SOCIETY FOR CONSTITUTIONAL INFORMATION: John Frost original member 1780 Upper Charlotte St, Rathbone Pl. Marked as "declined" in 178? list but active later without being proposed again
BONNEY DIARY: 31.7.1794 saw Frost (once Bonney moved to Newgate on 24.10.1794 Frost was mentioned more often) Frost 27.10.1794 / 29.10.1794 / 1.11.1794 / 3.11.1794 / 11.11.1794 / 13.11.1794 / 14.11.1794 / 15.11.1794. Bonney had been the clerk of John Frost
AMENDMENTS TO OXFORD DNB: John Frost 1750-1842
CURRENT TEXT "born in October 1750. His parentage remains unknown and little about his childhood, personal life, or early career has been discovered, although it is understood that he was educated at Winchester College and trained as an attorney. Like many practising lawyers Frost's occupation probably saw him actively involved in politics as an electoral agent, and it was in 1782 that he began attending meetings of a reform society at the Thatched House tavern in St James's Street, London. Here, on 18 May 1782, at a meeting chaired by William Pitt and attended by the likes of the duke of Richmond, Lord Surrey, Lord Mahon, John Wilkes, Major John Cartwright, and John Horne Tooke, a resolution was unanimously agreed which stipulated that a petition be presented to parliament calling for a reform of the House of Commons."
SUGGESTED CHANGE < probably the John son of Robert and Elizabeth Frost baptised at St Pancras on 6 November 1753. According to his obituary in the Genteman's Magazine he was born in October 1750 and educated at Winchester College. He was articled to John Bennett, attorney of Bartlett's Buildings, Holborn in 1768, was clerk to the St Pancras paving commissioners from 1772, and in 1779 John Augustus Bonney, later one of the defendants in the 1794 treason trials, became his clerk. On 27 May 1776 at St Pancras he married Elizabeth Moore. In the next two years two of their daughters were baptised at Percy Chapel but in his will Frost described his marriage as unhappy.
He was secretary to the election committee at Westminster in 1780 for *Charles James Fox ODNB 1749-1806* and then to the Westminster Committe of Association until he resigned in 1783.>
NOTES The old DNB article and the ODNB article rely heavily on the obituary in Gents Mag 1842 vol2 p442-3. Frost's will Nat Arch PROB 11/1966/280 said that his parents were buried at St Giles; Elizabeth Frost of St Pancras was buried at St Giles 11.1.1791 and Robert Frost of St Pancras was buried there 24.12.1796. Robert Frost was recorded as a householder on west side of Tottenham Court Road in St Pancras Land Tax books between 1780 and 1790 and was also a contributor of 3 gns to Middlesex Hospital (see "A Sermon &c" Dodgson, Charles, London 1761). John Frost also mentioned in his will his "unhappy marriage", with settlement date 31.5.1776 (day before the wedding) and the Newgate criminal registers Nat Arch HO 26/3 f16 gave his age in 1793 as 40, born Soho. Articles of clerkship on Ancestry, Paving commissioners see many adverts in Gale's British Newspapers, Fox's election committee Morning Chronicle 13.9.1780 and other newspaper ads 1780. Percy Chapel, Elizabeth Margaret born 2.5.1777 bapt 29.5.1777 Sarah born 1.7.1778 bapt 25.7.1778, both of John & Elizabeth Frost. His dau Sarah Frost was mentioned in his will of 1824.
SUGGESTED ADDITION after "leading reformers of the day." <In 1788 he was solicitor for Lottery affairs to the Stamp Office, and to Lord Hood in his Westminster election campaign, when he was accused of hiring sailors to intimidate voters.>
NOTES see Remarks column in entry in criminal register Nat Arch HO 26/3 f16, and many adverts in British Newspapers in 1788
CURRENT TEXT "The prominence of Frost in the metropolitan reform movement"
SUGGESTED CHANGE <In August 1792 Frost's pamphlet Cheap Coals, against the coal tax, was published. His prominence in the metropolitan reform movement>
NOTES Cheap Coals can be read in Gale's Eighteenth Century Online
CURRENT TEXT "For some time his whereabouts and activities remain unknown, until in December 1813"
SUGGESTED CHANGE <In 1810 he was a prisoner in the King's Bench on account of the costs of his petition, and then in December 1813>
NOTES historyofparliamentonline, consituencies, 1790-1820, East Grinstead. Frost's will dated 1824 called himself "citizen John Frost of Ashurst Wood in the parish of East Grinstead, but now uncomfortably and unprofitably residing at Number 30 Howland Street" (St Pancras)
SUGGESTED ADDITION after "the age of ninety-one." <He lived many years with a spinster, Mary Ann Austen, who proved his will, written in 1824, in which he expressed the hope that "my country that glorious little island will ultimately regain those subverted rights and liberties she once enjoyed which it was my fate to attempt to preserve".>