Author: Strutt, Joseph
Biography:
STRUTT, Joseph (1749-1802: ODNB)
Engraver and antiquary. He was born at Springfield Mill, near Chelmsford, Essex, to Elizabeth (Ingold) and Thomas Strutt (d 1751), a miller. He was educated at King Edward VI School, Chelmsford, and apprenticed in 1764 to an engraver, William Wynne Ryland, in London. In 1769 he began studying at the Royal Academy schools and won a silver medal in his first year. Engraving led to an abiding interest in antiquarianism. In 1771 he started drawing on visual sources in the British Museum for a series of antiquarian works, beginning with The Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England (1773). His works were innovative and well received. He divided his time between Essex and London and, in 1774, he married Ann Bocking of Essex; following the marriage the couple lived exclusively in London. They had two sons (one of whom, Joseph, later edited some of his father’s works) and a daughter. Both Ann and the baby girl died soon after the birth. With this tragedy, Strutt’s health suffered and he turned back to engraving, exhibiting works at the Royal Academy (1778-85), and publishing his Biographical Dictionary of Engravers (1785-86). From 1790-95, he lived in Bramfield, Hertfordshire, where he established schools in a nearby village. On his return to London he continued engraving but the work was now—as earlier in his career—intended to illustrate his major antiquarian writings: A Complete View of the Dress and Habits of the People of England (1796, 1799), and The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801). He died of inflammatory bowel disease in London and was buried at St. Andrew’s, Holborn; his remains were later moved to Ilford, Essex. At his death he left an unfinished novel which was acquired by the publisher John Murray; he commissioned Walter Scott (q.v.) to complete it and the work was issued in 1808 as Queenhoo Hall. (ODNB 30 Oct. 2020)