on the afternoon of Sunday, 13 Dec. 1795, within two fields of his house. Part of it was exhibited at the museum of James Sowerby, London, and this piece is now in the natural history department, South Kensington Museum. Topham published ‘An Account’ of it in 1798, and in 1799 erected a column on the spot. The stone was ‘in breadth 28 inches, in length 36 inches, and its weight was 56 pounds’ (King, Sky-fallen Stones, pp. 21–22; Sowerby, British Mineralogy, ii. 3*–7*, 18*–19*; Beauties of England, Yorkshire, pp. 398–405). Topham died at Doncaster on 26 April 1820, aged 68. He had three daughters, who were reckoned ‘the best horsewomen in Yorkshire.’
Topham's portrait, with a pen in his hand, was painted by John Russell (1745–1806) [q. v.] and engraved by Peltro William Tomkins [q. v.] That of ‘Mrs. Topham and her three children’ (1791) was also painted by Russell. They were the property of Rear-admiral Trollope (Williamson, Life of Russell, pp. 40, 74, 167–8; Boaden, Mrs. Inchbald, i. 271).
The costume, the plays, and the newspaper of Topham alike exposed him to the satire of the caricaturist. He is depicted in the ‘Thunderer’ of Gillray (20 Aug. 1782) as a windmill, together with the Prince of Wales and Mrs. ‘Perdita’ Robinson, who is said to have found refuge in his rooms when deserted by her royal lover. In another cartoon (14 Aug. 1788) he is bringing to Pitt for payment his account for puffs and squibs against the whigs in the Westminster election. Rowlandson introduced Topham into his print of Vauxhall Gardens (28 June 1785). This was afterwards aquatinted by F. Jukes and etched by R. Pollard (Miller, Biogr. Sketches, i. 29–30). In other cartoons of Rowlandson (5 Oct. 1785) he figures as ‘Captain Epilogue to the Wells’ (i.e. Mrs. Wells), and as endeavouring with his squirt to extinguish the genius of Holman.
[Baker's Biogr. Dramatica; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. History, vii. 484; Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816; Gent. Mag. 1820, i. 469; Ross's Celebrities of Yorkshire Wolds, pp. 163–6; Public Characters, vii. 198–212; Annual Biogr. 1821, pp. 269–79; Redding's Fifty Years' Recollections, i. 80–2; John Taylor's Records of my Life, ii. 292–6; Grego's Rowlandson, i. 158, 166–7, 183, 320; Wright and Evans's Gillray's Caricatures, pp. 26, 378, 382–4; Memoirs of Mrs. Sumbel, late Wells, passim; information from Mr. W. Aldis Wright of Trin. Coll. Cambr.]
TOPHAM, FRANCIS WILLIAM (1808–1877), watercolour-painter, was born at Leeds, Yorkshire, on 15 April 1808. Early in life he was articled to an uncle who was a writing engraver, but about 1830 he came to London, and at first found employment in engraving coats-of-arms. He afterwards entered the service of Messrs. Fenner & Sears, engravers and publishers, and while in their employ he became acquainted with Henry Beckwith, the engraver, whose sister he married. He next found employment with James Sprent Virtue [q. v.], the publisher, for whom he engraved some landscapes after W. H. Bartlett and Thomas Allom. He also made designs for Fisher's edition of the ‘Waverley Novels,’ some of which he himself engraved, and he drew on the wood illustrations for ‘Pictures and Poems,’ 1846, Mrs. S. C. Hall's ‘Midsummer Eve,’ 1848, Burns's ‘Poems,’ Moore's ‘Melodies and Poems,’ Dickens's ‘Child's History of England,’ and other works.
Topham's training as a watercolour-painter appears to have been the outcome of his own study of nature, aided by practice at the meetings of the Artists' Society in Clipstone Street. His earliest exhibited work was ‘The Rustic's Meal,’ which appeared at the Royal Academy in 1832, and was followed in 1838, 1840, and 1841 by three paintings in oil-colours. In 1842 he was elected an associate of the New Society of Painters in Watercolours, of which he became a full member in 1843. He retired, however, in 1847, and in 1848 was elected a member of the ‘Old’ Society of Painters in Watercolours, to which he contributed a Welsh view near Capel Curig, and a subject from the Irish ballad of ‘Rory O'More.’ His earlier works consist chiefly of representations of Irish peasant life and studies of Wales and her people. These were diversified in 1850 by a scene from ‘Barnaby Rudge.’ Topham possessed considerable histrionic talent, and was in that year one of Dickens's company of ‘splendid strollers’ who acted ‘The Rent Day’ of Douglas Jerrold and Bulwer Lytton's ‘Not so bad as we seem.’ Towards the end of 1852 he went for a few months to Spain to study the picturesque aspects of that country and its people. The earliest of his Spanish subjects appeared in 1854, when he exhibited ‘Fortune Telling—Andalusia,’ and ‘Spanish Gipsies.’ These drawings were followed by ‘The Andalusian Letter-Writer’ and ‘The Posada’ in 1855, ‘Spanish Card-players’ and ‘Village Musicians in Brittany’ in 1857, ‘Spanish Gossip’ in 1859, and others, chiefly Spanish. In the autumn of 1860 he paid a second visit to Ireland, and in 1861 exhibited ‘The Angel's Whisper’ and ‘Irish Peasants at the Holy Well.’ In 1864 he began to exhibit Italian
