Author: Perkins, Theophilus
Biography:
PERKINS, Theophilus (1782-1859: ancestry.com)
“Theophilus Perkins” is not as uncommon a name as might be expected, especially when variant spellings of the surname such as Parkins and Parkin are admitted. The keys to his identity are in his only known publication, The Prostitute (1812), which was published in Lincolnshire at Chepstow (perhaps for present-day Chepstow Grove near Grimsby—not the one in Wales) and sold also at Boston and Stamford, Lincs. In a footnote to his introduction, Perkins declares himself to be “by profession a Printer,” almost wholly self-educated, motivated solely by the desire to protect women from seduction. He must have been the son of Ann and Theophilus Perkins baptised on 5 May 1782 at Whaplode, Lincolnshire—the third boy they had baptised by that name in four years, the first two having died in infancy. He was apprenticed on 11 Sept. 1798 to a printer in Grantham, Thomas Hurst. He married Mary Ann Chapman soon after he was out of his indentures, on 29 Sept 1807 at St. James, Louth, Lincolnshire. He appears to have remained in Louth for the rest of his long life, but to have sunk into poverty by the end. The couple had at least eight children baptised at the same church; five aged between eight and twenty are recorded as living with their father, by then a labourer, in the 1841 Census. In the Census of 1851 he is described as an agricultural labourer and pauper, living as a lodger, still in Louth. He died there and was buried in the Anglican cemetery on 20 Jan. 1859. (ancestry.com 16 Sept. 2023; findmypast.com 16 Sept. 2023)