Leatham, William Henry

(1815-1889)

   Born at Wakefield, Yorkshire, the son of a Quaker banker and author of Letters on the Currency (1840), he was educated under a classical tutor in London and at nineteen he entered his father's bank at Wakefield. He was member of Parliament for Wakefield from 1865 to 1868. He married Priscilla Gurney in 1839, retired from politics and settled at Sandal, near Wakefield, and made the place the subject of a poem, "Sandal in the Olden Time." The couple converted to the Anglican Church and purchased Hemsworth Hall in 1851. He died suddenly at Carlton, near Pontefract, Yorkshire. Some of his poetry publications: The Victim, a Tale of the Lake of the Four Cantons, 1841. The Siege of Granada, 1841. Strafford, a Tragedy, 1842. Henry Clifford and Margaret Percy, a Ballad of Bolton Abbey, 1843. Emilia Monteiro, a Ballad of the Old Hall, Heath, 1843. Cromwell, a Drama in Five Acts, 1843. The Widow and the Earl, a Tale of Sharlston Hall, 1844. Montezuma, 1845. Life Hath Many Mysteries, 1847. Selections from Lesser Poems. 1855.

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997.