Author: Dearman, Richard
Biography:
DEARMAN, Richard (1766-1856: ancestry.co.uk)
Pseudonym Matthew Bramble
He was born on 17 Nov. 1766 at Thorne, Yorkshire, the third of seven children of Quakers, Nathan Dearman (1741-1811), grocer and draper, and Mary Huitson or Hewitson (1739-92), who had married in 1763. He was educated locally by a schoolmistress, Betty Moxon, and at twelve went to Joseph Tatham’s school in Leeds for two years (Tatham is presumed to be “A Good Schoolmaster” in Portraitures). His father had intended him to become a surgeon but he was apprenticed to trade in Nottingham for seven years before joining the family business in Barnsley, Yorkshire. He took over the business from his father but it eventually failed and he later led what he termed the life of “a wayfaring man.” He married Sarah Raywood (1769-1805) on 6 Dec. 1792 at Darfield, Yorkshire. They had two children. Shortly after her death he married her sister Elizabeth Frances Raywood (1783-1834) on 23 Jan. 1806 at St. Pancras Old Church, Westminster, London. There were two further children. He later moved to Cheetham Hill, Manchester, where his son traded as a bookbinder. He died there on 18 Nov. 1856 and was buried at St. Luke’s, Cheetham Hill. He contributed some poems to Nottingham newspapers in early youth and corresponded with the Gentleman’s Magazine but Portraitures(1820) is his only known separate work. It consists of mostly local portraits and is now best known for “The Christian Preacher and the Infidel” (John Wesley and Thomas Paine). It is not known why he published under the pseudonym of Matthew Bramble. Extracts from his memoirs in manuscript, establishing his authorship, were published by H. W. Atkinson in 1933. (ancestry.co.uk 11 Apr. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 11 Apr. 2024; Leeds Intelligencer 18 Feb. 1805; Harold Waring Atkinson, The Families of Atkinson of Roxby [Lincs.] and Thorne, and Dearman of Braithwaite [1933], 70, 73, 282-7; George Lawton, “Matthew Bramble, Tom Paine and John Wesley,” Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 33 [June 1961], 41-5) AA