Author: Hattersley, John
Biography:
HATTERSLEY, John (1810-79: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 7 Mar. 1810 at Hunslett Lane, Leeds, the eldest of at least four children of William Hattersley, a gardener, and his wife Ann Henson, who were both Quakers and had married in 1808. He was educated at Ackworth and became a tutor in an academy in Darlington. On 26 Jul. 1832, he conformed and was baptised at St Stephen’s, Colman Street, London. As a mature student he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1843 (8th Wrangler 1847, BA 1848, MA 1852). He entered the church in 1848 and became Chaplain at Prestwich, near Manchester. In 1854 he became Curate at Eccles, near Manchester, and combined this with being the Master of Beaucliffe School, Eccles Old Road. Thereafter his life has hitherto been unknown with Venn assuming that he continued as a schoolmaster until 1865 and noting that he disappeared from Crockford’s in 1868. In fact, he sold the school in 1857 and went to Pau in the Pyrenees where he sent up a school at 32 Rue de Bordeaux, Haute Plante. He had early acquired proficiency in Oriental languages and had been employed by both the British and Foreign Bible Society and the British Museum in the 1830s, contributing to the BFBS 1833 translation of twelve chapters of St. Luke’s gospel into Berber (in which he was an acknowledged expert). He was also proficient in French, Spanish, and German. Shortly after leaving Cambridge he published A First Course of Mathematics (1848) for students taking the BA. With these skills, he advertised widely in England for pupils who hoped to enter the EIC and also offered a reading party in the summer. It is not known how successful the school was but he remained in Pau for the rest of his life. He married Emmeline Esdaile, the only surviving daughter of the Rev. James Wilkinson Esdaile of Bardfeld, Essex, on 2 June 1866, in Pau. He died on 17 Apr. 1879, aged 69. His widow remarried the following year at Christchurch, Pau. The attribution of The Conquest of America (1831) is based on the Quaker dating of the preface, his residence in Darlington at the time, and his lifelong knowledge of Spanish. (ancestry.co.uk 23 Dec. 2021; Ackworth [Registers, 1879], 95; Manchester Courier 19 June 1852, 22 Aug. 1857; Lancet 26 Dec. 1857; Athenaeum 11 June 1859, 27 Sept. 1862; Morning Herald 9 June 1866; Bury and Norwich Post 29 Apr. 1879) AA