Life

Born at Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

, in 1781 or 1782, he was the son of Thomas Frost, a Hull solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

 He followed the same profession, and, as his father had been before him, was solicitor to the Hull Dock Company. He was elder brother to the writer and traveller Elizabeth Strutt

Elizabeth Strutt

Elizabeth Strutt , also or previously known as Elizabeth Byron, was an English writer and traveller. She was the wife of Jacob George Strutt and mother of Arthur John Strutt, and an acquaintance and critic of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whom she describes as having written "two of the most absurd...

.

Frost died at Hull, 5 September 1862, aged 80 or 81.

Works

Frost studied the handwriting of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and on 2 May 1822 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1827 he published by subscription ‘Notices relative to the Early History of the Town and Port of Hull; compiled from original records and unpublished manuscripts, and illustrated with engravings, etchings, and vignettes,’ London, 1827; illustrations by Bartholomew Howlett

Bartholomew Howlett

Bartholomew Howlett , was an English draughtsman and engraver.Howlett was born in Louth in Lincolnshire in 1767. He was the son, by his first marriage, of Bartholomew Howlett, a native of Norfolk, who was settled at Louth. Howlett came to London and served as apprentice to James Heath, the...

. He proved that Edward I was not the founder of the town as supposed by John Leland and William Camden

William Camden

William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and officer of arms. He wrote the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.- Early years :Camden was born in London...

, but that previous to his visit to Cottingham

Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire

Cottingham is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies just to the north-west of the city of Kingston upon Hull...

 in 1296 the ground on which Hull stands was the site of a town called Wic or Wyke. The work was the subject of a long and flattering critique by Nicholas Harris Nicolas

Nicholas Harris Nicolas

Sir Harris Nicolas, KCMG, KH was an English antiquary.-Life:The fourth son of John Harris Nicolas , he was born at Dartmouth. Having served in the navy from 1812 to 1816, he studied law and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1825...

in the Retrospective Review for December 1827 (p. 203).

Another publication, also of local value, was his ‘Address,’ 1831, delivered to the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society at the opening of the seventh session on 5 November 1830, in which he mentions various literary societies which had been promoted in the town during the preceding half-century, and gives brief biographical notices of most of the Hull author. A subsequent presidential address, delivered by him in 1852, was also published. Frost was president of the society ten times between 1830 and 1855; he served as president of the subscription library for twelve years, between 1827 and 1854, the laws being suspended so that he might occupy the position for five successive years, 1850–4, to enable him to carry into effect his scheme for the amalgamation of the two societies in a building in Albion Street.

He published two legal pamphlets. One was on the ‘Propriety of making a remuneration to witnesses in civil actions for loss of time. … With some observations on the present system of taxing costs,’ London, 1815. The other consisted of a letter to Thomas Thompson on the subject of ‘Equalising the poor rates of Hull by assessing the shipping belonging to the port to the relief of the poor,’ published in 1820.