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Webb Thomas , attorney (died 1824)

L

LisaT

proper brummie kid
Hi, I'm a new member (living in Scotland), doing research into the life of author Jane Wells Webb Loudon, hoping someone might be able to help me find out something more about her parents. Her father is usually described as a businessman, or merchant, or wealthy industrialist, but I've found obituaries from the year he died which say he was an attorney who "served upwards of forty years" in Birmingham, and that he was seventy-four when he died, so....he was born about 1750. There are references to an attorney of that name throughout the 1790s, and the firm of Tyndallwoods name him as their founder, back in 1790, before he went into partnership with Mr Tyndall.

But I don't know where this Thomas Webb came from originally, and as he would have been 40 in 1790, he could well have had a previous career as a businessman or merchant or whatever.

He seems to have been buried at St Paul's, and to be included in the list of Monumental Inscriptions there -- I would be hugely grateful to anyone able to check that for me and let me know whatever information is included!

Thank you for any help you can provide!
 
Hi Lisa,

Welcome to the Forum. I can confirm two sources show that Thomas was buried on 22 September 1824 at St Paul, Hockley. I don't have access to the BMSGH MI Transcriptions, but possibly another member has. As for births in the area in 1750, familysearch.org has two in Warwickshire and one in Staffordshire for that year, but none in Birmingham. The only mentions of a Thomas Webb, solicitor, in Birmingham newspapers occur between 1800 and 1824 and there are two possible different ones. Nothing between 1750 and 1799.

Maurice :cool:
 
sospiri said:
Hi Lisa,

Welcome to the Forum. I can confirm two sources show that Thomas was buried on 22 September 1824 at St Paul, Hockley. I don't have access to the BMSGH MI Transcriptions, but possibly another member has. As for births in the area in 1750, familysearch.org has two in Warwickshire and one in Staffordshire for that year, but none in Birmingham. The only mentions of a Thomas Webb, solicitor, in Birmingham newspapers occur between 1800 and 1824 and there are two possible different ones. Nothing between 1750 and 1799.

Maurice :cool:
Click to expand...
Thanks, Maurice! I have also found those births on Familysearch....and he could be one of them. Or not, if my assumption that he was born in the Midlands is wrong. I have a subscription to British Newspaper Archives and have found a few mentions in different papers from the 1790s of Thomas Webb as an attorney in bankruptcy cases. I've written to Tyndallwoods since they mention him on their website, hoping they might have more info (but probably not, after all this time).
 
thread moved to the correct section of the forum which is surname interests

lyn
 
I see that on 14th September 1830, at Paddington, daughter Jane, of the late Thomas Webb of Kitwell House, married JC Loudon.
 
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Interesting, Pedro, as there is an Aris' Gazette entry in November 1824 for the sale of goods from Kitwell House, residence of the late Thomas Webb, but it fails to mention his occupation. But why buried in St Paul, Hockey? Find-a-Grave has St Paul's M I s on Family Search but fails to find a Thomas Webb among its memorials.

Maurice :cool:
 
Just last week I was trying to put together a Birmingham quiz/crossword and I was trying to include this lady.

There is an article on wikipedia about her, how accurate it is I don't know...

en.wikipedia.org

Jane Loudon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

There is also a tree on Familysearch that suggests Thomas was born in Bromsgrove.
 
Pedrocut said:
For reference the Wiki entry for Jane Webb.

We can confirm that it was Kitwell, not Ritwell.
en.wikipedia.org

Jane Loudon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...
Yes, it was Kitwell but I have my doubts about that being her birthplace. It would be helpful if I could find out who owned Kitwell House in 1800 -- or even when it was built! It has been assumed that Thomas Webb bought Kitwell; if so, he was letting it to others while he continued to practice law in BIrmingham. The family might have lived in Edgbaston. Should I start another thread about Kitwell House?:rolleyes: (From perusal of old newspapers I know some more details)
 
sospiri said:
Interesting, Pedro, as there is an Aris' Gazette entry in November 1824 for the sale of goods from Kitwell House, residence of the late Thomas Webb, but it fails to mention his occupation. But why buried in St Paul, Hockey? Find-a-Grave has St Paul's M I s on Family Search but fails to find a Thomas Webb among its memorials.

Maurice :cool:
Click to expand...
Possibly because his wife was buried there? I don't know her name, but she died in 1819.
 
The Wiki entry is interesting !

“she travelled in Europe for a year with her father, learning several languages. On their return, his business faltered and his fortune was lost to excessive speculation. He sold the house in Edgbaston and moved to another of his properties, Kitwell House at Bartley Green, six miles away. He died penniless in 1824, when Jane Webb was only 17.”
 
Pedrocut said:
The Wiki entry is interesting !

“she travelled in Europe for a year with her father, learning several languages. On their return, his business faltered and his fortune was lost to excessive speculation. He sold the house in Edgbaston and moved to another of his properties, Kitwell House at Bartley Green, six miles away. He died penniless in 1824, when Jane Webb was only 17.”
Click to expand...
But she was not 17, she was actually 24. And....ok, I don't know when they left to travel through Europe, but from at least 1818 P.H. Witton was living in Kitwell House (this is from his daughter's marriage announcement in the Bath Chronicle, 4 June 1818) until he had an auction of some of his stuff because he was moving out of Kitwell House (advertised 14 March 1822). (My guess - only a guess! -- is that Witton was renting and his lease was up. But was he renting it from Webb, who now wanted to move in? The Webbs obviously DID move in.

In 1845, Kitwell House, Northfield, was the residence of Joshua Scholefield, esq.
 
So there is a slight error on Bill Dargue’s site, being that Jane was born at Kirkwell House.

Interesting that Birmingham Live say in 2008…

“An early pioneer of science fiction writing who was way ahead of her time is to become only the second woman ever to have a Blue Plaque dedicated to her in Birmingham.”
 
There is a thread entitled John Claudius Loudon by Dennis…

John Claudius Loudon,

Re: Some great men of Birmingham.. The Brummie Mummy and the Botanical Gardens Part One — The Mummy! In 1827 prominent London bookseller and publisher Henry Colburn brought out an anonymous three-volume novel entitled The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, a...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
 
Jane Webb's first book, a slim volume, privately published in 1824, was Prose and Verse. Unlike The Mummy! which she chose to have published anonymously (not so unusual then--even Walter Scott, known as a poet, did that with his first novels), she put her name to it, and there was even an advertisement that gave her address -- let me see if I can add it here: 1623080346269.png
 
...even though they misspelled the name of her house, she was clearly identified with it from then on! I assume that because this had been given as her own and her father's address, later writers made the assumption that it was the old family estate and she was born there.
 
I have just come across your postings regarding Jane Wells Webb. It so happens that I have covered some of the same ground while researching the background of John Claudius Loudon. You may be familiar with the book: "Lady with Green Fingers. The Life of Jane Loudon" by Bea Howe (Country Life, 1961) Howe states (page 13): "I have constructed the first years of Jane Loudon's life, when she was a girl living at Kitwell House, from the autobiographical material which is embedded, so discretely, in her books." She also thanks Miles Hadfield (the garden historian) "himself a Jane Loudon fan" for providing local material which he had collected. The book has two photos of Kitwell House, taken when derelict, in 1951, ""demolished to make room for the erection of a vast secondary modern school."

According to Howe, after the death of Jane's mother in 1819, Thomas Webb "took his daughter abroad for a year's travel on the Continent. ... On leaving Southampton, she cut off a lock of her hair and sent it, with some suitable line of verse, to her much-loved cousin, Harriet Swinson. [see below] For a year the Webbs, father and daughter, toured Europe, sight-seeing , and improving Jane's education by the study of German, French and Italian. On their return to Birmingham, Mr. Webb, facing heavy business losses, decided to turn his back on city life and retire to Kitwell House ... outside Bartley Green. He had bought Kitwell House soon after Jane's birth, but it had been let for some years. Now it was empty again." The house contents were sold in late 1824 (Aris's Birmingham Gazette: Monday 25 October 1824: advertisement on page 2; Monday 8 November 1824: advertisement on page 2; Monday 15 November 1824, advertisement on page 2 (repeated Monday 22 November, page 2. These ads give some detail about the property as well as its contents.)

I think it was Howe (page 26) who started the oft-repeated story about Thomas Webb of Birmingham: "Little has been recorded of him except that he was a well-to-do business man living in easy circumstances." Sarah Dewis, in "The Loudons and the Gardening Press" (Ashgate publishing, 2014), refers to him as "a prominent Birmingham businessman and engineer." The ODNB article on Jane Loudon, by Ann B Shteir also mentions Thomas Webb as a businessman- and says that Jane was born at "Ritwell House". As you have found out Thomas was, in fact, a well-to-do attorney!

I have been unable to find anything about Jane's mother, however. Was her name surname Wells, perhaps?

The brief mention by Howe of cousin Harriet Swinson got me onto this site, since there is some relevant info about her. Family search says that she was born 5 September 1831 at Bordesley; her father's name was George Newton Swinson (born 1789) and her mother's name was Mary Ann Swinson. George Newton Swinson was a surgeon [who confusingly also had a son (thus a brother of Harriet ) of the same name- this younger George Newton Swinson was born April 1833 as Bordesley, later moving to Ashwell and finally Australia.] The possible Jane Webb connection is that the older George Newton Swinson's father (called simply George Swinson) had a wife called Mary Webb. Was she related to Thomas? [England, Warwickshire Parish Registers: Marriage. George Swinson, age 24, residence St Martin and Mary Webb, age 21, residence Northfield. 10 January 1788. Marriage place Worcester.] So far I have not been able to tie Mary Webb to Thomas Webb.
 
I'm a little confused, if Harriet Swinson was born in 1831, then how can Jane have sent her a lock of hair in 1819?

Elder George Newton Swinson had a sister Harriet (b1791).
 
I mentioned previously that there was a family tree that suggested that Thomas was born in Bromsgrove.

There is a baptism for a Thomas in Bromsgrove 2 Dec 1752, son of Thomas & Hannah (Spilsbury).

And there is also a baptism for a Mary in Bromsgrove 20 Jan 1765, daughter of Thomas & Hannah.

Both non-conformist.
 
I think 1752 is too late for Thomas Webb who was Jane's father, unless she is wrong to have given his age as 74 when he died in September 1824, and his birthday as 20 November. So....he should have been born in November 1749, and baptised if not in that same year then in early 1750. I suggest that family tree has hit upon the wrong Thomas. (There were quite a few of them about).

There seems to be evidence that Jane's mother was also called Jane, and died in 1809. (Memorialized in St Paul's)

I have also wondered if her mother's maiden name was Wells....but there could be other reasons why she had that name.

Thank you Brian D! Although the birthdate you give for Harriet Swinson does suggest it must have been an earlier Harriet who was friends with Jane. (Why do people insist on naming their children after themselves? It makes it so difficult for researchers, centuries later!) Northfield is the parish where Kitwell House was. I've found a reference in Aris's of 10 May 1830 : "Married at Trinity Church, Mary-le-Bone, Mr G.N. Swinson, surgeon, to Miss Morgan of Fitzroy Square."
 
Hello

Im currently researching into women in science, Ive got a talk on 10 August on the impact of the lunar society and womens education. Ive come across Jane Loudon as shes the amalgamation of women breaking down some of the barriers. I am interested in her work as a botanist and really theres not much out there. I would recommend Ann Shtier whose a professor of gender studies in Canada as shes done quite a bit but there should be more as shes incredible Lisa if you want to email me please do and I will send you what Ive done so far. Her life is sad though penniless three times, forced to write and then husband loses all his money, then she gets dropped from her editors role and has to beg for a pension.
 
Sorry for the confusion! Thank you, MWS, for pointing out the discrepancy between Jane sending the hair in 1819 and Harriet Swinson being born in 1831. (Even with slower mail delivery then....) I'm afraid I was so chuffed at locating Harriet Swinson, I did not notice the anomaly.
Almost certainly, it must be the older Harriet (b. 1791) [Can you give me the source of this information, please, MWS?], sister of George Newton Swinson the elder, who was Jane's cousin. This would also make sense, since this Harriet's father was George Swinson, who married Mary Webb on 10th January 1788 in Worcester (according to Warwickshire Parish Registers, 1535-1963) He was aged 24 (thus born in 1764; he was baptised in October of that year) and she was aged 21 (thus almost certainly born in 1867). If Jane's father Thomas Webb was Mary Webb's brother, that would indeed make Jane and Harriet cousins. I have found a Mary Webb who was christened on 26 January 1767 (just within the right dates) at St. Michael, Coventry, Warwickshire. Her mother's name was also Mary Webb, but there are no other details.
George (aged 76) and Mary (aged 75) Swinson also appear (with son Henry (aged 42) and ?servant Ann Williams (aged 32)) on the 1841 census.
I can only echo Lisa T's complaint about families recycling names! (P.S. My father's name was Robert, and my son's name is Matthew: future researchers, take note!)
 
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