Author: JUDKIN, Thomas James
Biography:
JUDKIN, Thomas James (1788-1871: findmypast.com)
He always used the spelling “Judkin” but his father had gone by “Judkins.” He was born in London and baptised at Finsbury on 17 Aug. 1788, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Whitehouse) Judkins, who had married on 30 Sept. 1787. Hatfield describes his father as a respectable tradesman “in comfortable circumstances,” with a business in Bishopsgate St. But Judkin owed his education and subsequent career to a London alderman, Sir William Curtis, who took an interest in the boy and paid his university fees and perhaps also his school fees at Abthorpe School, Northamptonshire, and Oakington, Cambridgeshire. He went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (matric. 1810, BA 1815, MA 1818) and took orders (deacon 1815, priest 1817). After two short-term appointments he was made permanent curate and later vicar of St. Mary’s, Somers Town, St. Pancras, where he remained for the rest of his working life, a hard-working and popular minister. He was a gifted musician and amateur artist: Turner and Constable were his personal friends. His first collection of versions of the psalms adapted for his congregation (1831) contained 100 psalms and 200 hymns, most of his own composition. The enlarged version, Church and Home Melodies (1834) had almost 600 altogether; it was reprinted in 1837 and drawn on for hymnals and anthologies throughout the nineteenth century. On 26 Aug. 1845 Judkin married Ann (Barron) Lainson (b 1805), the widow of the alderman John Lainson (c. 1789-1844), whose three daughters aged 18-20 made up part of their household in the 1851 census, along with their own four-year-old daughter Emily. Only Emily appears in 1861 and 1871. Judkin died at Reigate Heath, Surrey, on 11 Sept. 1871. His final poetical publication had been a collection of sonnets, By-gone Moods (1856). (findmypast.com 16 July 2024; ancestry.com 16 July 2024; Edwin F. Hatfield, The Poets of the Church [1884], 354-6; CCEd 16 July 2024; ACAD)
Other Names:
- T. J. Judkin