Skip to main content

Author: Atkinson, Charles

Biography:

ATKINSON, Charles (1756-1819 : Leeds Mercury)

He was the eldest son of Charles Atkinson, house surgeon at York County Hospital, and his wife Ann Thirsk. In his Life and Adventures of an Eccentric Traveller (1818) he states that he was born in June 1756. The Atkinsons were Catholic and he was sent first to Bruges and then to Lisle to be educated; he returned to England in 1777 and trained as an apothecary-surgeon. In 1793 when he published The Mind’s Monitor he was living in Aberford, West Yorkshire. He married but the name of his wife is not known. Charles Atkinson served as the apothecary at the York Lunatic Asylum where his wife was the matron. In 1813-15 the Asylum was investigated for mismanagement and the staff, including Atkinson, was dismissed; he responded by publishing Retaliation in 1814. He must then have moved to Heslington, the subject of his 1815 book of verse. At the time of his death on 27 Dec. 1819 he was living in Fulford, York. (ancestry.co.uk 20 July 2022; Leeds Mercury 8 Jan. 1820)

 

Books written (1):

York: [no publisher: printed "for the author" by M. W. Carrall], 1815