in the Poultry; and actually acquired such a dejection of spirits as to occasion no small alarm to his friends. He was luckily, however, persuaded to adopt, in Brunswick-row, Queen-square, the sociability, if not the employment of the Poultry; and by the repeated visits of some inmates whom he highly esteemed, he was in a great measure roused from his melancholy; and continued to enjoy a few years of real comfort; distributing, not unfrequently, a portion of his large property in acts of the most disinterested benificence. His bounty to individuals it would be improper to mention. But it must be recorded in his honour, that in his life-time he gave £700 consols to the company of stationers (of which he was master in 1800) for the purpose of securing perpetual annuities, of ten guineas each, to the widows of two liverymen of that company. A very few weeks also before his death he gave £100 to the sea-bathing infirmary at Margate; to which very excellent institution he added £200 more by his last will; with the like sum to the society for the relief of persons confined for small debts. He gave £100 to the society for the relief of the indigent blind; £100 to the society for the relief of the deaf and dumb; and £100 to the dispensary in Red Lion-street. He remembered also some of his old friends. To Daniel Braithwaite, esq. John Oswald Trotter, esq. and Miss Cumberland, he gave £1000 each; to Dr. Lettsom, Dr. Elliott, the Rev. J. H. Todd, and Mary Fowler, widow, £500 each. Among the other legacies were, to Mrs. Crakelt, wife of Mr. Crakelt, £20 a-year: to her daughter, Mrs. Eylard, £20 a-year; to Mrs. Mary Greaves, the daughter of his half-sister, £52 a-year; to Mrs. Coulson of Bedford £100 a-year; to Miss Coulson, one of his residuary legatees, to the children of her sister, Mrs. Seilman, £100.; to the two Miss Davies's (daughters of the rev. Mr. Davies, perpetual curate of St. James's, Clerkenwell) £2000 each; to Mrs. Bodman and Mrs. May, all his shares in the Lancaster canal. And, besides other legacies, gave rings of ten guineas each to Mr. alderman Domville, and to Messrs. Baldwin, J. Nichols, Conant, Hughs, and Davies. The residue of his property (supposed to be about £60,000) to Miss Coulson, the two Miss Davies's Mrs. Bodman, and Mrs. May, who were all of them maternally related, his own name having become extinct. For the last twelve months his health evidently declined. He afterwards recovered so far as to undertake a journey to Ramsgate, on a visit to Mr. Cumberland, who happened to be at Tunbridge Wells with sir James Bland Burgess. Mr. Dilly arrived at Ramsgate on Saturday the 2d of May, 1807; and was on Sunday evening attacked by an oppression of breath, which took him off on the following morning. He was buried on the 12th, in the cemetry of St. George the Martyr, Queen-square, in a grave nearly adjoining that in which the famous Robert Nelson was deposited in 1715; the funeral being attended by a considerable number of his oldest friends.
1807, June 4. Died, Robert Butler, the proprietor and editor of the Blackburn Mail, aged forty-six years.
1807, July 28. Richard Phillips, bookseller, of New Bridge-street, London, (late of Leicester,) elected sheriff of London and Middlesex, and was on this day translated from the musicians' to the stationers' company. On going up with an address in behalf of ministers, he received the honour of knighthood.
1807, July 31. Died, Thomas Miller, a respectable bookseller at Halesworth, in Suffolk, where he had carried on business for nearly half a century, and died in his eighty-fourth year.
1807, July. Elihu White, of Threadneedle-street, London, obtained a patent for a machine for casting or founding types, &c.
1807, Aug. 20. The printing-office of Mr. Swan, Crown-court, comer of Salisbury-square, entirely consumed by fire, and four other houses much damaged. Mr. Swan lost above £2,000 over his insurance.
1807, Oct. 9. Died, John Wingrave, many years a bookbinder of eminence, in Red Lion-court, Fleet-street, London, in the eightieth year of his age. He had the honour of being patronized by the duke of Grafton, major Pearson, Isaac Reed, and several other first-rate collectors of curious books, and also by many of the first booksellers in London. He was a citizen of London, father of the bookbinding trade, and one of the oldest inhabitants of St. Dunstan's parish, of which he was constable in 1767; and apprehended the notorious Mrs. Brownrigg. He at that time published a curious Narrative of the many cruelties inflicted upon her apprentice Mary Clifford, for which she received sentence of death, Sept. 12, 1767.
1807, Oct. 13. Died, John Wright, of St. John's-square, Clerkenwell, London,an excellent printer, and a worthy man, in the thirty-eighth year of his age. Joseph Wright, his brother and successor, died, after a lingering illness, at his father's house in Leicestershire, May 1, 1809; and Edward Wright, a third brother, in the same profession, died April 26, 1810.
1807, Nov. 5. The warehouse of Mr. Bensley, printer, of Bolt-court, Fleet-street, London, destroyed, by fire, containing much valuable literary property.
1807, Dec. 13. Died, George Burbage, for upwards of thirty years a proprietor and printer of the Nottingham Journal, and a member of the senior council of the corporation of Nottingham. He had been in business as a bookseller and printer nearly sixty years; during which period, by his intense application and urbanity of manners, he obtained the respect of all ranks of society. He was aged eighty years. Mr. G. Stretton, who had been his apprentice, and also married his daughter, succeeded to his business.
1807, Dec. 13. Died, J. Northall, of the firm of Northall and Dawson, booksellers, Stockport, Cheshire; a truly upright man, whose death was awfully sudden, dying in the arms of his partner.
