Author: GORTON, John
Biography:
GORTON, John (c.1771-1834: ancestry.com)
His age at death was 63 according to the burial record of 11 Jan. 1835 (St. George's Bloomsbury, London), which is confirmed by other documents although some newspaper accounts differ. Hence the estimated birthdate of 1771. His place of birth and parentage have not been found. By 1797 he was seeking to earn a living in London by his pen, whether by sales or by patronage (Britannia is fulsomely dedicated to a viscount), and he became a notably hard-working, versatile hack writer, specializing in multi-volume reference books such as A General Biographical Dictionary (1828) and A Topographical Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland (1831-3). He also translated Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary (1824) and joined in theological debate, having a bee in his bonnet about "the genealogy of Jesus." For a time (as late as 1832) he was the editor of a London evening paper, the Globe. On 4 Aug. 1806 he married Margaret Hutton at Warlingham, Surrey; their first child was baptised at the father's home parish of Southwark, London, in 1807, and they had at least two daughters who lived to adulthood. The elder daughter, Margaret, educated in France, became an accomplished linguist and musician and assisted her father in the biographical dictionary. But they suffered financially, no doubt in part because of Gorton's mental illness, and he took his own life at their lodgings on Charlotte St., Bloomsbury, on 7 Dec. 1834. At the inquest it was reported that he had been under a doctor's care and was on suicide watch, but he managed to evade his carers and hang himself with a silk handkerchief, using a nail in the passage. His widow applied for assistance from the RLF and was granted £40. In 1836 she emigrated to Australia with her daughter Margaret and son-in-law George Stevenson, a Globe writer. They settled in Adelaide, where she died in 1853. (ancestry.com 14 Oct. 2021; findmypast.com 14 Oct. 2021; ODNB 14 Oct. 2021; RLF file 805; London Packet 10 Dec. 1834; ADB 14 Oct. 2021; contributions by AA) HJ