Hanway was born in
Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. While still a child, his father, who had been a
victualler, died, and the family subsequently moved to
London. In 1729, Jonas was apprenticed to a merchant in
Lisbon. In 1743, after he had been in business for himself for some time in London, he became a partner with Mr Dingley, a merchant in
St Petersburg, and in this way was led to travel in
Russia and
Persia. Leaving St Petersburg on 10 September 1743, and passing south by
Moscow,
Tsaritsyn and
Astrakhan, he embarked on the
Caspian Sea on 22 November and arrived at
Astrabad on 18 December. Here his goods were seized by
Mohammed Hassan Beg, and it was only after great privations that he reached the camp of
Nadir Shah, under whose protection he recovered most (85%) of his property. His return journey was embarrassed by sickness (at
Resht), attacks from pirates, and six weeks' quarantine; he only arrived at St Petersburg on 1 January 1745. He again left the Russian capital on 9 July 1750 and travelled through
Germany and the
Netherlands to England (28 October). The rest of his life was mostly spent in London, where the narrative of his travels (published in 1753) soon made him a man of note, and where he devoted himself to philanthropy and good citizenship. In 1756, Hanway founded
The Marine Society, to keep up the supply of British seamen; in 1758, he became a governor of the
Foundling Hospital, a position which was upgraded to vice president in 1772; he was instrumental in the establishment the
Magdalen Hospital; in 1761 he procured a better system of parochial birth registration in London; and in 1762 he was appointed a commissioner for victualling the navy (10 July); this office he held until October 1783. He died, unmarried, on 5 September 1786 aged 74 and was buried in the crypt at
St. Mary's Church, Hanwell. A monument to his memory, sculpted by
John Francis Moore was erected in the north transept at
Westminster Abbey in 1786. Hanway was the first male Londoner, it is said, to carry an umbrella, (following women who had been using umbrellas since 1705) and he lived to triumph over all the
hackney coachmen who tried to hoot and hustle him down. He attacked vail-giving, or tipping, with some temporary success; by his onslaught upon tea drinking he became involved in controversy with
Samuel Johnson and
Oliver Goldsmith. His last efforts were on behalf of child
chimney-sweeps. He also advocated
solitary confinement for prisoners and opposed naturalisation of non-British Jews. ==Opposition to tea==