Author: Robson, Henry
Biography:
ROBSON, Henry (1776-1850: ancestry.com)
pseudonym H. R.
A native of Benwell, Northumberland, at about age fifteen the songwriter migrated to Newcastle to apprentice at the Margaret Angus printing and publishing firm. There he met his future publisher, John Bell, also an apprentice at Angus’s. Often identified as a journeyman printer, he was instead a compositor at the St Nicholas’ Church Yard printing firm, Mackenzie and Dent. He was baptized 1 Sept. 1776 at St John’s, Newcastle, the son of John Robson and his wife, Jane Moss. (His parents married there on 6 Nov. 1769.) Conceived out of wedlock, his sister, Jane, was baptized at St John’s in 1769; his brother, Thomas, was baptized there in 1772. On 24 Aug. 1797 at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Henworth, Durham, he married Isabella, a daughter of William Crow, silversmith, of Devizes, Wiltshire. They had five children, Thomas Bewick (b 1798, named after the engraver), Jane (b 1799), Henry Jubert (b 1801), Isabella (b 1803), and John (b 1805). His imitation of working-class vernacular and his invention of working-class types began a trend in petit-bourgeois songs and poetry about working life (Harker 1981). Notably in “The Colliers’ Pay Week,” he satirized the louche leisure activities of Benwell pit-workers. Yet in “Parson Malthus” (set to the tune of “Ranting roaring Willie”) he urged “Ye blithe British lads and ye lasses” not to “heed this daft, whimsical Priest,” to “Get sweathearts [sic] in spite of such asses.” With several hundred artisans of Newcastle, on 19 Sept. 1832 he signed a letter of congratulation to William Cobbett for his efforts toward “national regeneration.” The songwriter died at Newcastle on 21 Dec. 1850. (ancestry.com 2 Apr. 2024; freereg.org.uk 2 Apr. 2024; T. Hugo, The Bewick Collector [1866], 1: 115; D. Harker, “The Making of the Tyneside Concert Hall,” Popular Music 1 [1981], 26-56; D. Harker, “The Original Bob Cranky?,” Folk Music Journal 5:1 [1985], 48-81) JC
Other Names:
- H. R.