PROVIS, THOMAS (son of Thomas Provis, a carpenter at
Warminster). Educ. Winchester school; called himself Dr. Smith
and became a public lecturer; sentenced to death for stealing a
gelding, but sentence commuted to 18 months’ imprisonment 1811;
called himself sir Richard Hugh Smyth and said he was _b._ Bath
2 Sept. 1797, claimed to be the son and heir of sir Hugh Smyth,
bart., who _d._ 28 Jany. 1824, by his first and secret marriage
in 1796 with Jane, daughter of count John Samuel Vandenbergh;
brought an action of ejectment to recover Ashton court, near
Bristol and certain estates valued at £30,000 a year at
Gloucester summer Assizes 8 to 10 Aug. 1853, his story entirely
broke down on his cross examination; tried for forgery and
perjury at Gloucester 6 to 7 April 1854, condemned to 20 years’
transportation; the case cost the Smyth family £6,000; confined
in Millbank penitentiary 1854. _d._ Dartmoor prison infirmary
27 May 1855. _Annual Register xcv_ 308–30 (1853), _xcvii_ 94
(1855); _Law magazine l_ 294–317 (1851), _li_ 371; _Celebrated
claimants_ (1873) 209–19; _W. O. Woodall’s celebrated trials_
(1873) 115–46; _Impudent impostors_ (1876) 209–18; _E. Austin’s
Anecdotage_ (1872) 129–41; _Sir B. Burke’s Vicissitudes of
families ii_ 300–27 (1869); _G.M. Feb. 1872 pp._ 334–41; _The
victim of fatality, the life of the plaintiff in the trial Smyth
versus Smyth_ (1854) _portrait_.
PROVIS, WILLIAM ALEXANDER (son of Henry Provis, engineer).
_b._ Wimpole, Cambs. 5 May 1792; pupil of his father to 1814;
assistant to T. Telford 1814–34; resident engineer of the
suspension bridge over the Menai strait 1819–26, laid the
first stone 10 Aug. 1819; M.I.C.E. 6 April 1819; author of An
historical account of the suspension bridge over the Menai
strait 1828. _d._ The Grange, near Ellesmere, Salop 29 Sept.