Profile Major Works Resources

Walter Thom, 1770-1824

Scottish businessman, printer and journalist in Dublin.

The facts of Walter Thom's life are scant.  Walter Thom was born in the burgh of Bervie in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  He reportedly had a manufacturing business, but after it failed, moved to Aberdeen  to carve out a life as a writer, and, later on, Edinburgh and finally, in 1813, Thom moved to Dublin, Ireland.

Upon arriving in Ireland 1813, Walter Thom set up a printing business and was editor of The Correspondent, a Dublin newspaper that largely supported the Tory government.  At the time, Sir Robert Peel was Chief-Secretary for Ireland and grew warmly toward Thom.  Nearing the end of his term, Peel arranged for the passage of  Dublin Journal  to the proprietorship of Walter Thom in July 1817  (orig. founded by George Faulkner in 1725, a friend of Swift's, the Dublin Journal had since become a government-subsidized paper).  Thom edited the Dublin Journal until his death in June,1824.  His son, Alexander Thom, who had come to Ireland around 1820 to assist his father's business, would take it over and expand it into one of the largest printing businesses in Ireland. It was Alexander Thom who was responsible for Thom's Irish Almanac, launched in 1844. 

Walter Thom wrote several articles for David Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1807-30) and contributed to Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland (1791-99).  Walter Thom's best known work during his lifetime was a large History of Aberdeen (1812). 

By virtue of the flyleaf of the History of Aberdeen and attribution in Sinclair, the HET website has chosen to identify Walter Thom as the anonymous author of the proto-marginalist 1809 tract, Sketches on Political Economy (a reply to James Mill).  This is backed up by the attribution in Sinclair, and in the 1809 review in The Tradesman (p.449).  The tract's author had been identified by Seligman (1903, p.338) as one of the "Neglected British Economists", but there had been no solid attribution to date (Goldsmiths'-Kress library has tentatively suggested Granville Sharpe instead, but without explanation (poss. Foxwell's attribution); Goldsmiths-Kress attribute the 1814 Synopsis to Thom.).

Walter Thom, along with son, are buried in St. Luke's Church cemetery in Dublin.

 

  

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Major Works of Walter Thom

  • [Anon.] Sketches on Political Economy, illustrative of the interests of Great Britain: intended as a reply to Mr. Mill's pamphlet Commerce Defended, with an exposition of some leading tenets of the Economists, 1809
  • Sketch of the Second Chapter of the General Report regarding the Agricultural and Political State of Scotland: On the State of Property, drawn up for the consideration of the Board of Agriculture by W.T. 1811
  • A History of Aberdeen, containing an account of the rise, progress, and extension of the city from a remote period to the present day, etc., 1811, Vol. 1, Vol. 2.
  • Pedestrianism; Or, an account of the performances of celebrated pedestrians during the last and present centuries, with a full narrative of Captain Barclay's public and private matches; and an essay on training  1813 [bk]
  • [Anon.] Synopsis of the Science of Political Economy, 1814
  • "On the Political Economy of Scotland", p.280 in J. Sinclair, editor, General Report of the Agricultural State, and Political Circumstances, of Scotland, v.3

 
HET

 
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Resources on Walter Thom

  • Sketches 1809 cover
  • "Review of Sketches on Political Economy", 1809, Monthly Review, p.446
  • "Review of Sketches on Political Economy", 1809, Critical Review (Jul) p.326.
  • "Review of Sketches on Political Economy", 1809, Tradesman, or Commercial magazine, Pt.1 (Oct , p.354), Pt.2 (Nov, p.446)
  • "Review of History of Aberdeen", 1812, Scots Magazine, p.207
  • "Review of History of Aberdeen", 1812, Gentleman's Magazine, p.155
  • "Thom's History of Aberdeen", 1813, Monthly Review, p.205
  • Note on Thom's death in 1824, Scots Magazine, p.255
  • "Walter Thom" in Cates' Dictionary of General Biography [1867 ed, 1875 2nd edition]
  • "Thom, Walter & Alexander",  in Leslie Stephen & Stephen Lee, editor, 1885-901 Dictionary of National Biography [1908-09 ed]
  • "Alexander Thom, Obituary" Journal of The Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland Vol. VII, Part LVI, 1879/1880, p.5 [pdf] (thanks to Daniele Besomi for this find).
  • The Thoms in Scottish Notes & Queries
  • Thoms & Dublin Journal in History of Irish Periodicals
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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