Author: Millhouse, Robert
Biography:
MILLHOUSE, Robert (1788-1839: ODNB)
The primary source for information about his background is the preface that Millhouse’s elder brother wrote for Vicissitude (1821), which was published by subscription like most of his work. According to that account, he was born on 14 Oct. 1788 in Nottingham, the second of ten children; public records indicate further that he was baptised at St. Mary’s, Nottingham, on 6 Nov., the son of John and Ann (Burbage) Millhouse. He attended Sunday School for his basic education until, at the age of ten, he started work at a stocking loom. At 16 he discovered Shakespeare and began, with his elder brother, to build a collection of books, mainly British poets. From 1810 to 1814 he served with the Nottinghamshire militia, and joined again in 1817 when it regrouped as the Sherwood Foresters. In this period he began composing poems and contributing to the Nottingham Review. But his livelihood depended on his work at the loom. He married Eliza Saxby at St. Mary’s on 25 Aug. 1818; they went on to have eight children. After her death he married Marian Muir at St. Stephen’s, Sneinton; they had two children. With the encouragement of patrons who saw him as a local Burns or Bloomfield, he was able to supplement his wages with a steady output of poetry. The same patrons, notably Luke Booker and later Richard Howitt (qq.v.), supported him in almost annual applications to the RLF between 1822 and 1835. The RLF awarded at least five pounds each time, for a grand total of £145—the last £25 going to his widow in 1839. In 1825 he told the Committee that since his income from poetry barely covered the costs of publication, he would try prose, but no such work has been found. In the same year, one of his patrons encouraged him to leave the loom and found him a job at a bank. The last medical report on him maintains that his disease was “a continued fever induced by poverty.” He died in Nottingham on 13 Apr. 1839 and was buried in the general cemetery on Apr. 18. He had a reputation beyond the local as a worker-poet, and was given a prominent place in Sketches of Obscure Poets (1833). (ODNB 16 June 2023; findmypast.com 16 June 2023; ancestry.com 16 June 2023; John Millhouse, preface to Vicissitude [1821], iii-x; RLF #462)