Kensal Green

Born June 3, 1771, Sydney Smith was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he took a B.A. in 1792 and an M.A. in 1796. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1796 and became a curate in Nether Avon, near Amesbury. Moving to Edinburgh as a tutor, Smith published his first book of sermons and married Catharine Amelia Pybus.

Born July 18, 1811, in Calcutta, William Makepeace Thackeray was sent to England in 1817 at his father's death. He was educated at the Charterhouse School in England from 1822 to 1826 and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1829-30 but left without graduating.