Author: DUNLOP, John
Biography:
DUNLOP, John (1789-1868: ODNB)
He was a temperance campaigner and author. Biographical accounts of Dunlop do not include any mention of the anonymously published Oliver Cromwell: A Poem which is listed in this bibliography but he was almost certainly the author. The eldest child of Alexander Dunlop (1766-1840), a merchant, and his first wife Janet Graham (1769-1795), he was born at Greenock, Renfrewshire, on 2 Aug. 1789 and baptised on 18 Aug. He suffered from rheumatic fever at about the time of his mother’s death when he was six. In 1801 he began studying at Glasgow university and later served a legal apprenticeship before moving to Edinburgh where he worked briefly with a law firm. On 13 Feb. 1813 in Greenock he married Janet Napier Dunmore; her father was a merchant who owned shares in plantations in Jamaica. They lived in Greenock and had nine children of whom four lived to be adults. Dunlop was active in the movement to establish sabbath education and a Greenock free school. He became increasingly concerned about the overconsumption of alcohol in industrial centres and established societies to promote temperance in Greenock and other locations. In 1836 he inherited the estate of Gairbraid through his mother but two years later he moved to London with the goal of developing a national temperance movement. He also took up other liberal social causes, including housing for the poor and electoral reform. Although he was a diffident public speaker, he wrote and published several books that promoted temperance including a play, The Temperance Emigrants (1840). His health began to deteriorate in about 1859 and he died at Priory Road, Kilburn, London, on 12 Dec. 1868. He left effects in England of under £300 but this figure does not include his estate in Scotland. (ODNB 11 Aug. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 11 Aug. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 11 Aug. 2024; LBS; The Sun [London] 15 Dec. 1868) SR