Author: Wilkinson, Edward
Biography:
WILKINSON, Edward (1728-1809: GM)
He was born in Sandwich, Kent, the son of a mariner, Edward Wilkinson (d 1743) and his wife Mary; according to GM the father was the owner and master of a trading vessel. No public records have been found to confirm his birthdate and parentage but the declaration about his parents on his marriage document is unequivocal. He wrote verses from his early years and contributed to a miscellany, The Lover’s Manual, in 1753. He trained as a surgeon and apothecary, probably in Kent, and established a practice perhaps first in Canterbury--which is the background of his first two satires—and eventually at Bow in Middlesex (east London). (A third verse satire of 1774 about a gambler, A Letter to Thomas Roch, at Canterbury, designed to accompany Gudgeon against Daniels, is too short to be included here.) On 22 Apr. 1755 in a Quaker ceremony at the meeting-house in Devonshire Square, London, he married Mary Patteson (b 1730), the daughter of a leather seller of Canterbury, William Patteson, and his wife Elizabeth Wraight. They had ten children baptised at St. Mary’s, Stratford Bow, between 1757 and 1775. All Wilkinson’s poetical works were published anonymously. Far and away the most successful was Wisdom: a Poem, which was especially popular in America. The absence of parish records apart from the baptisms of their children may have to do with their Quaker connection, but GM has a lengthy obituary in Dec. 1809 for Wilkinson, recently deceased “in his eighty-second year . . . a very respectable surgeon and apothecary at Bow, in Middlesex.” (findmypast.com 9 June 2024; ancestry.com 9 June 2024; GM 106 [Dec. 1809] 1176) HJ