Joshua Toulmin Smith (29 May 1816 – 28 April 1869) was a British political theorist, lawyer and local historian of Birmingham. Born in Birmingham as Joshua Smith, the son of William Hawkes Smith (1786–1840), an economic and educational reformer, radical and Unitarian. He moved to London in 1835 and pursued a career in law, studying at Lincoln's Inn. Smith was not called to the bar until 1849, as he interrupted his legal studies to settle between 1837 and 1842 with his new wife Martha in America where he lectured on philosophy and phrenology. Joshua Smith was an incessant writer. In 1839 he gained a diploma of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Copenhagen for his work The Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Century, while his interest in geology and subsequent papers led to h