Robert Dingley (FRS)

Robert Dingley (baptised 12 September 1710 – 1781) was an English merchant and banker, known as a philanthropist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1747.[1]

Robert Dingley, 1762 engraving

The son of Robert and Susanna,[2] he and his younger brother Charles (1711-1769) were significant figures in Anglo-Russian trade in the middle of the 18th century.[3] He joined the Society of Dilettanti in 1736.[4]

Associated with the London Foundling Hospital as an inspector, Dingley pushed to found the Magdalen Hospital in Whitechapel that was founded in 1758.[1] It came into being after a campaign run in the Literary Magazine 1756–8, in which Dingley was an ally of William Dodd, John Fielding and Saunders Welch, following Dingley's initial suggestion in 1750 to Jonas Hanway.[5]

Dingley was a collector of coins, drawings and engraved gems. He was also an architect who designed ornamental buildings, in particular for West Wycombe Park.[6]

Notes
  1. "Dingley, Robert (bap. 1710, d. 1781)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37359. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. "Ancestry". www.ancestry.co.uk. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  3. Earle, Peter (2015). The Earles of Liverpool: A Georgian Merchant Dynasty. Oxford University Press. p. 182. ISBN 9781781381731.
  4. Dilettanti, Society of (1877). Sir W. Fraser (ed.). Members of the Society of Dilettanti, 1736-1874. p. 3.
  5. Hancock, David (1997). Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785. Cambridge University Press. p. 310. ISBN 9780521629423.
  6. Howard Colvin (1978). A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840. John Murray. p. 261. ISBN 0-7195-3328-7.
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