Sir Thomas Lethbridge, 2nd Baronet

Sir Thomas Lethbridge, 2nd Baronet
Born	Thomas Buckler Lethbridge 1778
Died	1849

Sir Thomas Buckler Lethbridge, was the 2nd baronet of the Lethbridge baronets.

He was born in 1778, son of Sir John Lethbridge, 1st Baronet. The baronetcy had been created in 1804, for his help in paying the Prince Regent's gambling debts.

The family seat was at Sandhill Park, Bishops Lydeard.

In 1785, he and his two sisters were painted by Charles Gill. The painting of The Lethbridge Children is now in the Tate Gallery.

He was educated at Oxford.

He was disinherited by his father, although they reconciled and that will was destroyed shortly before the baronet died in 1815.

Sir Thomas married twice: first, in 1796, to Jacintha Catherine Hesketh of Rufford Hall, Lancashire, who died in 1801; and second, to Anne Goddard, of Swindon, Wiltshire. Dorothea Lethbridge married Capt. (later Sir) Henry Powell Collins in 1800. Frances married Capt. Charles Henry Rich in 1804.

Sir John’s wife Dorothy died in 1831.

In the 1830s, Lethbridge also had a house in the Royal Crescent, Bath.

In May 1806 he became one of two MPs for Somerset.

Lethbridge, as a rural squire, was a staunch defender of the Corn Laws in their last years before repeal and against the Anti-Corn Law League.

He was the principal founder of the West Somerset Savings Bank at Taunton, on 6 September 1817. By 1821 the bank had deposits of almost 90,000 pounds from over two and half thousand accounts.

Despite being regarded as a reliable banker, he was less careful with his own money and lost heavily on a variety of investments. These ranged from speculative canals that remained unbuilt, long tramroads beyond the practical bounds of local technology and then the iron industry. By 1840 he was practically bankrupt.

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