pipes were made for Roger North's organ at Rougham (Burney in Rees's Cyclopædia, art. ‘North’).
Smith's daughter married Christopher Schrider, one of his workmen, who afterwards built organs for the Royal Chapel of St. James, 1710; St. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, 1716; St. Mary, Whitechapel, 1715 (Malcolm); St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 1726; St. Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey; Whitchurch, Shropshire, and Westminster Abbey, 1730.
The repairing of organs was an employment chiefly pursued by Smith's nephews, whose work was known all over the country. In 1702 one of them, Gerard Smith, put in order and superintended the removal of an organ in Lincoln Cathedral (Maddison). He built church organs for Bedford parish, 1715; All Hallows, Bread Street, 1717; Finedon, Northamptonshire, 1717; Little Stanmore; and St. George's, Hanover Square.
Of Christian Smith, organ-builder, of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, it may be assumed that he was brother to the great organ-maker, as one of his instruments (at Norwich) is dated 1643. He built for Tiverton church, Devonshire, 1696; and Boston church, Lincolnshire, 1717.
[Hopkins and Rimbault's History of the Organ, 1877, pp. 102–38; Hawkins's History of Music, with portrait, p. 691; Burney's Hist. of Music, iii. 436 et seq.; Grove's Dict. of Music, iii. 539, and for pitch and specifications, ii. 590; Dr. Sparrow Simpson's Documents relating to St. Paul's Cathedral, pp. lxi, 161–4, 167; Pepys's Diary (Braybrooke), vol. i.; Walcott's St. Margaret's, pp. 67, 77; North's Memoires of Musicke, pp. xv, 20; Mrs. Delany's Correspondence (containing some notes on Smith's method of construction, which are ascribed to Handel), iii. 405, 568, iv. 568; Chamberlayne's Angliæ Notitia, 1700; Jones and Freeman's Hist. of St. David's, pp. 95, 369; Warren's Tonometer, p. 8; Harding's Hist. of Tiverton, i. 90, iv. 10; Register of Wills, P.C.C., ‘Barrett,’ p. 72; Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, iv. 447; Webb's Collection of Epitaphs, ii. 76; McCrory's A few Notes on the Temple Organ.]
SMITH, CHARLES (1715?–1762), Irish county historian, born about 1715, was a native of Waterford, and followed the calling of an apothecary at Dungarvan in that county. In 1744 he published, in conjunction with Walter Harris [q. v.], the editor of Ware's ‘Works,’ a history of the county Down. This was the first Irish county history on a large scale ever written. The preface to this book contains the outline of a plan for a series of Irish county histories, which appears to have led in 1744 to his foundation at Dublin of the Physico-Historical Society for the purpose of providing topographical materials for such a series. With the imprimatur of this body were published successively Smith's important histories of Waterford and Cork. The history of Kerry was published independently after this society had broken up. Although encumbered with much irrelevant matter, these volumes form a valuable contribution to Irish topography, of which Smith may be regarded as the pioneer. Smith's statements of fact are generally to be trusted, though it was said of him in the counties of which he was the historian that his descriptions were regulated by the reception he was given in the houses he visited while making his investigations. His books are warmly commended by Macaulay, who frequently refers to them in his ‘History’ (1855, iii. 136 n.)
In 1756 Smith, with a number of eminent physicians, founded at Dublin the Medico-Philosophical Society, a learned association which survived till 1784. Of this body Smith was the first secretary, and the author of a ‘Discourse’ setting forth its objects. Its memoirs or minutes are preserved in part at the Royal Irish Academy, and in part at the Irish College of Physicians. Smith died at Bristol in July 1762.
His works are:
- ‘The Antient and Present State of the County of Down,’ 1744, in collaboration with Walter Harris.
- ‘The Antient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford,’ 1746.
- ‘The Antient and Present State of the County and City of Cork,’ 1750.
- ‘The Ancient and Present State of the County of Kerry,’ 1756.
[Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; notice by M. J. Hurley in Waterford Society's Journal, No. 1; Dublin Mag. 1762; Minutes of the Physico-Historical Soc. (unprinted), in R. I. Academy; Memoirs of Medico-Philosophical Soc. (unprinted).]
SMITH, CHARLES (1713–1777), writer on the corn trade, born at Stepney in 1713, was the son of Charles Smith, a mill-owner of Croydon, Surrey, by his wife Anne, daughter of James Marrener of Fange, Essex, a naval captain in the service of the East India Company. Charles was educated at the grammar school of Ratcliff, Middlesex, entered his father's business, realised a fortune, married and settled at Stratford in Essex, and became a county magistrate. From an early period Smith devoted much attention to the subject of the corn trade and to the laws regulating it. The scarcity of 1757 turned public attention to the subject, and a strong feeling arose against the farmers and dealers of corn, whose avarice was considered to have caused it. In consequence, in the following year, Smith published ‘A Short Essay on the Corn-trade and Corn-
