Thomas Fisher (antiquary)

He died unmarried on 20 July 1836, in his sixty-fifth year, at his lodgings in Church Street, Stoke Newington, and was buried on the 26th in Bunhill Fields.

[3] Some plates in the Custumale Roffense, published by John Thorpe in 1788, are from drawings by Fisher; while the same work states that he had helped Samuel Denne, one of the promoters of the undertaking, in examining the architecture and monuments of Rochester Cathedral.

[4] His first literary effort, a description of the Crown Inn at Rochester and its cellars, was printed with a view and plan in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1789, under the pseudonym of 'Antiquitatis Conservator'.

In 1795 Denne communicated to the Society of Antiquaries a letter on the subject of watermarks in paper, enclosing drawings by Fisher of sixty-four specimens, together with copies of several autographs and documents discovered by him in a room over the town hall at Rochester.

His next publications were "An Engraving of a fragment of Jasper found near Hillah, bearing part of an inscription in the cuneiform character" (1802),[7] and "An Inscription [in cuneiform characters] of the size of the original, copied from a stone lately found among the ruins of ancient Babylon" (1803),[8] In 1806 and 1807 Fisher helped preserve two specimens of Roman mosaic discovered in the city of London, one in front of East India House in Leadenhall Street, and the other, which was presented to the British Museum, in digging foundations for the enlargement of the Bank of England.

[9] In the summer of 1804 Fisher discovered some legendary paintings on the roof and walls of the chapel belonging to the ancient Guild of Holy Cross in Stratford-on-Avon.

Meanwhile, Fisher had printed at the lithographic press of D. J. Redman thirty-seven drawings of 'Monumental Remains and Antiquities in the county of Bedford,' of which fifty copies were issued in 1828.

[3] His father Thomas Fisher who died on 29 August 1786, was author of the "Kentish Traveller's Companion", 1777, and, with Samuel Denne, F.S.A., and William Shrubsole, of a short "History of Rochester" published in 1772.