Author: SHACKLETON, John
Biography:
SHACKLETON, John (1763-1814: ancestry.co.uk)
He was possibly the John Shackleton baptised on 3 July 1763 at St. Thomas’s, Heptonstall, Yorkshire, son of James Shackleton and his wife Mary Stansfield, who had married in the same church the previous year. Nothing is known of his education and he did not go to university, although he became proficient in Latin and Greek. He was ordained, as “literate,” deacon (1786) and priest (1787). He became assistant curate at Thornton, near Bradford, in May 1786 and schoolmaster at Thornton Free Grammar School in Jan. 1787. He was good friends with another assistant curate, John Booth, at nearby Wibsey. When Booth experienced financial difficulty on the bankruptcy of a printer, Shackleton lost £54. He moved to Liverpool in 1798 and was employed there for twelve years by various booksellers; he was also Master of the Blue Coat Hospital school. He married Mary Turner on 10 Apr. 1798 at St. Peter’s, Leeds, Yorkshire, which was probably her parish. They went on to have a son, James, and a daughter, Mary, who were both born in Liverpool. He then moved to Birmingham and ran a classical and commercial academy unsuccessfully 1810-13. He applied to the RLF for assistance in the summer of 1813, “totally destitute of any income” and “entirely out of bread,” but no award was made. He died on 20 Apr. 1814. His widow and two children were left destitute, with his books and furniture seized for rent. Although his widow believed she would receive a pension of about £15 per annum from the Society for the Relief of Widows and Orphans of Clergyman, various appeals were made in Birmingham on her behalf. One resulted in the subscription edition of the posthumous work listed here; another was announced in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette. The funds were to provide immediate relief and to allow the son to finish at King Edward VI Grammar School and the daughter to continue lessons in English, Needlework and French. (ancestry.co.uk 17 May 2024; findmypast.co.uk 17 May 2024; RLF #301; Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 2 Oct. 1815) AA