John Gonson facts for kids

Sir John Gonson (died 1765) was an English judge for nearly 50 years in the early 18th century, serving as a Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the City of Westminster. Gonson was a supporter of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, and was noted for his enthusiasm for raiding ...s and for passing harsh sentences.

..... Gonson first appears in plate 3, leading three armed bailiffs into the boudoir of the protagonist, Moll Hackabout. ..... Gonson appears again in plate 4, shown hanging from the gallows in graffiti, while Moll beats hemp in Bridewell Prison.

Gonson was mentioned twice in Satire IV of Alexander Pope's Satires of John Donne, in Essay on Man, mentioning "the storm of Gonson's lungs" and "Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you, If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu!".

Gonson not only used the rod of the law to fight what he saw as the evils of immorality in London. He is listed as a founding governor of the Foundling Hospital in that charity's royal charter of 1739. ..... Hogarth was also a governor of the Foundling Hospital from its foundation.