Daniel Day was born in the parish of St. Mary Overy, (in which parish his father was an opulent brewer) in the year 1683, and for a great number of years, until his death, was a very considerable engine, pump, and blockmaker, in the parish of St. John’s, Wapping, where, to this day, his memory is respected as a great benefactor to that parish, particularly in the gift of the great bell at the consecration of the new church in 1760, and as an upright and ingenious tradesman, a great mechanic, as the many inventions he has left behind him in the construction of various descriptions of engines and pumps, and of the improvement he made in the jiggers used by brewers in the starting of beer, which is worked by them to this day, sufficiently proves. He was of a most charitable and humane temper, and exemplarily generous and liberal in his principles and actions; to evince this we need only mention his portioning off his twin nieces in his life-time with £1000 each, one of whom lies buried near him. He would not only lend a distressed friend considerable sums, but he invariably refused the smallest interest, and very frequently forgave the principal; in short, his character for probity was such, that his neighbours were ever satisfied with his arbitrations in their disputes, to which his abilities were amply adequate; his memory was astonishingly retentive, in so great a degree, as to enable him to repeat, almost verbatim, a long discourse or sermon. He was not the enemy of any man, or particular description of men, but the muscles of his face were violently agitated whenever he heard of litigation in law, and he always professed to be uneasy in the company of the practitioners of it. Notwithstanding the very large sums he distributed in charities and lent, he lived in comfort and died rich, leaving to the eight fatherless children of his niece, whom we have already alluded to, the bulk of his property to be equally divided. It is with some degree of pain we mention that Mr. Day was never married, because with a heart replete with the milk of human kindness, and possessing an understanding at the same time solid and elevated, he wanted only the additional great characters of a husband and father to have made him more completely the great and good man.