Ralph Kirby
Mayor of Oxford 1773/4
Ralph Kirby (1731–1786) was the son of Ralph Kirby, a gentleman of Ferry Hinksey (then in Berkshire) and his wife Margaret Wilkes, who had married at St Peter-in-the-East Church in Oxford on 21 May 1730. Ralph junior, who was baptised at North Hinksey on 11 July 1731, was their eldest child, and the only one that survived. (His brother John was baptised at North Hinksey on 29 May 1735, but died of smallpox on 11 June 1740 and was buried at Charlton-on-Otmoor church the same evening; and his sister Margaret, who was baptised at North Hinksey on 30 December 1737and was buried at North Hinksey just over a week later on 8 January 1737/8.
Kirby's father, described as "Ralph Kirby of Ferry Hinxy", died when his son was nine, and was buried at Charlton-on-Otmoor Church on 5 October 1740; and the Margaret Kirby who was buried at North Hinksey on 27 May 1741 may have been his wife.
On 25 March 1745, when he was 14 years old, Kirby was apprenticed to the Oxford grocer John Phillips (who was to be Mayor in 1757, 1766, and 1779).
Kirby duly became a grocer himself, and his shop was in Magdalen Street, on the corner of George Street, in the parish of St Mary Magdalen. On 6 July 1751 he took on an apprentice, Francis Coates, and on 31 October the same year he was admitted free after 5¾ years of his own apprenticeship, paying the same fine as his master paid for his admission, namely two guineas.
On 14 August 1752 Ralph Kirby of St Mary Magdalen married his first wife, Winifred Westcar of Souldern at Bicester, and they had one son:
- Ralph Kirby I (baptised at St Mary Magdalen on 25 March 1754).
Winifred does not appear to have recovered from the birth and was buried at Charlton-on-Otmoor three days after the baptism on 28 March 1754. It seems likely that the baby also died and may have been buried with her.
On 3 November 1753 Kirby was named as Mayor’s Child by the new Mayor, John Nicholes, and immediately took his place as Chamberlain. He was appointed a Cloth Searcher in 1754 and Senior Bailiff in 1756. The Churchwarden of St Mary the Virgin in 1754 is also named as Ralph Kirby.
In the mid 1750s Kirby took a second wife, Elizabeth, and they had three children:
- Ralph Kirby II (baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 8 August 1757, buried at St Mary the Virgin Church on 27 February 1760)
- William Kirby (baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 4 August 1758)
- Ralph Kirby III (baptised at St Mary Magdalen Church on 24 November 1763, buried at North Hinksey Church on 25 December 1763).
Kirby took on John Walker as an apprentice in 1757 and William Hayes in 1763.
Kirby’s wife Elizabeth died on 5 March 1764 at the age of 34 and was buried at St Mary the Virgin Church three days later . There is a diamond-shaped memorial stone to her in the floor of the church (near the entrance to what is now the shop). It reads:
In
Memory of
ELIZ; the Wife of
RALPH KIRBY who died
March the 5 1764
Aged 34 Years
Also Ralph their son
died in his Infancy
On 13 October 1764, just seven months after the death of his second wife, Kirby married his third wife, Miss Mary Smith of Kidlington (a lady "with a fortune", according to Jackson’s Oxford Journal) at Kidlington Church. Ralph and Mary Kirby had six children, all of whom survived:
- Ann Kirby (baptised at St Mary Magdalen 8 August 1765)
- Mary Kirby (baptised at St Mary Magdalen 13 July 1767)
- Ralph Smith Kirby (baptised at St Mary Magdalen 11 March 1769)
- Thomas Kirby (baptised at St Mary Magdalen 10 January 1771)
- Richard Kirby (baptised at St Mary Magdalen 22 January 1773)
- John Kirby (baptised at St Mary Magdalen 4 October 1775).
Kirby was made a Fair Master in 1767, and in 1771 he was appointed on to the committee of six men to act with the university committee in purchasing houses and settling a new market in Oxford.
Kirby took on his fourth apprentice, George Hawkins, in 1770, but discharged him two years later for misbehaviour.
In 1772 a survey of every house in the city was taken in consequence of the Mileways Act of 1771 and Mr Kirby's house on the corner of George Street and Magdalen Street (later added into the road) had a frontage of 9 yards exactly.
In February 1772 Kirby was elected one of the eight Assistants, and in September 1773 Mayor (for 1773/4), selecting John Treacher as his Child.
Kirby took on Richard Culpepper as an apprentice in 1773 and John Syddenham in 1774. On 30 October 1775 he resigned both from his position as Assistant and from the Market Committee, and his apprentice Culpepper was transferred to another grocer on 22 June 1778.
Kirby is listed as a "Grocer, Tea-dealer, and Chandler" inBailey's Western & Midland Directory for 1783.
Kirby died at the age of 55 and was buried inside the Church of St Mary Magdalen in Oxford on 26 February 1786. His wife Mary died ten years later (at the age of 63 according to the parish register, but 66 according to the memorial below)., and was buried there on 4 July 1796.
The inscription to Kirby and his third wife Mary on the wall of the church (left) reads:
Near this Place
is deposited the remains
of Mr RALPH KIRBY of this Parish
who departed this Life
Feb. ye 20th 1786,
Aged 55.
Also MARY, his wife,
who departed this Life
June ye 30th 1796,
Aged 66.
Erected by their six surviving
children in Dutiful Memory
of the Best of Parents.
- Malcolm Graham, Oxford City Apprentices 1697–1800, entries numbered 1905, 2039, 2178, 2257, 2407, 2479, and 2517
- MS Wills Oxon Bd. 109.64; 82/4/34