Spencer Timothy Hall

He was born in a cottage near Sutton-in-Ashfield in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, the son of Samuel Hall, a Quaker cobbler and Eleanor Spencer, a dairymaid.

The book earned Hall an invitation from James Montgomery to Sheffield, where he became co-editor of The Iris newspaper and governor of the Hollis Hospital.

He wrote a volume of prose sketches entitled Rambles in the Country for The Iris; it was reissued in an enlarged form in 1853 as The Peak and the Plain.

Hall then taught himself mesmerism and began to make his own tours of the country, giving public demonstrations, offering tutelage and therapy, and selling copies of a journal he founded in 1843, The Phreno-Magnet, or, Mirror of Nature.

He was married twice: his first wife, Sarah, died only nine months after their wedding; his second marriage produced six children, including the socialist activist Leonard Hall.