Parry, John Docwra I J. D. Parry, substituted for original entry Unknown correspondent l, b. ca, 1799; prob. date of death [1845 or after â€“ D.N.B.]. Divine, misc. writer; native of Bedfordshire. B.A. Cambridge, 1.824; M.A. 1827. Curate of Aspley Guise, Beds., 1827; of Brighton, 1833. In preface to one of his works, wrote of the discouragement under which he laboured; a passage in one of his letters to Sir Robert Peel, cited in Alumni Cantab., mentions his poverty and distress and his lack of success in the church; Alumni Cantab. suggests that he had perhaps been unfrocked. Contributed articles, and at least one poem, to Gent. Mag.; contributed to Builder, furnishing to the periodical "perhaps, the greatest amount of statistics in connection with the city churchyards that has yet appeared" (Builder, Sept. 19, 1846). Sometime editor of Portsmouth Herald. Compiled anthology of ballads, The Legendary Cabinet, 1829; and The Anthology: ... Selections Adapted to the Amusement and Instruction of Youth, 1830; in both, included his ballad ''EIla''; in the second, also his "Grecian Epitaph." Author of Select Illustrations, Historical and Topographical, of Bedfordshire, 1827; History and Description of Woburn and Its Abbey, 1831 (and part reissued in same year as A Guide to Woburn Abbey); An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Coast of Sussex, 1833, dedicated by permission to King William and Queen Adelaide. In Urban Burial. An Account of the London Churchyards, with Suggestions for Joint Parochial Cemeteries, 1847, reprinted some of items he had contributed to Builder. Dickens had a copy of the pamphlet in his library (Stonehouse, Catalogue, p. 89).

The H.W. article to which Parry's name is jointly attached denounces the cruelties practised in animal slaughter. Further remarks on the same subject, "drawn forth" (according to the editorial comment) from "a clergyman in Bedfordshire" on his reading the article, were cited in Wills's "Torture in the Way of Business," Sept. 14. The "clergyman in Bedfordshire" may have been Parry himself, though it is not possible to establish from directories that Parry was resident in Bedfordshire in 1850.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                         D.N.B.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971  

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography