Thrale history

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During the Gordon Riots the brewery was in great danger, John Perkins, Henry's supervisor, giving the No Popery mob £50 in meat and drink thus delaying them in time for the soldiery to arrive. Such action was typical of Perkins who must have been a very calm and able administrator.

From the earliest to the last days of Henry Thrale's life, the happy relationship with the Smiths at St. Michaels endured. Even during his courtship days when first invited to Offley Place he was accompanied by an elderly aunt named Mrs. Smith, whom Hester described as 'a very ordinary old woman indeed' but to whom she noted Henry "paid a mighty polite attention". This ordinary old woman was of course that long-headed and wise aunt Anne Smith, sister of Ralph Thrale, Henry's father. Many years later in July 1774 when Johnson with Henry, Hester and Queeney, the latter then being ten, embarked on a journey to Wales in order to inspect Mrs. Thrale's inheritance of Bach-y-Graig in Flintshire, the Smiths again play a part in the story. On setting out from Streatham, the party stopped for forty minutes at The Mitre in Barnet, and then went on to a 'good cold dinner' at St. Albans with relatives of Henry Thrale. These relatives were of course the Smiths at St. Michaels and this was possibly the only time that Johnson stayed in St. Albans. From thence, they travelled to Lichfield by way of Dunstable.²¹

One morning in 1776 Johnson and Boswell were breakfasting together. On receiving a letter Johnson became very agitated: 'One of the most dreadful things that has happened in my time: Mr. Thrale has lost his son'. Young Harry's death gave the greatest anguish to Hester, Henry, and Johnson, the tragedy leaving its mark on all three for ever in its different ways. The boy was ten. He possessed the most attractive personality, lively yet dutiful and loving. In March 1776 he went with a family party to the Tower of London jumping in an out of 'every Mortar till he was black as the ground'. The next day he breakfasted with his father's clerks, bright as a berry. During the day he commenced to suffer intense pain. A physician administered a medicine known as Daffy's Elixir. That afternoon young Harry died. Hester records his poignant death in her Family Book. As he became desparately ill, she hurried to his bedside where he lay struggling in agony. He then spoke very distinctly to his nurse: 'Don't scream so, I know I must die'. It would seem that the poor child had been killed by a ruptured appendix. Hester had accepted the death of her other children including her only other son Ralph at the age of two, with stoicsm, but Harry's death was the bitterest blow of all. After a nervous hysteria, Hester through the

Footnotes

21. "Personal History of Sam. Johnson" : C. Hibbert, Longman 1971. Margaret Turner-Hertfordshire Countryside 1971. "Dr. Johnson & Mrs. Thrale" Ed. A.M. Broadley 1910.↩︎