Author: Derbyshire, George
Biography:
DERBYSHIRE, George (1791-1874: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 5 Nov. 1791 and baptised on 27 Nov. at Dunstable, Bedfordshire, the third of at least five children of John Derbyshire, a shoemaker, and his wife Sarah Saunders. He received an elementary education at William Chew’s Charity School 1798-1805 and was in receipt of one of Jane Cart’s apprenticeship awards as a shoemaker. One obituary recorded that he was reading Shakespeare at seven and had published verse anonymously at sixteen. It is unclear if this verse was a volume or periodical publication. He married Mary Hillsdon (1801-63) on 14 Sept. 1820 at Dunstable, and they had at least five children. After leaving school he had a shoemaker’s shop in Church Street where he lived all his life. From about 1834 he was Parish Clerk at the Priory Church but his occupation in the 1841 and 1851 Censuses is given as boot and shoemaker. His wife was recorded as a straw bonnet sewer as were their daughters. The sons became carpenters. (One son, William Henry, continued his father’s historical interests in Dunstable and in 1855 became editor of the Dunstable Chronicle.) In 1848 he was appointed Registrar for Births, Marriages, and Deaths for Dunstable. In later life, in addition to be being Registrar, he took on various civic duties as vaccination officer and member of the Board of Guardians. He died on 3 Apr. 1874, aged 82, at Church Street, Dunstable. Dunstable (1830), his only known published collection, includes the historical-topographical poem of the title and a second poem, perhaps of more interest to modern readers, "Graves of the Poor,"which recounts the lives of the poor and unknown buried in Dunstable churchyard. (ancestry.co.uk 7 Nov. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 7 Nov. 2021; Leighton Buzzard Observer 27 Oct. 1863, 14 Apr. 1874; W. H. Derbyshire, The History of Dunstable, 2nd edn. [1882]; associationofdunstablecharities.co.uk) AA