Author: Freeth, John
Biography:
FREETH, John (1731-1808: ODNB)
pseudonym John Free (1731-1808)
"John Freeth" was not an uncommon name in the Midlands at the time: for example, this John Freeth, whose blue heritage plaque identifies him as "The Birmingham Poet of Mill St.," wrote an elegy for another one (1699-1769) who was a Quaker preacher at St. Albans. Records of birth, marriage, and death are nevertheless scarce for the author of The Political Songster. The reason is probably his nonconformist (Unitarian) status. But he was a well known, popular innkeeper, owner of the Leicester Arms on Bell St., which was generally referred to as "Freeth's Coffee House." He regularly entertained the patrons by singing topical songs of his own composition set to familiar tunes; in 1766 he published the first of close to twenty collections that appeared in his lifetime. He was himself the son of an innkeeper, Charles Freeth of The Bell on Philip St., and his wife Mary. The date of his marriage to a woman named Sarah (d 1807) is not known, but they had nine children, eight of whom--one son and seven daughters--are mentioned in his will. He died on 29 Sept. 1808 and was buried, as his wife had been before him, at the Old Meeting House in Birmingham, with an epitaph he had chosen. Freeth himself had been a leader in the campaign to build the Meeting House a new chapel, which opened on 4 Oct. 1795 with a service that included hymns by Watts (q.v.) and Kippis, favourites of dissenting congregations. (ODNB 14 Nov. 2021; WorldCat; R. D. Woodall, Midland Unitarianism and its Story 1662-1962 [1962]; OUCH 22 Oct. 1808) HJ
Other Names:
- J. Freeth