Benjamin Dews

Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children

**Benjamin Dews**, Temperance Makepeace's late husband, had studied for the church and worked as a schoolmaster before becoming acquainted with her father and engaged in the work of helping the St. Giles orphans as his protégé. They met when Temperance was 16-17.

He died in 1728 of crushing wounds from the wheels of a brewer's cart.

## Personality

Temperance relates that "he worked incredibly long hours at the foundling home. He was always gentle and patient with the children; he was kind to everyone he knew. I once saw him take off his own coat and give it to a beggar who had none." She had thought him "very intelligent, very proper, and very kind."

## Relationships

### Temperance Makepeace

" 'He was a good man—a wonderful man—and I didn't deserve him.' "

" 'I loved him, but I was never in love with him.' "

"gentle in their marriage bed—the few times he'd been passionate. Benjamin believed that physical love was a holy act between a man and wife. Something to be done thoughtfully and not too often. In fact, the only time he'd come close to sounding vexed with her was when she'd suggested that perhaps they might practice their physical bond more often. He'd made it quite plain that a woman who sought out sex was to be pitied."

## Name

* **Benjamin** — From the Hebrew name בִּנְיָמִין (Binyamin) meaning "son of the south" or "son of the right hand"...As an English name, Benjamin came into general use after the Protestant Reformation.
* **Dews** — (English with possible Old French and/or Anglo-Norman French origins) shortened form of Dewhurst. variant of Dew with post-medieval excrescent -s; variant of Devis, a habitational name from Devizes in Wiltshire Old French *devise* ‘(place on) the boundaries’; variant of Dewis, perhaps a habitational name from Ewyas Harold or Ewyas Lacy in Herefordshire, both from a Welsh name meaning ‘sheep district’ with Anglo-Norman French fused preposition *de*.

## Rank

* **Merchant/Working Classes** —
* **The Clergy** — Dews is said, generically, to have "studied for the church," without further elaboration. Given that "in the early eighteenth century nearly everyone was an Anglican; less than six per cent of the population of England and Wales dissented from the established Church," it is reasonable to assume that it was for the Church of England that Dews was intended. Many, but by no means all, clergy eventually ordained within the Church of England were graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, or another institution conferring a Bachelor degree; those not attending a university could prepare through various other avenues of study, some being set down by the Bishop of the Diocese in which the aspirant intended to seek ordination. Below the objective ranks of the nobility, hard lines with regard to social class are impossible. In general term, however, most of the clergy would properly be considered part of the middle classes, being "the reasonably well educated and usually salaried people" likely earning a small enough amount to put them in the lesser half of the group, but sufficiently educated to have "genteel pretensions."
* **Schoolmasters** —

1. ↑ In chapter 6 of *Wicked Intentions*, Temperance tells Lazarus that "I met him when I was seventeen, and we married shortly thereafter." However, in chapter 17, she recalls that "Father had offered him work at the home and a room in their house. Temperance had been sixteen then..."*.*
2. ↑ *Wicked Intentions*, chapter 6.
3. ↑ *Wicked Intentions*, chapter 7.
4. ↑ Behind the Name: Benjamin – Accessed 6 September 2023
5. ↑ Dictionary of American Family Names 2nd Edition ©2022, Oxford University Press, via Ancestry.com — accessed 6 September 2023
6. ↑ *Wicked Intentions*, chapters 6 and 17.
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Jacob, W.M., *The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680-1840*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, various page references. — accessed 10 September 2023
8. ↑ Earle, Peter. *The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660-1730.* Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1989, p. 328-9.