Edmund Rack
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Edmund Rack (c.1735 – 22 February 1787), born in Norfolk, England, became well known in Bath, Somerset; he was a writer, particularly about agriculture, and founded notable societies.
Rack was born in Attleborough, Norfolk, about 1735, son of Edmund and Elizabeth Rack. His father was a weaver, and both his parents were Quakers, the mother being a preacher. He was brought up as a Quaker, and apprenticed to a general shopkeeper at Wymondham. At the end of his term he moved to Great Bardfield in Essex, where he became shopman to a Miss Agnes Smith, whom he subsequently married. [1]
About 1775 he settled in Bath, Somerset, and, having cultivated a taste for literature, was patronised by Lady Miller of Batheaston, Mrs Macaulay, and Dr Wilson. Before he left Norfolk he had paid great attention to its system of farming, and, with a view to the improvement of that in use throughout the western counties of England, he drew up, in the autumn of 1777, a plan for the formation of a society for the encouragement of agriculture in the four counties of Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, and Gloucester. He was appointed its first secretary, and a room was appropriated for its members in his house at No. 5 St James's Parade. It still exists today, as the Royal Bath and West of England Society.[1]
In 1779 Rack aided in establishing the Bath Philosophical Society, and became its first secretary. Ill-health had long troubled him, and although he gave, in 1777, the notorious James Graham a certificate that he had been cured from "a bad cough and asthmatic complaint," his state soon became worse. His physical condition was not improved by the loss of his savings about 1780. He died in Bath on 22 February 1787. An elegy to his memory by Richard Polwhele, who had made his acquaintance in that city in 1777, appeared in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1787 (pt. ii. p. 717), and was reprinted in Poems by Gentlemen of Devon and Cornwall (i. 162–4).[1]
