Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sydenham, John
SYDENHAM, JOHN (1807–1846), antiquary, eldest son of John Sydenham, a bookseller of Poole, Dorset, was born in that town on 25 Sept. 1807. He was educated in his native town, and in 1829 became editor of the ‘Dorset County Chronicle.’ In 1839 he published ‘The History of the Town and County of Poole’ (Poole, 8vo), a work of considerable research and arranged with great clearness. In 1841 he wrote ‘Baal Durotrigensis’ (London, 8vo), a dissertation on an ancient colossal figure at Cerne in Dorset, in which he endeavoured to discriminate between the primal Celtæ and the later Celto-Belgæ, who emigrated from Gaul. In the following year Sydenham left the ‘Dorset Chronicle’ and became editor of ‘The West Kent Guardian,’ a Greenwich paper. In January 1846 he returned to Poole and started ‘The Poole and Dorsetshire Herald,’ of which he was editor and part-proprietor. Within a year, however, he died at Poole on 1 Dec. 1846. He married, in 1833, a daughter of William Zillwood, a schoolmaster of Dorchester, by whom he had six children. He was ‘one of the first members’ of the British Archæological Association.
[Private information kindly given by Mr. John Zillwood Sydenham; Gent. Mag. 1847, i. 211; Journal of the British Archæological Association, iii. 139; Mayo's Bibliotheca Dorsetiensis, pp. 127, 187.]