Abraham Bennet

Abraham Bennet FRS (baptised 20 December 1749 – buried 9 May 1799) was an English clergyman and physicist, the inventor of the gold-leaf electroscope and developer of an improved magnetometer.

He was ordained in London in 1775 and appointed curate at Tideswell and, one year later, additionally at Wirksworth, with a combined annual stipend of £60.

Bennet then worked assiduously to establish his expertise in electricity, achieving a reputation sufficient to take part in a meeting with Tiberius Cavallo, William Nicholson and Volta in London in 1782.

[1]Among Bennet's other patrons were Joseph Banks, George Adams and the Wirksworth squires, the Gell family.

The Gells, Kaye, Banks, Adams, and the Dukes of Devonshire and Bedford were all establishment figures whose hostility to the radicals of the Lunar and Derby Philosophical Societies intensified in the British reaction to the French Revolution.