THE RECENT, almost nonstop rain made last month the wettest November on record so there were many people who would have thanked a forgotten Hampshire man for helping to keep them dry, if only they had known his name.

Jonas Hanway, an author, but known more for his philanthropy and eccentricity, has slipped into historical obscurity but he was the man who introduced the umbrella to Britain.

However, Jonas, who was born in Portsmouth, was not the only Hampshire connection with the early use of umbrellas as two great military figures together with a world famous author also were known to have used a brolly.

Until the mid-18th century a sword had always been the yardstick of the gentle man and it was only after wearing the weapon was discouraged that the umbrella made its debut in Jonas’s grasp.

The day that he first appeared on the streets of London using an umbrella caused a sensation.

It was in 1756 that Jonas unfurled his umbrella, a canopy of oiled cloth fastened over whalebone ribs, on the streets of the capitol.

Ridiculed for his action, and lambasted by the sedan-chair men, for whom rain showers were a prime source of trade, who called him a “mincing Frenchman’’.

One wit of the time said: “Poor old Jonas must be ill if he has to use a ‘parapluie’ to defend his face and wig.’’ But, by the beginning of the 19th century the umbrella was an accepted part of polite society. Jane Austin, who lived in Southampton in the early 1800s, wrote that to be “equipped properly” entailed the acquisition of an umbrella.

The umbrella also caught the fancy of army officers, who took to using it to protect their uniforms in bad weather.

More remarkably, they also went into battle brandishing umbrellas in fetching shades of green and blue.

Hampshire’s, Duke of Wellington, with his home at Stratfield Saye, had himself inspected the troops from under a brolly, but this, he felt, was going too far. The Iron Duke let it be known that he “did not approve of the use of umbrellas during the enemy’s firing and will not allow gentlemen’s sons to make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of the enemy”.

Officers nevertheless stuck with their umbrellas, off-duty and an enduring tradition was born.

Four years before Jonas first took cover under his umbrella, General James Wolfe, colonel of the 67th Regiment of Foot, later to become the Royal Hampshire Regiment, wrote from Paris saying: “The people here use umbrellas in hot weather to defend them from the sun, and something of the same kind to save them from the snow and rain.

“I wonder a practice so useful is not introduced into England.’’ Jonas, who died in 1786, helped to found the Marine Society, which still exists to this day, and also fought to bring in a law forbidding young boys being sent up chimneys by sweeps.