Author: Cartwright, George
Biography:
CARTWRIGHT, George (1739-1819: DCB)
Born in Marnham, Nottinghamshire, on 12 Feb. 1739 and baptised on 18 Feb., he was the second son and second of ten children of William and Anne (Cartwright) Cartwright, an old landed family. After schooling in nearby Newark and at an academy in Heath, West Yorkshire, he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, London, as a cadet. In 1754 he was sent to India, where he took up a commission as ensign in the 39th Regiment of Foot. Subsequent postings took him to Ireland (Lieutenant, 1759) and Germany (aide-de-camp to the Marquess of Granby, 1760; captain, 1762). Back in England on half-pay from 1763, he accompanied his brother John Cartwright, R.N. (1740-1824)—later a prominent political reformer—on a voyage to Newfoundland in 1766. A second stint in the army in another infantry regiment saw him invalided home from Minorca with malaria. In 1768 he returned with his brother to Newfoundland and in 1770 again went on half-pay to try his fortunes for sixteen years in the fish and fur trade in Labrador. He was himself a keen huntsman and an adventurer; though his business ventures met with mixed success, he became a champion of the land and peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador. (On a visit to England in 1772 he brought with him a family of five Inuit.) After the last of his business partnerships ended in bankruptcy, he returned to Nottinghamshire. Besides the poem listed here, he published his colourful Journal of Transactions and Events, during a Residence of nearly Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador (1792) by subscription. During the Napoleonic Wars he served as a barrack master at Nottingham, where he had the nickname of “Old Labrador.” Cartwright never married. He died at Mansfield on 19 May 1819 after a long illness and was buried on 24 May at the church of St. Peter and St. Paul. (DCB 23 Oct. 2022; findmypast.com 23 Oct. 2022; “Cartwright, John,” ODNB 23 Oct. 2022; MC 24 May 1819; Sussex Advertiser 31 May 1819) HJ
Other Names:
- G. C.