Thomas Rawlinson

Thomas Rawlinson (1681–1725) was an English barrister, known as a bibliophile.

Life Rawlinson was born in the Old Bailey in the parish of St. Sepulchre, London, on 25 March 1681, the eldest son of Sir Thomas Rawlinson (1647–1708), and his wife Mary Taylor (died 1725), eldest daughter of Richard Taylor of Turnham Green, Middlesex; Richard Rawlinson was a younger brother. After education under William Day at Cheam, and at Eton College under John Newborough, he matriculated at St John's College, Oxford on 25 February 1699. He left the university in 1701, and studied at the Middle Temple, where he had been entered on 7 January 1696.

Rawlinson was called to the bar on 19 May 1705, and then made a tour through England and the Low Countries. Returning to London, he concentrated on municipal law, but succeeded to a large estate on the death of his father in 1708. He resided for some years in Gray's Inn, where his accumulation of books compelled him to sleep in a passage. In 1716 he hired London House, Aldersgate for his library, stacked three deep. Joseph Addison is supposed to have had Rawlinson in mind when (in The Tatler, No. 158) he wrote on Tom Folio, a "learned idiot". the remainder by his brother Richard. At the last sale (besides 800 printed books) were sold the manuscripts, 1,020 in number. The auctioneer was Thomas Ballard; catalogues exist. The pictures, including a crayon portrait of the collector by his brother Richard, were sold by Ballard at the Two Golden Balls, Hart Street, Covent Garden, on 4 and 5 April 1734.