Author: Love, David
Biography:
LOVE, David (1749-1827: ODNB)
He was born at Torryburn to William Love, a collier with five children from a previous marriage, and Anne (Robertson) Love. (His year of birth is given as 1750 in the ODNB and 1749 in ancestry.co.uk records.) His father abandoned the family after another son was born in 1752; his mother was later to go blind and become a wandering beggar. Love had just one year of education before he began working, including in the Earl of Dundonald’s coalmines where he broke his arm in an underground accident. (His autobiography gives a lively account of the multiple dangers of coalpits.) He was married three times: in about 1775 to Mary Thomson with whom he had five sons and one daughter, to Mary Falconer (born Thomson) in 1807, and in 1810 to Elizabeth Laming with whom he had five more children. Love had a four-year spell in the Duke of Buccleuch’s fencibles (about 1778-82); otherwise he was an itinerant poet who wrote verses and acrostics on demand, and a pedlar. He spent brief periods in prison and the workhouse. In 1796 he experienced religious conversion at Newbury, Berkshire, and dated that year as the beginning of a new life. He became a well-known figure in Nottingham and was nicknamed “Old Glory.” Beginning in 1814, he published his autobiography in penny numbers and incorporated many of his poems. He died at Nottingham and was buried in St Mary’s churchyard. (ODNB 3 Oct 2019; ancestry.co.uk 3 Oct 2019) SR