Author: Hawthorn, John
Biography:
HAWTHORN, John (fl 1779)
Public records for Hawthorn are scanty but he himself included information about his life in his only book, published in Salisbury in 1779, in order to forestall criticism. He was born in Banbridge in Northern Ireland. Neither his date of birth nor the names of his parents are known. He was taught to read and write but was otherwise uneducated. Apprenticed to a linen weaver, he worked at that trade for some time before enlisting as a light dragoon in the 27th Inniskilling infantry, an Irish regiment that was part of the British army. They were encamped at Combe near Salisbury June-Nov. 1778. Hawthorn’s verses are unsophisticated (“What here is wrote, I saw it with my eyes/ I’ll not deceive you with a pack of lies”) but have been appreciated for their freshness and for their glimpses of the soldier’s life from the time of the very first review in 1779. Little is known of his later life but he stayed in the army and was promoted to Captain and given command of a company in another regiment of foot in 1783. He probably married. There was another John Hawthorn, Private in the 69th Regiment of Foot, at Waterloo, who could have been his son. (findmypast.com 21 Mar. 2022; J. E. O. Screen, “John Hawthorn, Poet and Dragoon, 1779,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 69 [1991] 166-9; CR 48 [1779] 76; Caledonian Mercury 9 Aug. 1783) HJ