Author: Rutt, J. T.
Biography:
RUTT, John Towill (1760-1841: ODNB)
The only boy in a family of five, the poet was born in London on 4 Apr. 1760 to druggist George Rutt (1730-1777) of Friday Street, Cheapside, and his wife, Elizabeth Towill (1722-1799). His childhood tutor was a prominent nonconformist theologian, the Rev. Dr. Joshua Toulmin of Taunton. On 1 July 1771 he was admitted to St Paul’s School, London. Having initially worked for his father, in the 1790s he partnered with Joseph Laurence Darvall in a cotton and wool card manufactory in Little Moorfields. When in 1807 the partnership was dissolved, he took sole ownership and moved the concern to 18 Basinghall Street. With John Tretton of Saint Andrew’s Hill and John Webb of Clapton, in 1809 he patented a machine for making cards for carding wool, cotton, flax, and silk. He concurrently partnered with William Jameson in a drug business in Rutland Place, Upper Thames Street. Calamity struck when on 2 Aug. 1800 a fire at the premises destroyed drugs and equipment worth £35,000. After he and Jameson dissolved their partnership, in 1808, he continued as sole proprietor. In politics “a zealous republican” (Watkins), he was a member of Major John Cartwright’s Society for Constitutional Information, and a founding member of the Society of the Friends of the People. On 7 June 1786, at All Saints and St Peter, Maldon, Essex, he married Rachel Pattisson. The couple had at least eight children (ODNB states eleven). In 1796 he joined the Gravel Pit Unitarian church in Hackney. As a member of the Royal Jennerian Society, he took a leading role in promoting vaccination. He was also a manager of the London Institution eye hospital in Moorfields and a life governor of the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor. A co-founder and sometime editor of the Monthly Repository, a contributor to Unitarian periodicals, and the author of several anonymous tracts, Rutt’s primary legacy is his work as editor of Gilbert Wakefield’s memoirs, of Joseph Priestly’s works, and of the diary of MP Thomas Burton. He died at Bexley, Kent, on 3 Mar. 1841. Five days later, he was buried in London’s nonconformist cemetery, Bunhill Fields. His wife died, aged 90, on 5 July 1855. (ODNB 4 Nov. 2024; ancestry.com 4 Nov. 2024; PROB11/1943; PROB11/1035; Watkins, 303; Monthly Magazine 10 [1800], 273; The Day, 20 Dec. 1809) JC