Author: WALKER, John
Biography:
WALKER, John (fl 1789-1801)
Besides his name, occupation, and residence, little is known for certain about the author of A Descriptive Poem, on the Town and Trade of Liverpool. He was John Walker, a shoemaker resident in Liverpool, married, evidently an immigrant. Two passages in the poem suggest that he originated in Scotland: “Oft have I known the Caledonian swains, / Ere yet I wander’d from my native plains,” and, “The Scotian reed has oft on Albion plains / Allur’d the virgins and rejoic’d the swains.” The poem offers few other facts: his long-ailing wife was born in Ireland; several gentlemen raised a subscription to place her in a local charity hospital; and his brother, a mariner, drowned whilst on a voyage to Ireland. There are several candidates for the poet but no convincing ones. The death place of the John Walker (b 1752), shoemaker, buried in Lancaster, Lancashire, on 7 Feb 1812, marks him as unlikely. A John Walker, shoemaker, possibly the same person, age 21 or older, married Frances Moncrieff at St Nicholas church, Liverpool on 14 Nov. 1772. Another John Walker, shoemaker, age seventy, also a resident of Liverpool, is listed in the 1841 census. His age almost certainly rules him out. According to Fishwick, the Manchester Free Library (now the Central Library) holds a copy of a second edition of Walker’s poem, published in 1801. The library’s current catalogue lists no such item, but Jean Trepp in an article published in 1928 also refers to an 1801 edition. For a self-educated writer, the poem is remarkably lucid and admirably inventive. Several modern scholars have commented on his nationalism and his defence of slavery. The fullest discussion is by Tim Burke in the journal Eighteenth Century. (ancestry.com 17 Oct. 2023; H. Fishwick, The Lancashire Library: A Bibliographical Account [1875], 279; J. Trepp, “The Liverpool Movement for the Abolition of the English Slave Trade,” Journal of Negro History 13:3 [1928], 265-85; T. Burke, “‘Humanity is now the Pop’lar Cry’: Labouring-Class Writers and the Liverpool Slave Trade, 1787-1789,” Eighteenth Century 42:3 [2001], 245-63; J. Goodridge, “John Walker,” in Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, ed. T. Burke [2003], 3:143) JC