Author: Dobbs, James
Biography:
DOBBS, James (1781-1837: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 21 June 1781 at St. Martin’s, Birmingham, the eldest of at least eight children of John Dobbs and Sarah Dobbs (maiden name unknown). Nothing is known of his education but his volume of early verse listed here, The Lisper (1802), was announced in June 1802 and included “A Brief Description of the Illuminations at Soho.” He took to the stage early and married Catherine Hamilton (1779-1809), daughter of a sometime comedian and Hull printer, on 2 Dec. 1804 at St. Mary’s, Hinckley, Leicestershire. There seems to have been no issue. She died at Shrewsbury in 1809 and he married Elizabeth Pugh (b 1790) on 14 June 1810 at St. Peter’s, Liverpool, where her father was the curate. They had at least three children. Her date of death has not yet been established; she may have predeceased him, remarried, or gone to live with one of her children after his death. He led an itinerant actor’s life and at his insolvency proceedings in July 1834 was recorded as a comedian and sometime collector of debts but now unemployed, who had been resident in Birmingham, Stratford-upon-Avon, Shrewsbury, Coventry, and Worcester. He had also spent some time at the theatres in Cheltenham and Gloucester--and probably several others. He seems to have performed music-hall songs and recitals rather than dramatic parts and also to have demonstrated inventions, including one of his own for reaping corn. His most famous song/poem, published as a broadside, “I can’t find Brummagem” (1828), recalling changes over twenty years as the city industrialised, is worth another look and is often quoted in local histories. He died on 1 Nov. 1837 at his brother’s house in Newton Street, Birmingham, and was buried on 5 Nov. at St. Philip’s. (ancestry.co.uk 4 Feb. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 4 Feb. 2024; Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 7 June 1802, 10 Dec. 1804, 4 Nov. 1837; Birmingham Journal 19 July 1834; Hull Packet 17 Oct. 1809; GRO death cert.) AA