Archive Item of the Month – February 2020

Valentines’ day : Thomas Valentine (1759-1800) and his immediate family

RSM Member Thomas Valentine (A093) hailed from an extensive family of musicians from Leicester and moved to London in the late 1770s.  His name appears in the list of instrumentalists for the important and ground-breaking music festival held in London in 1784, namely the Handel Commemoration Concert at Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon (see An account of the musical performances in Westminster-Abbey and the Pantheon, May 26th, 27th, 29th and June the 3d and 5th, 1784 in commemoration of Handel by Charles Burney, London, printed for the benefit of the Musical Fund, 1785).  Valentine joined the Society of Musicians on 4 July 1784 just a few weeks following this festival and his application had been supported by Redmond Simpson (who compiled the financial accounts for the Handel Commemoration Concert) and notes that Valentine “has practised music for a livelihood upwards of seven years, is a single man, aged about 25, plays at Covent Garden Theatre, has many scholars”.

On 27 May 1785 Valentine married Margaretta Sutherland at St Martin-in-the-Fields.  Their first child, John, was born on 8 April 1787.  Thomas Valentine became organist to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn (4th Baronet, 1749-1789) in Ruarbon near Wrexham in North Wales.  Four further children were baptised (Thomas, 1790; Henry, 1792; Sarah, 1794 and Hannah, 1797) and recorded in the register of Wrexham Parish Church.  Disaster struck in April 1800 with the sudden death of the father Thomas. “With a teenage son and four other children to care for, Margaret Valentine turned to the RSM for help – the very purpose for which it was set up.
At a Governors’ meeting of the RSM on 4 May 1800 a petition from Margaret Valentine for funeral expenses and support for herself and her five children was accepted” (see Shuker).

A request from the widow that her son John, aged fourteen, be apprenticed was apparently rejected; however, documents show that the other children did have tuition and apprenticeships funded by the RSM.  Both Thomas and Henry went on to have substantial musical careers and the two daughters, Sarah and Hannah, had training for English grammar and needlework in order to assist in becoming schoolmistresses.

Further literature:

David Shuker, The Valentines of Leicester and beyond: a very British musical dynasty in A Handbook for Studies in 18th-century English music, XXIII (London: Gerald Coke Handel Foundation, 2019), pp.81-95.