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Author: Service, James

Biography:

SERVICE, James (1790-1864: ancestry.co.uk)

He was probably the James Service baptised on 27 Aug. 1790 at Embleton, Northumberland, the son of James Service and his wife Jane. He grew up in Chatton and early went to sea but later became a schoolmaster. He recorded his love of his native Northumberland in a number of poems, most notably "Reminiscences, chiefly written at Sea" and "Stanzas on leaving Bengal" in The Wandering Knight (1820). James Hardy noted that he was "rather too fond of the bottle" and enjoyed the company of hard-drinking farmers. He married Isabella Gibson in 1827 but she died in 1831. They do not appear to have had any children. His later life consisted of chequered and transient employment. In the 1851 Census he was recorded as a widower and musician; Hardy visited the bookshop where he worked in 1860; his death certificate gives "formerly a bread baker." Hardy is the source of most of the information on his life; he attempted to visit him in Sunderland in 1860 but failed to do so as Service was in the Workhouse two miles out of town. Thereafter he lost track of him and did not know the details of his death. He died 22 May 1864 at the Union Workhouse, Sunderland, from liver disease, and left effects of under £100 to a Scottish relative. (ancestry.co.uk 16 Dec. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 16 Dec. 2020; James Hardy, "Notice of James Service, the Chatton Poet," History of the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club (1873-1875) [1876] 66-9; death cert GRO) AA

 

Books written (3):

Sunderland: Printed and sold by George Garbutt, 1820