Ralph Kirby
Mayor of Oxford 1773/4
Ralph Kirby (1730–1786) was the son of Ralph Kirby, a gentleman of Ferry Hinksey (then in Berkshire).
In 1740, when Kirby was only about ten, his father died at Ferry Hinksey and was buried at Charlton on Otmoor. Five years later on 25 March 1745, Kirby was apprenticed to the Oxford grocer John Phillips (who was to be Mayor in 1757, 1766, and 1779).
On 6 July 1751 Kirby took on an apprentice grocer, Francis Coates, and on 31 October that year was admitted free after 5¾ years of his own apprenticeship, paying the same fine as his master paid for his admission, namely two guineas. His business was on the corner of George Street, in the parish of St Mary Magdalen
He appears that Kirby married three times. On 14 August 1752 Ralph Kirby of St Mary Magdalen married Winifred Westcar of Souldern at Bicester, and they had one son, Ralph, baptised at St Mary Magdalen on 25 March 1754. Winifred is heard of no more, and it seems likely that she and the baby died in childbirth.
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 baptised three children at St Mary Magdalen Church: Ralph (1757, who died in infancy), William (1758) and a second Ralph (1763).
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 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. There is a diamond-shaped memorial stone to her in the floor of St Mary the Virgin 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) . Ralph and Mary Kirby went on to baptise six children at St Mary the Virgin: Ann (1765), Mary (1767), Ralph Smith (1769), Thomas (1771), Richard (1773), and John (1775).
Kirby took on his fourth apprentice, George Hawkins, in 1770, but discharged him two years later for misbehaviour.
In February 1772 Kirby was appointed one of the eight Assistants, and in September 1773 Mayor, 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 died at the age of 55 in 1786, and was buried inside the Church of St Mary Magdalen in Oxford. The inscription to him and his wife (left) on the wall of the church 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