Author: Shaw, Thomas
Biography:
SHAW, Thomas (1789-1861: ancestry.co.uk)
Shaw identifies himself on his title-page as a native of Saddleworth, Yorkshire, meaning of Saddleworth Moor which was once part of the West Riding of Yorkshire but is now part of the Greater Manchester area. He was baptised on 26 July at St. Thomas’s, Friarmere Heights, the second of at least five children of Joseph Shaw and Hannah Wrigley of Broadmeadow, Dale, who had married in 1785. Nothing is known of his education. He was variously a scyther, beekeeper, and woolweaver. Virtually all that is known about him comes from either his poems or Ammon Wrigley who had spoken to people who had known him. A legendary drinker, he is said to have downed sixteen quarts of ale on an ordinary day and on inheriting a pig, to have promptly sold it to go drinking (Wrigley 69-70). Like James Chambers (q.v.) he often slept out in the open in fields. Recent Poems (1824) was well subscribed, with several people taking fifty copies and various local families taking multiple copies. His brother James inherited the unsold copies and after his death they passed to the Workhouse where he had died. A second volume of poems in manuscript was still in family hands in 1916 and had been seen by Wrigley but its current whereabouts are unknown. Shaw died, unmarried, at Oxhey, near Oldham, on 10 Mar. 1861 and was buried at St. Thomas’s, Friarmere Heights, “near the scene of his many drinking exploits and poetic inspirations” (Wrigley, 68). Apart from amusing poems on drinking (“Tramp Lagonee and Dithyrambus” and “Husht-House Customers”), his most notable poem is on Saddleworth folklore, “Narrative of Shantooe Jest.” (ancestry.co.uk 17 Jan. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 17 Jan. 2023; Ammon Wrigley, The Wind among the Heather [1916, 68-72; Joseph Bradbury, Saddleworth Sketches [1871], 70, 84-5; John Radcliffe, ed., The Parish Registers of St. Chad, Saddleworth [1891], 78n; Charles Frederick Forshaw, Yorkshire Poets [1891], 4: 60) AA