Author: Robinson, Ellen
Biography:
ROBINSON, Ellen, formerly Sherwood (fl 1794-1823)
Born Ellen Sherwood, on 17 Aug. 1794 she married John Robinson at St James, Toxteth, Lancashire. She states on the title-page of her book A Tribute of Sorrow and Affection to the Memory of a Beloved Son that her address in 1821 was 125 Whitechapel, Liverpool, and that her son Thomas, an apprentice draftsman, had died, aged 16, on 23 Sept. 1821. Her son’s birth at Liverpool on 25 Dec. 1805 is recorded in the register of the Baptist chapel in Byrom Street, as are the birthdates of her other children, Margaret Ellen (b 1795), Joseph (b and d 1797), Joseph (b 1798), Jennet Ann (b 1801), and John (b 1802). The poet’s husband, a boot and shoemaker, sold 125 Whitechapel, a “dwelling house and two shops . . . freehold of inheritance,” in Mar. 1822. Several other Robinsons had businesses or lived in Whitechapel in the 1820s and 1830s, some of whom, presumably, were the poet’s relatives. Several Ellen Robinsons are listed in contemporary commercial directories: a gentlewoman by that name was at 78 Mill Street; Ellen Robinson, circulating library manager and stationer, was at 92 Gerard Street; a woman named Ellen Robinson, victualer, was at 22 St Andrew Street; and another Ellen Robinson, boarding house director, was at 62 Bold Street. The subject of her 1811 volume, the nonconformist minister Thomas Spencer (1791-1811; ODNB), the pastor of Newington chapel, Liverpool, was ordained in Byrom Chapel in the year of his death. He, like the poet’s son, died by drowning. She may have been related to “the late Mrs. E. Robinson” of Stapleford, author of a volume published at Liverpool in 1816, The Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God Displayed in the Works of Creation and Redemption: a Poem. Several libraries attribute that poem to “Ellen Robinson,” though on what basis is unrecorded. (ancestry.com 14 Mar. 2024; Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1600-1840 [1986] at British History Online 19 Mar. 2024; Liverpool Mercury 15 Mar. 1822; E. Baines, History, Director, and Gazetteer of the County Palatine of Lancaster [1824], 1: 318, 437; Liverpool Standard and Commercial Advertiser 11 Apr. 1834; Liverpool Mercury 17 Aug. 1837; information from AA) JC