HANWAY, Jonas (1712-1786), an English traveller and philanthropist, was born at Portsmouth, but he was still a child when the death of his father, a victualler by trade, caused his mother to remove with her family to London. At the age of seventeen the boy was apprenticed to a merchant in Lisbon, and he remained there till he entered business for himself. In 1743, after he had been for some time again in London, he became a partner with Mr Dingley, a merchant in St Petersburg, and in this way had his attention turned to the trade between Russia and Persia. Leaving St Petersburg on the 10th of September 1743, and passing south by Moscow, Zuritzin, and Astrakhan, he embarked on the Caspian on November 22d, and arrived at Astrabad on December 18th. Here his difficulties began. The town was attacked and captured by a rebel, Mohammed Hassan Beg; his goods were seized, and it was only after great privations that he reached the camp of the Shah Nadir. Obtaining an order for the restoration of his goods he returned to Astrabad, and succeeded in recovering about 85 per cent, of their original value; but he was obliged to retrace his steps, and after a painful journey, during which he was attacked by pirates, detained by sickness, and obliged to perform six weeks’ quarantine, he arrived at St Petersburg July 9, 1750 The autumn of that year he spent travelling in Germany and Holland, and on October 28th he landed in England, where the narrative of his travels published in 1753 soon made him a man of note. The rest of his life was for the most part spent in London, and his leisure was devoted to the advocacy and support of all kinds of useful and benevolent enterprises. In 1762 he was appointed one of the commissioners for victualling the navy, and on his resignation in 1783 he ...