Author: Caulfield, James
Biography:
CAULFIELD, James Thomas, (1764-1826: ODNB)
Pseudonym Satiricus Sculptor, Esq.
Caulfield features in Chalcographimania and, with W. H. Ireland (q.v.), is identified as one of the possible authors of this pseudonymous work. His denial of the attribution was supported by George Smeeton, a friend of Caulfield’s who wrote his obituary published in GM. One of several sons born to John Caulfield, a music engraver, and his wife Susanna Thompson, Caulfield was baptised at St. James’s church, Clerkenwell, London, on 27 Feb. 1764. The ODNB and GM (the source for information about his early life) give the date of his birth as 11 Feb. but the baptismal record has 6 Feb. 1764. As a child he suffered from an eye infection that impaired his vision. When he was about 8, his father took him to Cambridge where he was educated by Christopher Sharpe, a print collector. At the age of sixteen, Caulfield established a small shop dealing in engravings in Old Round Court, the Strand, London; subsequently he moved to larger premises in Castle Street, Leicester Fields (Leicester Square). Later still he had a shop on Wells Street, off Oxford Street. On 23 Jan. 1790 he married Mary Gascoyne (d 1816) in St. Anne’s, Soho; they had seven children with just four surviving their father. Caulfield specialised in books with engravings of people: among other works he published Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons in parts (1790-95) and catalogues of portraits. Whether or not he wrote Chalcographimania, he astutely capitalised on its publication by issuing Calcographiana: The Printsellers Chronicle and Collectors in 1814. In Jan. 1826 when he was living at Park Street, Camden Town, he broke his kneecap. He was cared for initially at his brother’s house before being moved to St. Bartholomew’s hospital where he died on 22 Apr. 1826. He was buried in the family vault in St. James’s, Clerkenwell, on 1 May 1826. (ODNB 6 Nov. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 6 Nov. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 6 Nov. 2023; GM 96 [1826], 569-71) SR