Author: Jackman, Isaac
Biography:
JACKMAN, Isaac (b c. 1740-d 1831?: ODNB)
No birth or baptismal record has been located for Jackman. Almost all biographical information about him derives from two brief sketches published in 1802 and 1806. He is said to have been born in Dublin, the son of a clerk in the Lord Mayor’s office. A 1798 source states he was “[f]ormerly an Attorney in Dublin,” and, according to DIB, he qualified as attorney at King’s Inn in 1762. He was in England in Mar. 1774 when Oliver Goldsmith wrote to him. His supposed marriage to an Englishwoman is undocumented. His musical farce Milesian (Drury Lane, Mar. 1776) “met with uncommon applause.” David Garrick wrote the prologue to Jackman’s most successful work, All the World’s A Stage, called one “of the most popular farces … ever written.” Acted in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and many provincial theatres, it was revived annually throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Jackman’s The Divorce was staged at Drury Lane (10 Nov. 1781), and Hero and Leander (1787) at the Royalty Theatre, Goodman’s Fields. The Man of Parts; or, A Trip to London was staged at Theatre Royal, Dublin, in 1785. Egerton’s Theatrical Remembrancer attributes to him the mock-tragedy Almirina, a one-man play with cardboard figures acted at the Royalty Theatre in Sep. 1787. John Murray of Fleet Street published 2,000 copies of Jackson’s Royal and Royalty Theatres: Letter to Phillips Glover (1787), in which he complained of official restrictions placed upon the Royalty and other “illegitimate” theatres. He appears to have edited the Morning Post between 1791 and 1795. Earlier sources state that he returned to Ireland where he obtained employment as a newspaper editor. The RLF, however, granted him 10 guineas in 1808 when, apparently, he was imprisoned for debt at King’s Bench. The RLF repeated the grant in 1809, 1811, and 1818. From 18 to 20 Dec. 1820, an Isaac Jackman, age 80, was a ward in the St James, Piccadilly, poorhouse. Sources that state he died in 1831 may be confusing his death with the Rev. Isaac Jackman’s, who died at Lambeth in May of that year. (ODNB 15 May 2023; RLF; DIB 15 May 2023; Living Authors of Great Britain [1798]; Thespian Dictionary [1802]; Cawthorn's Minor British Theatre [1806]; J. W. Cole, “Dramatic Writers of Ireland,” Dublin University Magazine [Aug. 1855]; W. Zachs, The First John Murray [1998], 341) JC