Thomas Ragg, preacher, writer and printer, was born in Nottingham 11 January 1808 and brought up in Birmingham. After leaving school at the age of 11, he worked for 'The Birmingham Argus', the reform paper which his father, George Ragg (1782-1836), founded in 1818. His employment enabled him to support his family when his father was imprisoned for selling Carlisle's 'The Republican' from his bookshop on Bull Street and later for 'publishing seditious libel', 1820-1821. In 1822, he was apprenticed to his uncle who, like Ragg's father, was a hosier and lace manufacturer. After his uncle's move to Nottingham and Ragg's conversion to Christianity, Ragg became a writer and dissenting preacher in Nottingham; in 1834 he left his Uncle's employ and took up a position as an assistant bookseller. In 1839 he became editor (later owner) of the 'Birmingham Advertiser' and, from 1841-1842, manager of the 'Midland Monitor' before setting up as a stationer and printer in Birmingham. From 1845, he was the printer for the Birmingham Polytechnic Institution and four years later founded and edited the 'Protestant Watchman of the Midland District', the official organ of the Protestant Association of the Anglican church (Birmingham branch) which he had founded in 1847. He was ordained by the Bishop of Rochester in 1858 and served as a curate in Kent and Shropshire. In 1832 he married his first wife, Mary Anne Clarke (d 1860), with whom he had two sons; he married his second wife, Jane Sarah Barker, with whom he had 8 children c 1861. He died in Lawley, Shropshire 3 December 1881.
Ragg's published works includes volumes of poetry, works on science and Christianity including 'Creation's Testimony to its God, or the Accordance of Science, Philosophy, and Revelation' (1855), his autobiography entitled, 'God's Dealings with an Infidel, or, Grace Triumphant' and contributions to local journals.
Sources: G. Le G. Norgate, "Ragg, Thomas (1808–1881)," rev. Anne Baltz Rodrick, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed, ed. Lawrence Goldman, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23011 (accessed 13 March, 2013); death records available online through the website of 'findmypast' (accessed 13 March 2013); TNA online catalogue of the Treasury Solicitor Papers, http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/browse/C7863107?v=r(accessed 13 March 2013)
