Author: MATHER, Joseph
Biography:
MATHER, Joseph (1737-1804: ODNB)
Apart from the burial record that establishes the date of his death and his age, there are few public records related to Mather, so it is fortunate that in 1862 a local historian, John Wilson, edited a fresh collection of his songs with a memoir and introduction in which he drew on oral evidence from people who had known him and seen him perform. That memoir is the basis of all later biographical accounts. According to Wilson he was born and died in Sheffield, Yorkshire, his parentage unknown but his birthplace identified as "Cack Alley." ODNB offers an alternative birthplace--Chelmorton, Derbyshire--but there were several men with the same name about the same time in the north of England and a Sheffield birthplace seems more likely. He served his apprenticeship as a "filer" or "filesmith" in the Sheffield workshop of the cutler Nicholas Jackson 1751-9 and worked all his life in that trade. He could read but not write. At first a Methodist, he fell out with the church about 1787 but was reconciled to it towards the end of his life. He had a wife and at least five children, the eldest of whom was probably the Joseph Mather baptised on 5 June 1765 at the cathedral church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Sheffield, where his father was later buried. His wife's name is not on the baptismal record. It is said to have been Nell, although that might come from one of his ballads, "Nell and Jos," in which Nell attacks Jos with her fingernails for coming home empty-handed. Mather struggled financially and was more than once imprisoned for debt. He supplemented his earnings from the 1770s on by busking--singing his songs in the streets, sometimes seated backwards on a bull or donkey. Set to familiar tunes, they are lively representations of working-class life. When they became increasingly radical in the 1790s he was bound over to keep the peace ("muzzled") for a year. He died at his home in Pond Hill on 12 June 1804 and was buried in St. Paul's churchyard. His songs, which had been taken down and circulated in manuscript or in broadsides, were collected for posthumous publication in 1811 and then enlarged by Wilson in 1862. (ODNB 18 Jan. 2026; Goodridge; John Wilson, "Memoir," The Songs of Joseph Mather [1862]; findmypast.com; information from AA) HJ