Nationality British Role Political reformer | Name Thomas Hardy Occupation Shoemaker | |
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Books Thomas Hardy's Fiction: all 20 books Organizations founded London Corresponding Society | ||
Thomas Hardy (3 March 1752 – 11 October 1832) was an early Radical, and the founder, first Secretary, and Treasurer of the London Corresponding Society.
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Early life
Hardy was born on 3 March 1752 in Larbert, Stirlingshire, Scotland, the son of a merchant seaman. His father died in 1760 at sea while Thomas was still a boy. He was sent to school by his maternal grandfather and later apprenticed to a shoemaker in Stirlingshire. He later worked in the Carron Iron Works. As a young man, he came to London just before the American Revolutionary War. On 21 May 1781 he married at St-Martin-in-the-Fields church Lydia Priest, the youngest daughter of a carpenter and builder from Chesham, Buckinghamshire. The couple had six children, all of whom died in infancy. Lydia died in childbirth on 27 August 1794, her child (the sixth) being stillborn: the cause may have been the injuries she had sustained when a loyalist "Church and King" mob attacked the Hardy home some weeks earlier. In 1791, Hardy opened his own boot and shoe shop at 9 Piccadilly, London.
Involvement with the London Corresponding Society
Around 1792, Thomas Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society, starting out with just nine friends. Two years later, on 12th May 1794, it had grown so powerful that he was arrested by the King's Messenger, two Bow Street Runners, the private secretary to Home Secretary Dundas, and others on Crown charges of high treason. During his imprisonment, Hardy's wife gave birth to a stillborn, and eventually died in August 1794, leaving him with an unfinished letter declaring her love for him. The charges were prosecuted with Sir John Scott leading for the Crown, and William Garrow among the prosecuting counsel; while Hardy was defended by Thomas Erskine. He was acquitted after nine days of testimony and debate, on Guy Fawkes Day 1794.
Death and legacy
In later life Hardy ceased involvement in politics, and with the assistance of friends set up a small shoe shop in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. In September 1797 he moved to a smaller establishment in Fleet Street. He died on 11 October 1832 at his home in Queen's Row, Pimlico, London. He was buried at Bunhill Fields burial ground, where a granite obelisk, designed by John Woody Papworth, was later erected to his memory.