John Venning[99] was born in Totnes in 1776, and he is buried in the Rosary Cemetery at Norwich, where he died in 1858, after twenty-eight years' residence in that city.

He started for St.Petersburg four years after John Howard had died, ostensibly on behalf of the commercial house with which he was associated, but with the intention of carrying on the work of that great man in prison reform.

Alexander I.was on the throne, and he made Venning his friend, frequently conversing with him upon religious subjects.

He became the treasurer of a society for the humanising of Russian prisons; but when Nicholas became Czar in 1825 Venning's work became more difficult, although the Emperor was sympathetic.

Venning returned to England in 1830, and thus opportunely, in 1833, was able to give his fellow-townsman letters of introduction to Prince Galitzin and other Russian notables, so that Borrow was able to set forth under the happiest auspices--with an entire change of conditions from those eight years of semi-starvation that he was now to leave behind him for ever.
Borrow left London for St.Petersburg on 31st July 1833, not forgetting to pay his mother before he left the L17 he had had to borrow during his time of stress.