William Cookworthy, by Theodore Compton. London, 1894.
Strangely enough, though Cookworthy has not received the recognition due to him as a discoverer. Ure, in his Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures (London, 1853), makes no mention of him. Nor does Tomlinson in his Cyclopædia of Useful Arts and Manufactures, London, 1854; nor did Marryatt in the first edition of his History of Pottery in 1850. But Cookworthy has received due acknowledgment in the Dictionary of National Biography.
WILLIAM JACKSON, ORGANIST
The autobiography of William Jackson was printed and published for the first time in the Leisure Hour, 1882. It is not of much personal interest, as it concerns almost exclusively his musical education and his travels abroad. For instance, concerning his marriage, it is dismissed with the curt remark, “At twenty-three I married.” Nevertheless it affords us some particulars which we might have sought for in vain elsewhere.
He informs us: “Of my family I know nothing but that for many generations they were farmers at Morleigh, an obscure place in the south-west of Devon. It seems trifling to add that all the Jacksons in Devonshire have a family face and person. What mine was may be known by a picture by Rennell, painted at twenty years of age; one by Gainsborough at forty; another by Keenan at seventy. I recollect also sitting for a miniature to Humphrey, for a portrait in crayon to Morland, and for two in oil to Opie.” He goes on to say: “My grandfather Richard Jackson was a serge-maker in Exeter, lived creditably, and acquired what in those days was considered a fortune. He left many children. My father, William, was his second son, to whom he gave a good school education, but not inheriting the prudence of his predecessor, he soon dissipated his little fortune.”
Mr. Jackson.