Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/184

 talents, his contributions to literature are only those of a second-rate Lever and a third-rate Moore.

Lover married (1) in 1827 a daughter of a Dublin architect named Berrel, who died while he was in America in 1847, and (2) in 1852 the daughter of a Cambridgeshire squire named Wandby.



LOVETT, RICHARD (1692–1780), author of works on electricity, was born at Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, in 1692. On 25 Nov. 1722 he was admitted to a lay clerkship in Worcester Cathedral, and retained this position until his death on 8 June 1780. He studied electrical phenomena, and in September 1758 advertised himself as able to effect cures, especially of sore throat, by the use of electricity. Augustus De Morgan, however, describes him as ‘an ether-philosopher, a mere theorist.’ His published works are:
 * 1) ‘The Subtile Medium proved … the Qualities of Æther or Elementary Fire of the Ancient Philosophers to be found in Electrical Fire,’ London, 1756; 2nd pt. 1759.
 * 2) ‘The Reviewers Reviewed, or the Bush Fighters exploded, a reply to Animadversions of the “Monthly Review” on a late Pamphlet entitled “Sir Isaac Newton's Æther realized.” An Appendix on Electricity rendered useful in Medicinal intentions,’ London, 1760.
 * 3) ‘Philosophical Essays,’ in 3 pts., Worcester, 1766.
 * 4) ‘The Electrical Philosopher, containing a new System of Physics, founded upon the principle of an Universal Plenum of Elementary Fire,’ Worcester, 1774.



LOVETT, WILLIAM (1800–1877), chartist, son of William Lovett, master-mariner, and Keziah Green, his wife, was born in Church Lane, Newlyn, near Penzance, on 8 May 1800. His father was drowned at sea before his birth, and his mother earned a precarious livelihood by selling fish in Penzance. He was bound apprentice to a ropemaker. The introduction of chain cables having much injured the ropemaking business, he made his way to London in 1821. For some weeks he was unable to obtain work, and suffered considerable privation, but he had much mechanical ingenuity, and at last obtained employment in carpentering and cabinet-making. He had not been apprenticed to the trade, and consequently met with much opposition from his fellow-workmen, but after some years he was admitted into the Cabinet-makers' Society. He busily educated himself, joined a discussion society, the ‘Liberal,’ in Gerrard Street, Soho, a mechanics' institute, and other associations. On 3 June 1826 he married a lady's-maid, and having opened a confectioner's shop, which failed, he and his wife joined the first London co-operative association, in which they obtained precarious employment. Becoming thus interested in co-operative societies in the earliest days of co-operation, he was about 1830 appointed secretary of the British Association for Promoting Co-operative Knowledge, which failed after three or four years. At this time he became acquainted with Owen, Hunt, Cobbett, Cleave, Hetherington, and Watson, and took an active part in various projects of reform. He drew up a petition for the opening of museums on Sundays in 1829, the earliest of its kind. In 1830 he became connected with the agitation against stamp duties on newspapers. He was sub-treasurer and secretary of the ‘Victim Fund,’ which was raised to assist persons prosecuted by the revenue authorities. In 1831 he refused to serve in the militia, for which he had been drawn, or to pay for a substitute, and execution was accordingly levied upon his furniture, but attention being called to the subject by Hunt and Hume, the practice of drawing was discontinued. In 1831 he joined the ‘National Union of the Working Classes,’ a political organisation modelled on the plan of the methodist connexion. He was arrested and sent for trial in March 1832 for rioting in connection with a procession which he headed on the cholera fast day, but he was acquitted in May. He continued his political activity in spite of private misfortunes, such as the failure of a coffee-house which he opened in Greville Street, Hatton Garden, in 1833. He assisted to draft the Benefit Societies Act of 1836, and to form the London Working Men's Association, 16 June 1836, writing for this society an appeal to the nation on the franchise question, and agitating for those reforms which ultimately became the ‘six points’ of the ‘People's Charter.’ He drafted bills embodying the ‘points,’ and addresses to the crown, the houses of parliament, the people of England at large, and the working classes of Europe. He was secretary of the general committee of the trades of London, which was formed to represent the views of the working classes before the select parliamentary committee on Trades Unionism and