Author: Crane, John
Biography:
CRANE, John (1754-1836: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 15 July 1754 at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, near Birmingham, the son of Jonathan Crane and his wife, who was possibly Elizabeth Nott. They had married at nearby Rock in 1739 and went on to have many children. The Bromsgrove section of the Universal British Directory (1791) lists a John Crane (watch-maker) and an Ann Crane (school-mistress). Nothing is known about their son’s education other than that he left school at fifteen. He married Elizabeth Bell on 11 Oct. 1781, possibly in Bromsgrove or a nearby parish, but the only record is the Bishop’s Transcript for the county. They had at least five children. He became a clock- and watch-maker like his father but the family were also sometime printers and general merchants. They had a shop at 16 High Street, Bromsgrove. In the politically charged 1790s, he was High Church and an ensign and adjutant in the Bromsgrove Loyal Association (an ad hoc volunteer militia). The Bromsgrove Constables (1802) amusingly describes how it took five of them to arrest a one-legged sailor for begging. In 1825, a reviewer mocked Crane: “to his primary occupation as a watch and clock maker, the author has added that of dealer in almost everything. Musical instruments, sugar-tongs, microscopes, nut-crackers, Derbyshire spars, shuttlecocks, tea-totums, prayer books, cribbage boards and a long list of et-ceteras” (Monthly Critical Gazette, 349). Nevertheless, the reviewer found Crane eccentric and original. Crane responded with an attack on literary London in London Wakes: A Vision (30 pp., Stourport n.d.), separately printed and included in some later sets of his poems. In old age he became blind. He died on 17 Dec. 1836 at his son’s house in Tybach, Brecon. A final collection, Mountain Meditations, Reformation. From the Royal Slap-Bang to the Plums of the Last (1836) was reviewed in the Literary Gazette (16 July 1836, 454) but no copy has been located. (ancestry.co.uk 29 Mar. 2023; Monthly Critical Gazette Mar. 1825, 2: 349-51; Worcester Herald 16 Dec. 1830, 31 Dec. 1836; Hereford Journal 28 Dec. 1836; Bromsgrove and Droitwich Messenger 3 Sept. 1904, 11 Mar. 1911, 7 Sept. 1912, 13 and 20 Dec. 1913; Harold Forster, “Rhymes of a Provincial Bookseller,” Antiquarian Book Monthly Review 5:1, Jan. 1978, 2-7) AA