Author: Meek, Thomas
Biography:
MEEK, Thomas (fl 1795-1814)
“Thomas Meek” was a not uncommon name on both sides of the border between Scotland and England. This author was active in both countries but his life probably began and ended in Scotland. He was almost certainly not the high-profile son of James Meek, DD (1740-1810), Moderator of the Church of Scotland: that Thomas was a lawyer in Glasgow. He might have been the son of Thomas Meek and his wife Isobel Calder baptised at Whitburn, West Lothian, on 11 Nov. 1768. He declared himself “A.M.” but there is no record of his degree in the records of Aberdeen, Oxford, or Cambridge. The most helpful biographical clue about him is a waspish ms note of unknown date by the antiquarian George Chalmers (1742-1825) on the title-page of the BL copy of A Small Tribute to the Memory of Ossian (1809), identifying the writer as “Thomas Meek formerly Student of Divinity now a poor worthless Drunken body . . . ”. The printed title-page of that book refers to some of the author’s other publications, including the New Picture of Edinburgh which started about 1806 and was carried on with periodic revisions until 1820, and The Life of Mahomet (1799) which had been published in South Shields, Tyneside. During the more promising early years of his career Meek had published in the Newcastle area as “Rev. Thomas Meek,” while teaching school and delivering occasional evening lectures in the Scottish-Presbyterian Groat Market Meeting House (Mackenzie). He wrote against deism in Sophistry Detected (1795) and in favour of a measure of government regulation in The Liberty of the Press (1799). After returning to Scotland shortly after 1800 he dropped the “Rev.” The Pleasures of Charity, dedicated to the Duchess of Buccleugh, may have been his final attempt at poetry. No confirmable public records have been found of his birth or death, nor is it known whether or not he married. The list of publications attributable to him ends about 1814 and it seems likely that he died not long after but it is possible that he remained in good health until 6 Feb. 1838 when the death of Thomas Meek “Clerk”—i.e. clergyman—was registered at Edinburgh. (Scotland’s People 18 May 2023; ancestry.com 16 May 2023; findmypast.com 16 May 2023; BL; Eneas Mackenzie, Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle upon Tyne [1827], 387n)