Author: Roscoe, William Stanley
Biography:
ROSCOE, William Stanley (1782-1843: ancestry.com)
The eldest of the seven sons of William Roscoe (q.v.) and his wife, Jane Griffies, the poet was born 4 Jan. 1782 at Liverpool and baptized on 10 Feb. at the Renshaw Street Presbyterian Chapel. His brothers Robert and Thomas and his sisters Jane Elizabeth and Mary Anne (Jevons) also were poets (qq.v.). The interest he later took in Italian poetry probably was inspired by his childhood tutor, William Shepherd (q.v.). On 3 Apr. 1798, he was bound apprentice to attorney Joshua Lace of Liverpool. He abandoned that commitment when in Sept. 1801 he entered Peterhouse, Cambridge (no degree). He became, like his father, a banker, a profession “utterly distasteful to him.” He was a partner in several banks, each of which failed: at Chester, dissolved Jan. 1816; his father’s bank, bankrupt Jan. 1820; and at Liverpool—Fletcher, Roscoe, and Roberts—declared insolvent Sept. 1833. From 12 Aug. 1836, he received a salary of £350 per annum as Liverpool’s sergeant-at-mace (a position analogous to sheriff). At St James, Audley, Staffordshire, on 10 Sept. 1818, the poet married Hannah Eliz Caldwell (1785-1854). Their six children were baptized at Renshaw Street Chapel. His Poems, published by Pickering in July 1834 (readvertised May 1844), was noticed with approval in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (“much beautiful poetry”). Roscoe subscribed to the poems of Frances Watkis and of Thomas Romney Robinson and to Robert Blair’s The Grave illustrated by William Blake (qq.v.). He was for many years a member of the African institution (he wrote several abolitionist poems) and of the Liverpool Mechanics and Apprentices’ Library. In July 1843, in a failed effort to buttress his ailing health, he toured Germany and Switzerland. The poet died that year, on 31 Oct., at his Liverpool residence, 6 Carlton Terrace, Upper Parliament Street. His estate at probate was valued under £300. An obituarist characterized him as “a quiet, unassuming gentlemanly man, who possessed little of the talent or ambition of his family.” (ancestry.com 21 May 2024; findmypast.com 21 May 2024; London Gazette 17097 [6 Jan. 1816], 32; Leeds Intelligencer, 7 Sept. 1833; MH, 15 July 1834; Old England, 10 Aug. 1834; Liverpool Standard, 7 Oct. 1842; Caledonian Mercury, 6 Nov. 1843; Liverpool Mercury, 24 Nov. 1843; The Examiner, 25 May 1844; GM [1844], 96; Reports of Cases in Bankruptcy [1845], 3: 595-600) JC