William Newton

Memorial stained glass window to William Newton (1750-1830), St. John the Baptist Church, Tideswell, Derbyshire. Window by Alfred Fisher of Chapel Studio, 1996. Photo by Andrew Abbott, 2015. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

William Newton (28 November 1750 - 3 November 1830) was a working-class English poet, known as "The Peak Minstrel."

Life

Smith was born near Abney, in the parish of Eyam, Derbyshire, the son of a carpenter.

After attending a dame's school, he also worked in the carpentry trade. He soon showed mechanical skill in constructing spinning-wheels, and was articled for 7 years as machinery carpenter in a mill in Monsaldale.

Newton married early in life Helen Cook (1753–1830), by whom he had several children.

With his spare means Newton purchased books, chiefly poetry, and his own efforts in verse were soon noticed by Peter Cunningham, then acting as curate to Thomas Seward at Eyam. In the summer of 1783 Newton was introduced to Anna Seward, who corresponded with him until her death. She showed his verses to William Hayley and other literary friends, who formed a high estimate of them.

Miss Seward finally helped him to become partner in a cotton mill in Cressbrook-dale, and he thus realized a fortune. Later Newton personally rebuilt Cressbrook Mill, after its destruction by fire. Archives at Manchester Central Library contain evidence that he sought to provide better living conditions for his apprentices than were prevalent at many other mills, and he oversaw the construction of model cottages and a village school.

However, an apprenticeship even at Cressbrook Mill was far from ideal. There are accounts of Newton's bullying treatment of the 300–400 indentured boys from orphanages and charity hospitals that he employed there. Any offence resulted in a beating from him with "hazel sticks across our bare buttocks and loins till he cut the flesh and made the blood flow".

Poet John Holland, who visited Newton in 1823, remarked that the poet turned mill-owner "appeared venerable in years, with locks white and floating in the breeze; his poetical feeling was not extinct and some latent sparks of that enthusiasm remained."

Newton died on 3 November 1830 at Tideswell, Derbyshire, and is buried there. His eldest son, William (1785–1851), supplied Tideswell with good water at his own expense.

Writing

Beyond a sonnet to Miss Seward (Gentleman's Magazine 1789, i., 71), verses to Peter Cunningham (ib. 1785, ii., 212.), and others in a Sheffield newspaper, few of Newton's work seems to have survived. Sonnets were addressed to Newton by Cunningham (ib. 1787, ii., 624.), by Miss Seward (ib. 1789, i., 71.), and by a Lister (Seward, Letters, ii. 171); while Miss Seward also wrote an Epistle to Mr. Newton, the Derbyshire Minstrel, on receiving his description in verse of an autumnal scene near Eyam," September 1791 (Poetical Works, ii. 22).

Recognition

A chance meeting with sculptor Francis Chantrey, who initially mistook Newton for a peasant, resulted in the sculptor making a pencil sketch of the poet which he left with him. This is the only live portrait of Newton known to exist. An engraving based on it was reproduced in the Reliquary Quarterly for 1860.

In 1996 a memorial window commemorating Newton was installed in St. John the Baptist Church in Tideswell. Representing Jesus welcoming little children, it commemorates the mill owner's apprenticeship scheme and also his descendants in the Williams family, whose daughter Gwendoline had died in 1993.

See also

• Working-class poets
• List of British poets

References

•  Smith, Charlotte Fell (1894) "Newton, William (1750-1830)" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 40 London: Smith, Elder, p. 406  . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 20, 2020.

External links

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Newton, William (1750-1830)