Author: TAYLOR, James
Biography:
TAYLOR, James (1794-1863: ancestry.co.uk)
He was probably the James Taylor born in a cottage in Fleet Street, Royton, near Oldham, Lancashire, and baptised on 3 Aug. 1794 at St. Paul’s, Royton, the eldest surviving son of John Taylor and his wife Esther Park, who had married at Wakefield, Yorkshire, in 1784. His parents were probably handloom weavers. He had no formal education because his mother feared it would turn him into an irreligious radical (as to some extent it did). At the age of twenty-five he persuaded the mistress of the village school, Margaret Bottomley, to teach him to read. He then attended a radical reading room in Cotton Street and was soon writing poetry and contributing poems to the Rochdale Recorderunder the signature “P. P.” (Poor Poet). He was injured at Peterloo and presented a petition to Parliament on 29 Nov. 1819 asking it to “bring the authors, abettors, and executors of the above atrocities to justice.” He married Mary Brierley (1801-73) on 26 Aug. 1821 at St. Mary’s, Oldham. They had at least six children, with most of them baptised at St. Paul’s, Royton. They both became cotton powerloom weavers. From 1827 to 1830 he also worked as a teacher at Rochdale church Sunday school. He worked in a steam-driven cotton mill until the age of sixty. Thereafter he made shoe blacking and sold it from a shop near Middleton Road. In the 1861 he gave his occupation as “Poet” but the census-taker crossed it out and put “Retailer of Blacking.” He died on 18 Sept. 1863, aged 69, his occupation “pedlar,” and was buried on 19 Sept. at St. Paul’s, Royton. After his death, Mary Taylor went to live with her married daughter, Ann, and her family. She died on 12 May 1873, aged 72. The posthumous Miscellaneous Poems (Oldham 1864) was published for the benefit of his widow but contained a memoir which did not mention her. It reprinted his earlier poems and included memorial poems on various relatives and local people, labouring-poor genre poems (“The Blind Beggar Girl’s Petition,” “The Poor Man’s Complaint,” “The Murder of Cass and His Wife”) and “On My Native Village,” which earned him the title of “The Royton Poet.” (ancestry.co.uk 27 Nov. 2023; “Memoir” in Miscellaneous Poems [1864], [viii]-xi; Goodridge; Sutton [1876], 123; peterloo1819.co.uk; “James Taylor in Royton, Oldham,” tonyshaw3.blogspot.com) AA