Author: Hugman, John
Biography:
HUGMAN, John (1770-1846: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 4 Mar. 1770 at Halesworth, Suffolk, the eldest of at least nine children of John Hugman and his wife Susanna Brook. He was originally, like his father, a tanner, and built up a business sufficiently to buy a house. However, in 1823 he went bankrupt, and thereafter seems to have become an appraiser and auctioneer. He also started to give performances of Elegant Extracts (including his own poems) at various theatres, initially locally: Halesworth, Woodbridge, Colchester. These gradually evolved into longer tours in the Thames Valley, the South Coast (Southampton and Brighton) and the industrial cities of Birmingham and Leeds. To his performances he added the sale of broadsides and later published his Original Poems in many imprints or "editions"-- at least seventeen 1825-35 from Brighton, Colchester, Cambridge, Ipswich, Portsmouth, Sudbury, et al. (His printer Thomas Tippell in Halesworth possibly adapted the sheets to assist him.) He was also an amateur watercolourist. He married Mary Anne Reeve on 3 May 1795 at St. Mary, Halesworth, and they went on to have at least nine children. She died in 1837; he is recorded as living alone in the 1841 Census. He died on 30 Nov. 1846 at Halesworth. (ancestry.co.uk 13 Mar. 2021; "John Hugman’s Tour 1824-25" [transcript copy], Society of Genealogists, London, UK/D 1824-25; Suffolk Chronicle 3 Jan. 1824, 5 Dec. 1846; Copsey 1:273; Johnson Cata 469) AA