Abraham Goringe (fl. ca. 1750 – ca. 1775)

Abraham Goring, bookseller in Little May's Buildings, ca. 1750–1775.

He appears to have been active in the 1760s. An Abraham Gorring was one of the "Good and Lawfull Men" of Westminster City and Liberty in the County of Middlesex who were "Sworn and Charged to Enquire ... how when where and in what manner ... Capt, Jacob Moody come to his Death." The men said upon oath that the captain, "being in a Sedan Chair, and being greatly Intoxicated with Liquor it so happened ... in his Passage from the House of Mr. Robert Derry in Charles Street Covent Garden in the Parish of St. Paul Covent Garden to the Royal Bagnio in Long Acre in the Parish of St. Martin in the fields ... by means of the Liquor aforesaid was Suffocated ... [and] instantly Died."—City of Westminster Coroners: Coroners' Inquests into Suspicious Deaths CW | IC, 14 February 1760–31 December 1760, London Lives 1690 to 1800 – Crime, Policy and Social Policy in the Metropolis, directed by Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker

The following advertisement may be for the work tentatively dated as 1755 in the ESTC:

This day is publish'd (price 1s) The schemers: or, the City match. A comedy. Printed for J. Pridden, at the Feathers, Fleet-street; J. Wade, near Gray's Inn Gate, Holborn; D. Hookham in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields; A. Goring, in May's Buildings; and W. Heard at the Philobiblion's Library ... (Daily Advertiser 25 Nov 1761)

—Ian Maxted, "The London book trades of the later 18th century. Names: G," Exeter Working Papers in Book History

Goring is identified as a bookseller in May's Buildings in the trial of Alexander Low for Grand Larceny at the Old Bailey 7 December 1763:

(M.) Alexander Low was indicted for stealing one book, intitled, The travels of the Jesuits, &c. value, 2 s. and one ditto, called, The London complete songster, value, 6 d. the property of Abraham Goring, December 5. *

Ann Goring. I am wife to the prosecutor, he is a bookseller, and lives in May's Buildings. Last Monday, between three and four in the afternoon, the prisoner was looking at these books, and, as the window was open, he asked the price of two others, but we could not agree; he was going off, two of these volumes lay there five minutes before: I observed a book in his left-hand pocket, he was gone six or seven yards, I went and laid hold of him, and said, you thieving fellow, come back and give me the books out of your pocket; he had the two books, mentioned in the indictment, in his pockets; he insisted upon it, they were his own property, and talked of carrying me before a magistrate, the books produced, and deposed to.

Prisoner's Defence.

I was in liquor, how they came into my pocket, I know not.

Guilty. B. [i.e., the punishment was branding]

—Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 9.0) December 1763. Trial of Alexander Low (t17631207-38).