• Name: Wedgwood, Thomas
• Gender: Male
• Birth Date: 14  May  1771
• Death Date: 10  July  1805
• Occupation: chemist

Godwin established a friendship with the Wedgwood family, including the potter Josiah (1730–1795) and two of his surviving sons, Josiah II and Thomas (1771–1805). Thomas was the youngest of seven children, who gained distinction as one of the fathers of photography (DNB). The initial recorded meeting between Thomas and Godwin took place in 1793, noted in the diary and confirmed in Godwin’s yearly addendum. The Wedgwoods secured copies of Political Justice and invited Godwin to dine the day after publication.

Thomas, especially, was impressed by Godwin’s ideas (see Litchfield, Wedgwood, the First Photographer’ and Wedgwood'sThe Value of a Maimed Life). ‘On his father's death in 1795 Wedgwood inherited a considerable fortune which enabled him to travel extensively in vain search of a cure, and also enabled him to contribute funds personally to literary, medical, and scientific men of genius. He went on a five-month walking tour in Germany’. (DNB) He supported Coleridge, Thomas Beddoes, and John Leslie, as well as Godwin. Tom Wedgwood suffered ill health throughout his life, and made frequent trips to alleviate his complaints, including a visit in 1800 to the West Indies, a continental tour in 1802 and a visit to Coleridge and Wordsworth in the Lake District (DNB). While the two had some social contact early on, this explains in part why they established their friendship via a frequent exchange of letters between 1795 – 7. Although the frequency tapers off towards the end of Wedgwood’s life, they continue maintaining contact until his death in 1805. Upon Tom Wedgwood’s death in 1805, all of Godwin’s debts were written off (St Clair, p. 287) although ‘Josiah made clear that further requests would not be welcome’ (St Clair, 288). However, he clearly retracted this, as Godwin’s link to Wedgwood patronage can be traced up until 1825 (see Clemit, 2010). Due to Thomas Wedgwood’s frequent travels and periods of illness, instances where his initials appear explicitly (as T W) have been coded as meetings, and ‘Wedgwood’ by itself in the context of a meeting has been assumed to be Thomas, but it is not possible to be certain. ‘Write to Wedgwood’ is understood in most cases to be Thomas, until his death in 1805, which Godwin records.

• DNB
• St Clair
• Pamela Clemit, 'Commerce of Luminaries: Eight letters between William Godwin and Thomas Wedgwood' in Robert M. Maniquis and Victoria Myers, Godwinian Moments, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2010).
• The Value of a Maimed Life. Extracts from the MS notes of T. Wedgwood, ed. by M.O. Tremayne (London, 1912).
• R. Burr Litchfield, Tom Wedgwood: The First Photographer (London: Duckworth, 1903).

This table lists the people this person is most frequently noted with in the diary.