Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/291

 merits with the new engine were not successful; but he continued to work at the subject, and after many trials upon the roads in and around London, the 'Infant' began to run regularly for hire between Stratford and London in February 1831. In the following year he built the 'Era' for the London and Brighton Steam Carriage Company, one of the many similar associations which came into existence about that time, when the success of the Liverpool and Manchester railway had raised the hopes of speculators. The 'Era' was followed by the 'Enterprise,' which was put upon the road by the London and Paddington Steam Carriage Company in April 1833. In October of the same year the 'Autopsy' ran for a short time between Finsbury Square and Pentonville, and again in October 1834, alternately with the 'Erin,' between the city and Paddington. Hancock appears to have continued his efforts until about 1840, by which time he had built ten carriages, making many trips through various parts of the country. After that year public interest in the subject rapidly declined, all the companies which had been formed having failed. Of all the projectors of steam locomotion on common roads, Hancock was the most successful, and the performances of some of his carriages were very creditable. He afterwards turned his attention to indiarubber, working in conjunction with his brother Thomas, and in 1843 he obtained a patent for cutting indiarubber into sheets, and for a method of preparing solutions of indiarubber. He died 14 May 1852.

Hancock was also author of a 'Narrative of Twelve Years' Experiments (1824-1836) demonstrative of the Practicability and Advantage of Employing Steam Carriages on Common Roads,' London, 1838.



HAND, THOMAS (d. 1804), painter, was a follower and imitator of [q. v.], and one of his boon companions. Some of his pictures were cleverly painted in Morland's manner, and have been known to pass for works of that painter. Hand exhibited a small landscape with the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1790, and from 1792 to 1804 was an occasional exhibitor at the Royal Academy. He was more successful in his landscapes than in his figures. He died in London in September 1804.



HANDASYDE, CHARLES (fl. 1760–1780), miniature-painter, received in 1765 a premium from the Society of Arts for an historic painting in enamel. In 1761 he exhibited two miniatures in enamel and two in water-colours at the Incorporated Society of Artists, and in 1762 three miniatures in enamel and one in water-colours at the Free Society of Artists. In 1776 he exhibited a miniature in enamel at the Royal Academy. He mezzotinted two or three small portraits of himself. On the back of an impression of one of these in the print room at the British Museum he is described as 'Mr. Handiside of Cambridge.'



HANDEL, GEORGE FREDERICK, more correctly (1685–1759), musical composer, was the grandson of a coppersmith, Valentin Handel (1582–1636), who removed from Breslau to Halle early in the seventeenth century. The father of the composer was Georg Händel (1622–1697), Valentin's sixth child, who, leaving two elder brothers, Valentin and Christoph, to carry on the business, studied such surgery as could be learnt from a barber in the town named Andreas Beger, who in 1618 had married the daughter of the English musician, [q. v.], then court kapellmeister at Halle. In 1645 Georg Händel was appointed town surgeon ('Amts-chirurgus') of Giebichenstein, and in 1660 Duke Augustus of Saxony gave him the titles of 'Kammerdiener' and 'Leibchirurgus.' This, with the prefix 'Kurbrandenburgische,' was confirmed to him by the elector of Brandenburg on the death of his former patron. Georg Händel married, first, in 1643, Anna, widow of a barber-surgeon named Oettinger, by whom he had six children; and secondly, in 1683, six months after his first wife's death, Dorothea (b. 1651), daughter of Georg Taust, pastor of Giebichenstein, a suburb of Halle. Georg Händel's house at Halle was No. 4 in the Grosser Schlamm, and here, on 23 Feb. 1685, his son, the second child of his second marriage, was born, and was baptised on the following day (Baptismal Registers of the Liebfrauenkirche, Halle, quoted by, G. F. Händel, i. 9). The first child of the second marriage, also a son, had died an hour after its birth in 1684. Two daughters were born later. According to Dreyhaupt (Pagus Neletici, ed. 1755, ii. 625), the boy was sent very early to the gymnasium, or classical school of the town, the master of which, Johann Praetorius, was an ardent musician. Handel may have been withdrawn 