Author: Pickering, George
Biography:
PICKERING, George (1758-1826: findmypast.com)
He was born in Simonburn, Northumberland, and baptised there on 11 Jan. 1758. His father George Pickering, land steward on some large estates, had married his mother Mary Ray (or less probably Reah) at Newcastle in 1752. A younger sister, Elizabeth, was baptised at Simonburn in 1762. He was educated at local schools and sent in Dec. 1776 to be a clerk in the solicitor’s office of John and Thomas Davidson at Newcastle, where he formed close friendships with two of his fellow clerks who shared his literary interests, Thomas Bedingfeld and James Ellis (qq.v.): Bedingfeld worked for the firm from 1780 to 1784, with Ellis arriving in 1783. Ellis many years later undertook the editing of a collected edition of their works. Some time after the death of Bedingfeld in London in 1789, Pickering left Newcastle. According to Ellis’s memoir in the 1815 volume, he was believed to have gone abroad and presumed to have died there, since his friends heard no more of him. In fact he lived until 1826 but suffered from mental illness and eventually died insane at his sister’s house at Kibblesworth, Durham, on 28 July 1826. He was buried nearby on 31 July at St. Andrew’s, Lamesley, with a memorial erected by his sister. The death notice describes him only as “formerly of Newcastle.” (findmypast.com 21 Oct. 2023; Durham Chronicle 5 Aug. 1826; [James Ellis], “Introductory Memoir” in Poetry, Fugitive and Original [1815]; Richard Welford, Men of Mark Twixt Tyne and Tweed [1895]; “George Pickering,” Wikipedia 21 Oct. 2023)