Samuel Favell

Samuel Favell (1760-1830) was a prominent Dissentng layman. He lived his early years in Tooley Street, Southwark, where he married Sarah Bardwell in 1786, a member at Carter Lane. She died in 1795 and married Elizabeth Beddome (1765-1830), daughter of Benjamin Beddome, Baptist minister at Bourton-on-the-Water. She too was a member at Carter Lane but Favell does not appear in the membership rolls of Carter Lane, Unicorn Yard, or Maze Pond. It is possible he attended at Dean Street (that church book is no longer extant) and also possible he was an Independent, for in 1812 he was serving as a deacon at the Camberwell Green Congregational Church. He partnered for a time with his second wife's brother, Boswell Brandon Beddome (a member at the Baptist meeting in Maze Pond and a close friend of Benjamin Flower) as woollen drapers (Beddome, Fysh and Co., 170 Fenchurch Street). Favell operated a second partnership as a slopseller with William Bousfield at 12 St Mary-Axe. Favell was present at the initial meeting of the Sunday School Society in 1785, and served as a leading member of the London Revolution Society from 1788 to its demise in 1792, as well as Society for Constitutional Information; he was the object of a satirical piece in the London Times on 22 June 1792 titled “The Southwark Slop-Seller,” signed “Sammy Slop,” a name revisited again by the Times on 4 December 1792, described as still living in Tooley Street. Favell himself would later write of these attacks (more occurred that December) on his politics and character in a letter that appeared in the Times on 25 June 1827. He represented the Court of Common Council from 1809 through 1829. He was, like his fellow Baptists Henry Waymouth, Benjamin Shaw, Joseph Hughes, Samuel Medley, Jr., and F. A. Cox, involved in the founding of London University, serving as a member of the first Provisional Committee in July 1825. He moved to Camberwell from Tooley Street c. 1794, and later was an active member of the Camberwell Bible Association. At a meeting of 8 November 1813, he was joined by Samuel Palmer (1775-1847), father of the Romantic painter Samuel Palmer (1805-81), the latter becoming a friend of Crabb Robinson and William Blake in the 1820s. see Minutes of the Camberwell Bible Association, 1813-22, MS. John Gill Papers, William B. Hamilton Collection, David M. Rubinstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University; see also  Church Book, Horsley-down and Carter Lane, 1719-1808, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London; and R. A. Ford, Camberwell Green Congregational Church, 1774-1996 (Broadstairs, Kent, UK: Westwood Press, [1996].