Author: Jackson, Joseph
Biography:
JACKSON, Joseph (1780-1804: oldbaileyonline.org)
A poet of some promise, Jackson met a dreadful end. He was a son of William Jackson (d 1799), a “carver,” and his wife, Phœbe (b 1741), the daughter of John and Sarah Goodson. He was born on 17 Dec. 1780 and baptised at St Mary, Rotherhithe, Southwark, on 12 Jan. 1781. Of his seven siblings, two died in infancy. Reviewers of his poem, The Reign of Liberty, were impressed by his age but critical of his radical politics; in MR: “For a youth not yet seventeen years old, this writer has acquitted himself very tolerably well”; in CR: “a mere school-boy piece of rhiming rant,” “in the fury of politics [the author] takes up the goose-quill to immortalise the ‘defender of the city liberties, the opposer of ministerial influence, and the champion of the rights of man’.” Jackson dedicated his poem to a working-class agitator, Samuel Ferrand Waddington. In the year in which Reign of Liberty appeared, 1797, he published “Ode to Beauty” in the Monthly Visitor and “Stanzas to Celia” in Lady’s Magazine. “Sonnet to an Infant” appeared the following year in Monthly Magazine. Through a connection at the London Corresponding Society, of which he was a member, he became a money broker. That career choice sealed his fate. On 13 Mar. 1804, he forged a signature on bills of exchange for £1,200 and £1,300. Now a fugitive with a reward of £100 offered for his apprehension, he absconded to Ireland. There he was arrested, at Enniskillen. On 4 May he was brought before the Lord Mayor of London for arraignment. He was tried at the Old Bailey on 4 July, was found guilty, and was sentenced to death. His attempt to commit suicide by poison failed. The king having denied clemency, he was hanged at Newgate prison on 26 July, age 23 years and a half. Apparently, he had a wife and a child. His only biographer drew a fair conclusion, that “natural abilities induced Jackson to expect too much for himself.” (oldbaileyonline.org 26 Oct. 2023; ancestry.com 26 Oct. 2023; Lady’s Magazine 28 [1797], 88; Monthly Visitor 2 [1797], 49, 480; MR [1797], 344; CR 21 [1797], 341-42; MR [1798], 123; GM 83:1 [1798], 509; European Magazine 46 [1804], 154; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 5 May, 4 Aug. 1804; “Account of Joseph Jackson,” Universal Magazine 7 [1807], 209-14) JC