TOM or THOM, JOHN NICHOLS (1799–1838), impostor and madman, was baptised on 10 Nov. 1799 at St. Columb Major in Cornwall. His father, William Tom, kept an inn called the Joiner's Arms, and was also a small farmer. His mother, Charity, whose maiden name was Bray, died in the county lunatic asylum. John was educated at Bellevue House academy, Penryn, and at Launceston under Richard Cope [q. v.] From 1817 to 1820 he was clerk to F. C. Paynter, a solicitor at St. Columb, and, after acting as innkeeper at Wadebridge for a few months, he became clerk to Lubbock & Co., wine merchants, Truro, in whose employ he remained until 1826. In that year, with the assistance of his wife, Catherine Fisher, daughter of William Fulpitt of Truro, to whom he was married in February 1821, and who brought him a handsome fortune, he set up in Truro on his own account as a maltster and hop-dealer, and built himself a house in Pydar Street. From an early age he showed a tendency to political and religious enthusiasm. When on a visit to London in 1821 he joined the Spencean Society, founded by Thomas Spence [q. v.] About the beginning of 1832 he is said to have had an epileptic fit, and was regarded by his family as of unsound mind. He disappeared from Cornwall, and is next heard of at Canterbury in August 1832. His own story of intermediate travels in the Holy Land is purely fictitious. He now assumed the name of Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay, and claimed to be heir to the earldom of Devon, a title which had been restored to the third Viscount Courtenay in 1831. He also (inconsistently) claimed the Kentish estates of Sir Edward Hales, sixth baronet, who died without issue in 1829. Other names under which he passed were the Hon. Sydney Percy, Count Moses Rothschild, and Squire Thompson. He persistently styled himself knight of Malta, and sometimes king of Jerusalem. The Canterbury people of all classes were won over by his handsome face and figure, his strange oriental garb, and his apparent generosity, which was really derived from loans raised out of his credulous followers. At the general election of December 1832 he was nominated for Canterbury, and polled 375 votes; standing for East Kent a few days later he polled only four. In March 1833 he started a paper at Canterbury, called ‘The Lion,’ which ran to eight numbers. The contents, written by himself, are commonplace appeals to political and religious ignorance, with some fictitious autobiographical details. In Feb. of that year at a trial of some smugglers at Rochester, he swore falsely that he witnessed the fight between them and the revenue officers off the Goodwin Sands. At the Maidstone assizes, in July, he was convicted of perjury and sentenced to three months' imprisonment and seven years' transportation, but was placed in the county lunatic asylum at Barming Heath. Here he remained for four years. He issued a wild address (Nov. 1835), re-
Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/7
