Modern English biography

PROVIS, THOMAS (son of Thomas Provis, a carpenter at Warminster). Educ. Winchester school; called himself Dr. Smith and became a public lecturer; sentenced to death for stealing a gelding, but sentence commuted to 18 months’ imprisonment 1811; called himself sir Richard Hugh Smyth and said he was _b._ Bath 2 Sept. 1797, claimed to be the son and heir of sir Hugh Smyth, bart., who _d._ 28 Jany. 1824, by his first and secret marriage in 1796 with Jane, daughter of count John Samuel Vandenbergh; brought an action of ejectment to recover Ashton court, near Bristol and certain estates valued at £30,000 a year at Gloucester summer Assizes 8 to 10 Aug. 1853, his story entirely broke down on his cross examination; tried for forgery and perjury at Gloucester 6 to 7 April 1854, condemned to 20 years’ transportation; the case cost the Smyth family £6,000; confined in Millbank penitentiary 1854. _d._ Dartmoor prison infirmary 27 May 1855. _Annual Register xcv_ 308–30 (1853), _xcvii_ 94 (1855); _Law magazine l_ 294–317 (1851), _li_ 371; _Celebrated claimants_ (1873) 209–19; _W. O. Woodall’s celebrated trials_ (1873) 115–46; _Impudent impostors_ (1876) 209–18; _E. Austin’s Anecdotage_ (1872) 129–41; _Sir B. Burke’s Vicissitudes of families ii_ 300–27 (1869); _G.M. Feb. 1872 pp._ 334–41; _The victim of fatality, the life of the plaintiff in the trial Smyth versus Smyth_ (1854) _portrait_. PROVIS, WILLIAM ALEXANDER (son of Henry Provis, engineer). _b._ Wimpole, Cambs. 5 May 1792; pupil of his father to 1814; assistant to T. Telford 1814–34; resident engineer of the suspension bridge over the Menai strait 1819–26, laid the first stone 10 Aug. 1819; M.I.C.E. 6 April 1819; author of An historical account of the suspension bridge over the Menai strait 1828. _d._ The Grange, near Ellesmere, Salop 29 Sept.