Author: Sandys, John
Biography:
SANDYS, John (c. 1750-1803: findmypast.com)
Pseudonym John the Dipper
Not to be confused with the CofE minister John Sandys (1726-1810), the Rev. John Sandys who, under a pseudonym and armed with satire, joined in a pamphlet war over baptism was a dissenter, the leader of congregations in Shrewsbury (Shropshire/ Salop), London, and Harlow (Essex). The instigator of the affair was Richard de Courcy (1743-1803), a protégé of the Countess of Huntingdon and vicar of St. Alkmond’s, Shrewsbury, from 1774 to 1803, including the period in which Sandys was the minister of the Claremont Baptist meeting house there, 1771-78. In the “Advertisement” at the beginning of The Salopian Zealot, “John the Dipper [Baptist]” points out that in a series of attacks, de Courcy had been “not content with combatting Messrs. Medley, Turner, Sandys, and Philips” or with general arguments, but had “descend[ed] to particulars” and engaged in name-calling. Sandys’s only other known publication, which appeared under the same pseudonym, was a broadside poem, The Little Innocent Rescued from the Hands of a Priest (1798). He may have left Shrewsbury under a cloud, having been accused by some members of the church with a theft of £20, but testimonials in his defence, showing clearly that the sum had been freely given to him after he himself had been robbed of £10, were published in 1793 by John Martin in The Case of the Rev. John Sandys, a Dissenting Minister, at Harlow in Essex. Nothing certain has been found out about his origins, his marriage, or his children, but he did marry and had at least one daughter, Jane, who married the sculptor L. J. Abington. He might have been the John Sandys who married Sarah Rootsey at her parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on 2 June 1782. The only solid public document traced so far is the burial record. He died in London and was buried at Trinity Chapel (Baptist), West End, Hammersmith, on 1 Dec. 1803, aged 53. (findmypast.com 16 Sept. 2024; ancestry.com 16 Sept. 2024; A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851 online at paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk) HJ