Author: WHITAKER, Lawrence
Biography:
WHITAKER, Lawrence (1726-1797: ancestry.com)
The author of the 1770 volume An Epistle to Mr Hickington and of an earlier work printed in Hull, Verses on the Approach of Peace. Written in December 1762, was Lawrence (or Laurence) Whitaker of Beverley, Yorkshire. On 29 Jan. 1758 at Beverley he married Helen Rushworth. In their marriage record he is identified as a “writing master”; reviewers of his Epistle describe him as a poverty-stricken schoolmaster. By his first wife he had at least three children: Ann; William, a mariner; and Luke, who in the 1790s assisted his father in a bookselling business, the earliest reference to which is in 1771. On 28 May 1769 he was married a second time, to the widow Hannah Leggett, in St Mary’s church. He had a third marriage, to Frances Northan, at Beverley on 22 Dec. 1773. “Respected as a truly honest man,” the poet was buried at St John, Beverley, on 30 Mar. 1797. At probate, his estate was valued at £100. (ancestry.com 20 Mar. 2025; findmypast.com 31 Mar. 2025; CCEd 31 Mar. 2025; CR 18 [1762] 473; MR 43 [1771] 484; London Chronicle [Nov. 1771], 443; J. D. Reuss, Alphabetical Register [1791], 432; Monthly Magazine 3 [1797], 324) JC