John Smith (1799 – 3 March 1870) was the

Rector Rector (Latin for the member of a vessel's crew who steers) may refer to: Style or title *Rector (ecclesiastical), a cleric who functions as an administrative leader in some Christian denominations *Rector (academia), a senior official in an edu ...

of St Mary's church in

Baldock Baldock ( ) is a historic market town and unparished area in the local government district of North Hertfordshire in the county of Hertfordshire, England, where the River Ivel rises. It lies north of London, southeast of Bedford, and north n ...

in Hertfordshire and is noted for being the first person to transcribe the

Diary A diary is a written or audiovisual record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries have traditionally been handwritten but are now also often digital. A personal ...

of Samuel Pepys. Smith was the first to decipher the complete text of the

of Samuel Pepys while a student at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where the Diary is kept'The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Daily entries from the 17th century London'
/ref> (others had previously deciphered sections of it). Smith laboured on the Diaries for three years, from 1819 to 1822, and had assumed that they were written in code. He broke the code by comparing the section in the Diary concerning the escape of Charles II from Worcester Castle with the longhand version of the same event Pepys published later. Later Smith was told that the diary was actually written in a

shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''st ...

system devised by

Thomas Skelton Thomas R. Skelton (September 24, 1927 – August 9, 1994) was an American lighting designer. In a career spanning more than four decades, he was best known for his lighting designs for ballet and Broadway theatre productions. Biography Born in No ...

and that the textbook Pepys learnt it from was on the bookshelf above Smith's head. Smith's transcription, which is kept in the Pepys Library, was the basis for the first published edition of the diary, edited by

Lord Braybrooke Baron Braybrooke, of Braybrooke in the County of Northampton, is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1788 for John Griffin, 4th Baron Howard de Walden, with remainder to his kinsman Richard Neville-Aldworth. Lord How ...

, released in two volumes in 1825. Smith also worked on other material by Pepys, transcribing the so-called ''Tangier Diary'' of 1683 in the Bodleian Library.

Personal life

Smith married Elizabeth Frances Smith (c1795-1864) and with her had a son, Josiah William Smith QC (1816-1887), Judge of County Courts. Smith was Rector at St Mary's in Baldock from 1832 to 1870 and is buried beside his wife and son in the churchyard.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, John 1799 births 1870 deaths Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge Burials in Hertfordshire People from Baldock 19th-century English Anglican priests