Author: Fisher, John
Biography:
FISHER, John (fl 1820)
Although The Political Plough that Jack Built, one of a multitude of imitations of Hone's bestselling Political House that Jack Built (1819), was published anonymously as by "a farmer commenced author," the dedication to the Duke of Bedford is signed "John Fisher, late proprietor of the Agricultural Repository." No more personal information has been found, but the name of the business makes it possible to reconstruct something of Fisher's working career. In 1813, as a farmer with a sideline in inventions, living at Mill End, Bucks., he was granted a patent for an improved way of fastening gaiters jointly with Layton Cooke (1781-1851), a London estate agent (born in Norfolk) with a sideline in weights and measures. As Cooke, Fisher & Co., land agents, they opened an Agricultural Repository at a site on Winsley St., just off Oxford St. in London "opposite the Pantheon" in Feb. 1813, where they offered for sale machines and hardware for farming and gardening, especially iron manufactures such as ploughs, fencing, harrows, troughs, rollers, and trellises. The Repository changed hands in 1818 or early 1819 but by then had grown to encompass two further sites on the riverside, Steelyard Wharf and New Wharf. An unusual feature of the enterprise was its appeal to investors as a way of promoting British industry: they had royal patrons and in Dec. 1814, at a dinner of the Smithfield Club, a subscription was started to create a reading room where "gentlemen of leisure" could keep up with agricultural books and periodicals. Cooke's book of Tables adapted to the Use of Farmers and Graziers (1813)-- dedicated to Lord Somerville, with a second edition under variant titles (The Grazier's Manual, The Farmer's and Grazier's Manual) in 1819--was advertised as already available at the Agricultural Library in St. James's Square. After the partnership was dissolved, Cooke continued to work as an estate agent and manager based in London; he died at Lambeth. Fisher might be the John Fisher recorded in the 1861 Census as a farm labourer aged 78 living with his wife Rebecca at Harrow; that man died in 1864 and was buried at the church of St. Mary, Harrow. (ancestry.com 29 Aug. 2021; findmypast.com 29 Aug. 2021; Annals of Philosophy 2 [1813] 77; Hampshire Chronicle 15 Nov. 1813; Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser [London] 23 Feb. 1813; London Courier and Evening Gazette 19 Dec. 1814)
Other Names:
- J. Fisher