Family and Education
b. 1796, 1st s. of Thomas Duncombe of Copgrove, nr. Knaresborough, Yorks. and Emma, da. of Rt. Rev. John Hinchcliffe, bp. of Peterborough. educ. Harrow 1808-11. ?m. ?; 1s. His son and biographer, Thomas Henry Duncombe, was an army officer from 1860 until his retirement in 1873, having been a half-pay lt. of infantry since 1866. He 16 July 1864, at St. James, Paddington, Mary, da. of Sir Matthew Wyatt. In Duncombe Life and Corresp. ii. 356, he asserted that his father ‘left a widow ... and an only son’; and according to Biog. Dict. of Modern British Radicals, ii. 195, Duncombe married a woman who was shunned as ‘common’ by society, notwithstanding her beauty. Yet at the time of his own father’s death, 7 Dec. 1847, he was said to be ‘unmarried’ (Gent. Mag. (1848), i. 440); and, despite an intensive search, no contemporary record has been found of his marriage or of his son’s birth or baptism. suc. fa. 1847. d. 13 Nov. 1861.
Offices Held
Ensign Coldstream Gds. 1811, lt. and capt. 1815, ret. 1819.
Main residence: 20 Queen Street, Mayfair, Mdx.
Notes
His Life and Corresp. ed. by his son (2 vols., 1868), discursive and sometimes inaccurate, does him scant justice. The entry by James L. Sturgis in Biog. Dict. of Modern British Radicals ed. J. Baylen and N. Gossman, ii. 193-6 is perceptive, despite rendering Duncombe’s second name as ‘Slinksby’ and his first parliamentary seat as ‘Hartford’. There is a useful illustrated account of his career in P.W. Kingsford, ‘Radical Dandy’, History Today, xiv (1964), 399-407. See also Oxford DNB and M. Taylor, Decline of British Radicalism, 35, 40, 44, 110, 114, 164, 191, 278, 290, 329, 347.
Volume
Commons 1820-1832
Web Title
DUNCOMBE, Thomas Slingsby (1796-1861)
Will
Estates
Oxford 1644
No
Addresses
Religion
Image