Author: JACKSON, William
Biography:
JACKSON, William (1784-1864: ancestry.com)
He was baptised at Croxton Kerrial, Leicestershire, on 18 Jul. 1784, the son of Elizabeth and John Jackson. Nothing is known of his education but he became a “writer for the press” (1861 Census), one-time editor and publisher of William Cobbett’s (q.v.) Political Register, and contributor of light verse to newspapers and magazines. His career was dominated by his connection to the dashing naval commander and MP Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860). His first known poem, The Rape of the Table (1811), was an anonymous satire celebrating one of Cochrane’s bold courtroom escapades. He sent it in ms. to George Crabbe, q.v., for comment, and kept the approving letter of response. According to a statement in his final collection, Old-Fashioned Wit and Humour; in Verse (1860), the poem had been printed for private circulation but not offered for sale. Most probably that was what brought Jackson to Cochrane’s attention. In 1814 before a trial in which he was convicted of fraud along with his uncle Alexander Cochrane, Cochrane hired Jackson as his private secretary. Jackson wrote the anonymous Gambyriad (with polemical footnotes) celebrating Cochrane’s exploits at sea and published it in 1818 with a dedication to the Admiralty judge who had recently ruled in Cochrane’s favour in a case of prize-money. Cochrane then left England to seek his fortune in South America, taking Jackson with him. (Some of the poems in the 1860 collection are dated from sea in those years.) Cochrane’s name was eventually cleared and his honours restored; in 1831 he became the 10th Earl of Dundonald and upon his death in 1860 was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the last years of his life he called on Jackson for information as he wrote his Autobiography of a Seaman. Jackson was left £100 as a “steady friend” in the Earl’s will. At some point Jackson married but his wife Elizabeth (d 1848) predeceased him and there seem to have been no children. They had settled at Long Clawson, Leicestershire, where he died on 6 Apr. 1864 and on 29 Apr. was buried near his wife in the Anglican churchyard. He left his house, some land, and personal effects to two nephews. (ancestry.com 2 Nov. 2024; findmypast.com 2 Nov. 2024; ODNB 5 Oct. 2024 [Thomas Cochrane 1775-1860, Alexander Inglis Cochrane 1758-1832, James Gambier 1756-1833]; William Jackson, Old-Fashioned Wit and Humour [1860]; death cert.; information from AA) HJ