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Thomas Raikes

1777 - 1848, Brighton

BiographyLC name authority rec. nr 89010906
LC Heading:Raikes, Thomas, 1777-1848

Biography:

Raikes, Thomas (1777–1848), dandy and diarist, born on 3 October 1777, was the eldest son of Thomas Raikes (1741–1813) and his wife, Charlotte (d. 1810), daughter of the Hon. Henry Finch. He had three brothers, including the clergyman Henry Raikes (1782–1854), and five sisters. His father was the brother of Robert Raikes, the promoter of Sunday schools, and was a merchant in London, governor of the Bank of England in the crisis of 1797, and personal friend of Wilberforce and the younger William Pitt.

Raikes was educated at Eton College, where he became a ‘fair classical scholar’ and made the acquaintance of many youths, including George Brummell, who were to be his friends in fashionable life. In 1795 he was sent abroad with a private tutor to study modern languages, and visited most of the German courts, including Berlin and Dresden. On his return to England he became a partner in his father's business, but he was more at home in the clubs of the West End. There he spent his time in the company of the ‘dandies’. He was an early member of the Carlton Club, joined White's Club about 1810, and belonged to Watier's. As he was a City merchant as well as a dandy, his nickname was Apollo, ‘because he rose in the east and set in the west’. He was a tall, large man, very much marked with the smallpox, and was caricatured by Dighton as One of the Rake's of London. His name appears with almost unequalled regularity in White's betting book. On 4 May 1802, he married Sophia Maria, daughter of Nathaniel Bayly, a proprietor in Jamaica. She died on 8 March 1822, leaving one son and three daughters.

Raikes was at The Hague in 1814, spending most of his time in the house of Lord Clancarty, the English ambassador; he visited Paris in 1814, 1819, and 1820, and he spent the winter of 1829–30 in Russia. But he still remained in business, and in 1832, at a meeting of City merchants at the London tavern, proposed the second resolution against the war with Holland. Financial troubles, however, forced him to leave for France in the summer of 1833, and for eight years he remained abroad. In October 1841, when the tories came into office, he returned to England, hoping for a post through the influence of the duke of Wellington, but his expectations were disappointed, and he found most of his old friends dead or in retirement. The following years were spent partly in London and partly in Paris. His health was failing and in May 1846 he went to Bath for its waters. He then took a house at Brighton, and died there on 3 July 1848.

Raikes's best book was his diary, comprising reminiscences of the leading men of fashion and politics—such as the duke of York, Brummell, Alvanley, and Talleyrand—in London and Paris during the earlier part of the nineteenth century. It was published in 1856–7. His other works included two volumes of foreign observations, and Private Correspondence with the Duke of Wellington and other Distinguished Contemporaries (1861), edited by his daughter, Harriet Raikes; most of the letters to the duke related to French politics from 1840 to 1844.

W. P. Courtney, rev. K. D. Reynolds
Sources Burke, Gen. GB · Allibone, Dict. · A portion of the journal kept by Thomas Raikes esq. from 1831 to 1847: comprising reminiscences of social and political life in London and Paris during that period, 4 vols. (1856–8) · R. H. Gronow, The reminiscences of Captain Gronow (1861) · GM, 2nd ser., 30 (1848), 332
Archives U. Southampton L., letters to first duke of Wellington
Likenesses R. Dighton, caricature, coloured etching, pubd 1818, BM, NPG, V&A [see illus.]
© Oxford University Press 2004–15
All rights reserved: see legal notice Oxford University Press

W. P. Courtney, ‘Raikes, Thomas (1777–1848)’, rev. K. D. Reynolds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/23017, accessed 19 Oct 2015]

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Last Updated8/7/24

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