Author: DIBB, Robert
Biography:
DIBB, Robert (1807-87: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 25 Nov. 1807 at Otley, Yorkshire, the son of William Dibb and his wife Sarah Iles. He married Julia Maria Parsons at St. George’s, Bloomsbury, on 25 Aug. 1832. They had at least six children, all of whom survived into adulthood. After marriage they moved to Leeds where several more children were born. In the 1841 census, he is recorded as a clerk and she as a schoolmistress. By 1851 they had moved to 15 New York Street, Ardwick, a suburb of Manchester. He was recorded as a schoolmaster. They were still in New York Street, living next door to their son, in the 1861 Census when he declared himself “Poet.” (He also ran a circulating library from this address.) By 1871 they had moved to Thornhill Street, Islington, London, and by 1873 to 14 Cloudesley Road, where he advertised as the best advertisement writer in England. His wife died in that year and thereafter he struggled to survive. In 1876 he was subject to a Poor Law Removal order and spent the rest of his life in and out of the Islington Union Workhouse in St. John Street. He was possibly a minor celebrity there as he was chosen on a couple of occasions shortly before his death for day-trips and feasts sponsored by local philanthropists to whom he published letters of gratitude in the Islington Gazette on behalf of the inmates. In 1883 he was in the Islington Infirmary and continued to suffer ill health thereafter. He died there 21 Nov. 1887, still listed as an Advertisement Writer at 6 Parr Street, but with the Workhouse as informant of death. His most important volume was The Minstrel’s Offering (1839), which included his contributions to the Leeds Chartist newspaper, the Northern Star. (ancestry.co.uk 13 Mar. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 13 Mar. 2021; Newsam167-8; Johnson Cata 270; Mike Sanders, The Poetry of Chartism [2009]; Manchester Times 26 June 1858; Bradford Daily Telegraph 10 Nov. 1873; Islington Gazette 24 June, 29 Aug. 1887) AA