Author: Brimmer, George
Biography:
BRIMMER, George (1780-1844: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 22 Oct. 1780 and baptised on 19 Nov. at St. Marylebone, London, as George Ross Brimmer, the sixth of seven children of Benjamin Brimmer (1741-90) and his wife Rebecca Stronghill (1745-1823), who had married at St. James’s, Piccadilly, in 1766. He was apprenticed to a stationer along with his younger brother, John Brimmer (1788-1859). From 1805 to 1818, he traded as stationer and printer at 15 Water Lane, Farringdon. He dissolved a printing partnership with John Jennings, in Fleet Street, Westminster, in 1811. He probably married Mary Gibbs (1780-1855), at St. Mary’s, Newington, on 19 Nov. 1812. They had several children. Two sons were baptised at St. Dunstan’s in the West in 1820 with the father’s occupation recorded as printer, living at New Inn Buildings, St. Clement Danes. In 1825 he underwent bankruptcy proceedings and was listed as of Prince’s Street, Drury Lane, and Strand Lane. By 1841 the family had moved to Fetter Lane, St. Andrew, Holborn. He died on 27 Dec. 1844 at 2 Great Warner Street, Clerkenwell, aged 64, and was buried at Spa Fields non-conformist burial ground. At some point he may have embraced Wesleyan Methodism. The Composing Room (1835) was highly regarded in the nineteenth century for its amusing descriptions of printing customs and practices. In it he describes himself as M.L.U.C. (Member of the London Union of Compositors), Imposer, Corrector, Locker-Up and Distributor of Types. The historian of printing Charles Henry Timperley included extracts in his anthology, Songs of the Press (1833), and in the second edition of 1845 (p. 62n) confirmed Brimmer’s death the previous year. His widow went to live with their son George, also a printer and compositor, at Mount Pleasant, Clerkenwell, where she died in 1855. (ancestry.co.uk 20 June 2023; findmypast.co.uk 20 June 2023; London Gazette (multiple issues); GRO death cert.) AA