Dennis Williams
Gone but not forgotten
This thread has combined other pieces about John Baskerville
A gruesome true story, stolen mostly from Vivian Bird’s book, Portrait of Birmingham (1970), Bill Dargue’s Site, and elsewhere on this Forum (see link).
The man:
John Baskerville, born Wolverley, near Kidderminster in 1706. Printer and type-face inventor. Came to Birmingham in 1725 and set up various businesses in Moor Street as a writing-master; stone-cutter; and latterly as a japanner. In 1747 moved from Moor Street to new workshops and house at Easy Hill (later Easy Row), where Hall of Memory and Baskerville House now stand. He also did lots of other memorable things in his life in Birmingham, was somewhat of an eccentric; but it is in death that my interest, and this story are focused.
PART 1. In the beginning.
The Date: 1829
The Place: New Street, between Christ Church Passage and The Royal Society of Arts Building.
A respectable gentleman, a master plumber and glazier named Job Marston, briskly walked past the Church, under the impressive Porticos of the RSA, then stopped and knocked on the door of his friend George Barker, a leading Solicitor and churchwarden at Christ Church. A servant appears. “Is Mr Barker at home?” enquired Mr Marston.
Then things took a strange turn. Answering a brief “No, sir”, the servant walked away, leaving the door open. Marston entered the hallway, saw a key on the table, slipped it into his pocket, and promptly returned to his shop in Monmouth Street, as the Snow Hill end of Colmore Row was then called.
Shortly afterwards he was to be seen accompanying one of his workmen pushing a barrow, on which a heavy object lay, covered with a green baize cloth. They stopped at Christ Church, where, with the key he had nicked earlier, Marston opened the door of the Catacombs. There in Vault 521, he helped his workman manhandle the burden, which when the baize was removed revealed – a leaden coffin. The body of John Baskerville had come to the second of its three resting places, and George Barker, churchwarden and solicitor, could square his conscience in that while HE would not open up the catacombs for Marston himself, he had mentioned to him that the key would be on the hall table at a specific time…crafty beggar…
https://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/showthread.php?t=9765&highlight=Baskerville
A gruesome true story, stolen mostly from Vivian Bird’s book, Portrait of Birmingham (1970), Bill Dargue’s Site, and elsewhere on this Forum (see link).
The man:
John Baskerville, born Wolverley, near Kidderminster in 1706. Printer and type-face inventor. Came to Birmingham in 1725 and set up various businesses in Moor Street as a writing-master; stone-cutter; and latterly as a japanner. In 1747 moved from Moor Street to new workshops and house at Easy Hill (later Easy Row), where Hall of Memory and Baskerville House now stand. He also did lots of other memorable things in his life in Birmingham, was somewhat of an eccentric; but it is in death that my interest, and this story are focused.
PART 1. In the beginning.
The Date: 1829
The Place: New Street, between Christ Church Passage and The Royal Society of Arts Building.
A respectable gentleman, a master plumber and glazier named Job Marston, briskly walked past the Church, under the impressive Porticos of the RSA, then stopped and knocked on the door of his friend George Barker, a leading Solicitor and churchwarden at Christ Church. A servant appears. “Is Mr Barker at home?” enquired Mr Marston.
Then things took a strange turn. Answering a brief “No, sir”, the servant walked away, leaving the door open. Marston entered the hallway, saw a key on the table, slipped it into his pocket, and promptly returned to his shop in Monmouth Street, as the Snow Hill end of Colmore Row was then called.
Shortly afterwards he was to be seen accompanying one of his workmen pushing a barrow, on which a heavy object lay, covered with a green baize cloth. They stopped at Christ Church, where, with the key he had nicked earlier, Marston opened the door of the Catacombs. There in Vault 521, he helped his workman manhandle the burden, which when the baize was removed revealed – a leaden coffin. The body of John Baskerville had come to the second of its three resting places, and George Barker, churchwarden and solicitor, could square his conscience in that while HE would not open up the catacombs for Marston himself, he had mentioned to him that the key would be on the hall table at a specific time…crafty beggar…
https://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/showthread.php?t=9765&highlight=Baskerville
Last edited by a moderator: