Allan Stewart Laing

Son, trrustee and co-heir of James Laing of Dominica (who died 1831 at Streatham Hill).

1. Matric. Trinity College Oxford 26/10/1805 aged 17; BA 1809; MA 1812; bar-at-law Middle [sic] Temple 1812, a police magistrate at Hatton Garden, died 12/02/1862. However, his name is also given in the Inner Temple Admissions database.

2. Allan Stewart Laing was buried 17/02/1862 in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. His address in the cemetery register was given as Tanfield Court Temple and his age was 73. Will of Allan Stewart Laing of 3 Tanfield Court Inner Temple barrister-at-law who died 12/02/1862 proven by the oath of Abel Jenkins of 8 New Inn Solicitor and Charles James Abbott of 8 New Inn solicitor the executors, effects under £60,000.

3. Allan Stewart Laing was the model for Charles Dickens' Mr Fang in Oliver Twist: Mr Fang was based upon Mr A S Laing, an infamous magistrate working here between 1836 and 1838. According to John L Forster, on 3rd June, 1837, Dickens wrote to Mr Haines – a supervisor over police reports for the daily papers: ‘In my next number of Oliver Twist I must have a magistrate; and casting about [for one] whose harshness and insolence would render him a fit subject to be shown up, I have… stumbled upon Mr Laing of Hatton-garden celebrity… it occurred to me that perhaps I might under your auspices be smuggled into the Hatton-garden office for a few moments some morning [in order to see him]… ’ Forster records that, ‘The opportunity was found; the magistrate... brought before the novelist; and shortly after, on some fresh outbreak of intolerable temper’ Mr Laing was removed from the bench.

'A North-east Story': Scotland, Africa and Slavery': Fortune hunters in the Caribbean, http://www.abdn.ac.uk/slavery/4p2.htm [accessed 23/04/2011].

1. Ancestry.com, Oxford University Alumni, 1500-1886 [database online]; http://www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/itad/index.asp) as Allan Steuart Laing. Admitted 19 May 1808; father = James Laing, esquire [no other occupation given]. ASL's Address: Streatham Hill, Wandsworth, London, England (formerly in county of Surrey). Specific entry at: http://www.innertemple.org.uk/archive/itad/detail.asp?id=2242. Other details are: Admission Date: 19/05/1808. Call Year: n/a Bench Year: n/a Leaving Date: not known Date of Death: not known Judicial Appointment: n/a.

2. Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online]. National Probate Calendar 1862.

3. http://www.walksoflondon.co.uk/53/dickens-and-london-clerke.shtml [accessed 17/01/2011]: this alludes without page reference to John L Forster's Life of Charles Dickens (1842).

We are grateful to Signe Hoffos for her assistance with compiling this entry.