Author: Pinn, William
Biography:
PINN, William (b 1757: ancestry.com)
He was baptised at St. George’s, Southwark, London, on 7 Aug, 1757, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Pinn. In the preface to his only known publication he cheerfully describes himself as having had no education and therefore contending with an “unletter’d Muse.” He enlisted in the army at Gravesend, Kent, on 7 Feb. 1776 and served with the marines based at Chatham, Kent, for almost 24 years. On 13 Nov. 1786 he married Dorothy Slingsby at St. Mary Magdalene, Gillingham, Kent, and they went on to have seven children baptised at Chatham, all but one of whom grew to maturity. Pinn was a sergeant at the time of the review that he writes about in his jocular Poems on Various Subjects. But on 7 Jan. 1800 he was discharged without warrant, an event that became an issue at the court-martial of his commanding officer in 1802. Major-General Innes was cleared of wrongdoing and Pinn was commended for his “long service and very meritorious conduct” but not reinstated. In the meantime he had become a tailor with business in the town. No record has been found of his death or of that of his wife—unless she is the Dorothy Pinn buried at Tiverton, Somersetshire, on 24 Jan. 1805. The William Pinn buried in Kent in 1806 was an infant. (ancestry.com 23 Oct. 2023; findmypast.com 23 Oct. 2023; John McArthur, Courts-martial and Courts of Inquiry [1806])