Darlington, 1879

? Thomson, Margaret Wallace, daughter of a card-cutter and warper. She was distinguished in academic and musical accomplishments, working first as a teacher and then after marriage as a church organist. Arguably Thomson should be considered middle-class, by her own attainments. Ref: Brown, II, 556-62; inf. Florence Boos. [F] [S]

Thomson, Neil (b. 1823), of Glasgow, ‘The Hyde Park Foundry Man’ tinsmith, soldier, prison warder, pub. poems in newspapers. Ref: Edwards, 9, 388-94. [S]

Thomson, Robert Burns (1817-87), weaver then mill manager, grandson of Robert Burns, pub. Ref: Edwards, 7, 151-60 and 12, xvi; Leonard, 235. [S]

Thomson, Samuel (1766-1816), of Carngreine, County Antrim, Ulster weaver poet, schoolmaster, publisher of the United Irishmen publication Northern Star, met Burns; recently extensively recovered in the scholarship of Jennifer Orr (see refs). Ref: LC 3, 261-6; Radcliffe; Carpenter, 482; Jennifer Orr, ‘To Mr Robert Burns: Verse Epistles from an Irish Poetical Circle’, in Burns Lives! (undated online publication on the Electric Scotland web page); ‘Constructing the Ulster Labouring-Class Poet: The Case of Samuel Thomson’, in Class and the Canon: Constructing Labouring-Class Poetry and Poetics, 1780-1900, ed. Kirstie Blair and Mina Gorji (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 34-54, and Jennifer Orr (ed), The Correspondence of Samuel Thomson (1766-1816): Fostering an Irish Writers’ Circle (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012). [I] [LC 3]

Thomson, Thomas (1800-79), of Loanhead, Midlothian, house painter and portraitist, pub. poems in newspapers. Ref: Edwards, 8, 95-98. [S]

Thomson, Thomas (b. 1848), of Edinburgh, compositor, reporter, printer’s reader, prose writer and critic. Ref: Edwards, 6, 78-82. [S]

Thomson, William (‘Theta’, 1797-1887), of Kennoway, Fife, worked in linen manufacture, grocer and general merchant, postmaster at Kennoway, pub. Verses (1866); Poetical Recreations (Cupar, 1877). Ref: Edwards, 1, 321-2 and 12, xi; Reilly (2000), 460. [S]

Thomson, William, shepherd, handloom weaver, trade-unionist, editor, Chartist; pub. poetry in the Chartist Circular, which he edited; he was also general secretary of the Scottish Chartists. Ref Schwab 21`8. [S] [C]

? Thomson, William (1860-83), of Glasgow, tailor, contributor to newspapers and periodicals, pub. Leddy May, and other poems (Glasgow, 1883). Ref: Reilly (1994), 471, Edwards, 2, 156-7, 5 (183), 241-53 and 9 (1886), xxv. [S]

Thorpe, Thomas (b. 1829), of Milton, Bowling, Dumbartonshire, block-printer, warehouseman, pub. poems in magazines. Ref: Edwards, 4, 22-7. [S]

? Threlfall, Jeanette (1821-1880), of Blackburn, Lancashire, the daughter of Henry Threlfall, a wine merchant; she early became an orphan, shuttled between relatives, and later suffered two accidents – the former lamed and mutilated her; the latter rendered her a lifelong invalid. The misfortune visited upon Jeanette did not negate her devotion to God, and she dedicated much of her time to composing Christian poems and hymns. In 1873, as Jeanette mused upon the story of Palm Sunday, she wrote the poem, ‘Hosanna, Loud Hosanna’. It became a hymn that continues to be sung in many churches today. Pub. Woodsorrel; or, Leaves from a Retired Home (1856), Sunshine and shadow: poems by Jeanette Threlfall, with introduction (London 1873). Ref. Reilly (2000), 461-2; http://www.blc.edu/comm/gargy/gargy1/ELH.biographies.P...Z.html . [F] [—Tim Burke]

Thwaite, John (d. 1941), of Hawes, Yorkshire, shopkeeper and auctioneer, largely autodidactic dialect poem whose poems on birds ansd animals such as ‘To a Kingfisher’ are ‘particularly distinctive’. Ref Smith, Dales, pp. 10-11, 22-6. [OP]

Todd, Adam Brown (b. 1822), of Mauchline, Ayrshire, in a family of fifteen of whom six survived, ploughboy, herder for his father, journalist, pub. a vol. of verse in 1846, several other small vols and a novel; The Poetical Works of A. B. Todd with Autobiography and Portrait (1906). Ref: Edwards, 1, 130-5; Burnett et al (1984), Grian Books web page, visited July 7th 2014. [S]

? Todd, Maggie (b. 1866), of Campertown, Dundee, daughter of farmer and miller who leased Windy Mill, Murroes; pub. in People’s Journal and a collection, Burnside Lyrics (Dundee, 1900); poems include ‘The Summer Queen,’ ‘We’re Scotland’s Bairns Yet,’ ‘The Bonnets o’ Bonnie Dundee,’ ‘My Laddie Days,’ and are often mildly comic and patriotic. Ref: Edwards, 13, 33-8; inf. Florence Boos. [F] [S]

Towers, Walter (b. 1841), of Carronshore, Stirlingshire, pattern-maker, songwriter, pub. Poems, song and ballads (Glasgow, 1885). Ref: Edwards, 8, 345-9; Reilly (1994), 476. [S]

? Townsend, David (b. 1807), of Kettering, Northants., singer-songwriter and violinist on the streets of Kettering, pub. The gipsies of Northamptonshire: their manner of life, festive amusements, and fortune telling, fifty years ago [poems] (Kettering, 1877), BL; Heroes of Kettering, and other records (Kettering, 1892). Ref: Reilly (1994), 477, Reilly (2000), 465.

Train, Joseph (1779-1852), of Sorn, Ayrshire, apprentice, militiaman, manufacturing agent, exciseman; his father was a land steward and later forced to become day labourer; Train was apprenticed to a weaver but worked for most of his life as an exciseman and indulging his passion for antiquarian lore, which he collected in numerous substantial historical volumes (with mixed financial success). He corresponded frequently with Walter Scott and helped to secure items for Scott's museum; Scott, in turn, tried to support Train as he could and invited him for multiple visits to Edinburgh. Pub. Poetical Reveries (1806), Strains of the Mountain (Ballantyne, 1814), and other works including historical writings. Ref: ODNB; Wilson, II, 30-32, Johnson 46, no. 334. [S]

Turnbull, Gavin (c. 1765 to c. 1816), of Hawick, Kilmarnock, poet and actor, weaver, friend of Alexander Wilson, ornithologist (qv), friends with and supported by David Sillar (qv) and Robert Burns (qv). Burns wrote, ‘Possibly, as he is an old friend of mine, I may be prejudiced in his favour: but I like some of his pieces very much’ (ODNB). Poem subscriptions advertised in American publications though the volumes seem not to have been completed; pub. Poetical Essays (Glasgow, 1788, BL 1466.d.26), Poems (1794, BL 11632.b.53). Ref: ODNB; Radcliffe; Eyre-Todd. [S]

Turner, Ben (b. 1863), of Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, weaver, Alderman, later a national trade union leader and socialist politician, has four Yorkshire dialect poems in the England anthology, including ‘Oh! Drat this Working Neet and Day’, and writes autobiographically of labour. Published poetry collections in 1909 and 1934; autobiography About Myself (1930). Ref Moorman, xxxvii, 81-2; Smith, West, 35-40; Burnett et al (1984), 322-3 (no. 721); England 18-19, 40, 53. [OP]

Turner, George (1805-86), of Dumfermline, tailor, soldier, abstinence advocate. Ref: Edwards, 5, 261-4. [S]

? Tweddell, Florence, nee Cole (b. 1833), of Stokesley, Clevelandm daughter of Thomas Cole, the Stokesley parish clark, married George Markham Tweddell (b. 1823, author of The People’s History of Cleveland—see Andrews 49-54), and was matron of Bury Industrial School. Pub. a ‘slender volumes of dialect verse and prose’, Rhymes and Sketches to Illustrate the Cleveland Dialect (1875), noted by Moorman for its implicity, homely charm and humour, ‘well-illustrated by the song, “Dean’t mak gam o’ me”’ Her ‘most sustained’ poem is ‘T’ Awd Cleveland Customs’, ans she is also well-known for her prose satory ‘Awd Gab o’ Steers’. Ref Andrews, 55-60; Moorman xxxii-xxxiii (mis-naming her as Elizabeth Tweddell), 43-6, 121-2. [F]

Tweedale, Robert (b. 1832), of Ballymoney, Country Down, Johnstone and Paisley, shoemaker, son of an Irish agricultural labourer, author of ‘Co-Operation: The Brotherhood of Man’ in Brown, II, 355-7. Ref: Brown, II, 354-58; Leonard, 334-6. [I] [S]

Twissleton, Tom (1845-1917), working farmer, of Settle, Yorkshire, autodidact, pub. dialect poems in the 1860s including ‘The Fair’, and ‘The Husband and Wife’; Poems ion the Craven Dialect (1869, ran through several edns);’a disciple of burns’ (Moorman). Ref Moorman, xxxiii-xxxiv, 56-62; Smith, Dales, pp. 9-10, 18-21.

? Tyre, John (b. 1824), of Paisley, pattern-designer, poems in Brown. Ref: Brown, II, 193-97. [S]

Umpleby, Stanley (1887-1953), N. Yorks. station master and dialect poet. Ref K. E. Smith, The Dialect Muse (Wetherby: Ruined Cottage Pubns., 1979), 22-3. [OP]

Upton, Catherine, (fl. 1780s); according to Todd (311), grew up in Nottingham and moved to Gibraltar, ‘probably as the wife of a soldier.’ She was possibly widowed, as she wrote Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse: by Mrs. Upton, authoress of the Siege of Gibraltar (1784) to support several children. This collection was dedicated to General Boyd, the governor of Gibraltar. The Siege of Gibraltar was criticised for poor language and versification. Todd records that Upton protested that Dryden and Pope are praised when they take liberties with their metre. In a letter to her father in Nottingham, Upton describes London in terms of ‘rattling coaches’ and the ‘discordant cries’ of chimney sweeps. She shows annoyance at the double standards that ascribe virtue to women but education to men. This may explain the discrepancy between presenting herself as uneducated to the Critical Review and yet earning a living from teaching; it appears that women like Upton were expected to teach children, but not benefit from an education themselves. Ref: Todd, 311 [F] [—Dawn Whatman]

Usher, John (1810-29), Lammermoor sheep-herder, attended Edinburgh University to train to become a minister, but died before he had qualified; author of ‘Lammermoor’, pub. in Crockett. Ref: Crockett, 208-9. [S]

? Varley, Isabella, later Banks (1821-97), also known by her husband's name as ‘Mrs. G. Linneaus Banks’ (qv), member of the Lancashire Literary Association (formed from the ‘Sun Inn’ group of Manchester poets), novelist and poet, received numerous grants from the Royal Literary Fund, author of The Manchester Man, a popular novel. Her father, James Varley, was a chemist and amateur artist. When she was a child, a smoky chimney damaged her eyesight. The Manchester Guardian published Isabella’s poem, A Dying Girl to Her Mother, when she was sixteen, and her collection of poetry entitled Ivy Leaves was published in 1843. Prior to her marriage to the journalist and poet George Linnaeus Banks in 1846, Isabella was forced to support herself running a school at Cheetham in Lancashire following a lawsuit in which her father lost £10,000 over a bleaching process he had invented. ~ As a result of George's various job changes, the couple led quite an itinerant life, with three of their children being born in locations as disparate as Dublin, Durham and Windsor. Isabella contributed regular articles to the newspapers that George edited. ~ As a member of the Ladies Committee of the Anti-Corn Law League, Isabella campaigned successfully for the repeal of laws embodying an impediment to industrialisation and free trade. Isabella’s second volume of poems, Daisies in the Grass (1865) – containing many poems on the theme of a woman’s difficult position in marriage – was published in the same year as her first novel, God’ s Providence House. ~ Despite the onset of chronic ill-health, Isabella persisted to write novels and became known as ‘The Lancashire Novelist’. She is most noted for her 1876 work of ‘industrial fiction’, The Manchester Man, first serialised in Cassel’s Magazine, and seen as presenting ‘a vivid picture of Manchester in the 19th century; a time when men from humble backgrounds could make vast fortunes through mercantile activity’. ~ At the time of the 1891 census she was still living with her daughter, Esther, a dressmaker. Isabella Varley Banks died in Hackney in 1897. Pub: Ivy Leaves (poetry, 1843); God's Providence House, (novel, 1865), Daisies in the Grass (poetry, 1865), Stung to the Quick, A North Country Story (novel, 1867), The Manchester Man, (novel, serialised in Cassel's Magazine, published 1876 in full and went through at least 11 editions), Forbidden to Marry (novel, 1883), Bond Slaves (novel, 1893). Ref: ODNB; Harland, 300, 364-5, 433-4, 448-9, 484-5; Vicinus (1974), 160; Sutton, 37 (many manuscripts and letters). See online resources: [http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ewm/mp/lbanks.html], [http://www.geocities.com/helenvict0r/Banks.html]. [F] [—Iain Rowley]

Vaughan, Thomas (‘The Hereford Poet’, 1813-63), tailor, of Hereford, pub. Morah; or the Indian wife: a moral tale; also, Songs and ballads; and, The apparition: a tale of Hereford, founded upon fact (Hereford, 1863). Ref: Reilly (2000), 474.

? Vedder, David (bap. 1789-1854), of Burness [Deerness], Orkney, orphan, cabin boy, ship’s captain, prolific magazine and anthology contributor. Pub: poems dedicated to “Burns” (presumably Robert Burns, qv) and Ebenezer Elliott (qv)., and The Covenanter’s Communion and Other Poems (1826), Orcadian Sketches [prose and verse] (1832), Poems—Legendary, Lyrical and Descriptive (1842), and others, including a memoir of Walter Scott (1832); Sutton, 964. Ref: ODNB; Wilson, II, 117-21. [S]

? Verney, Thomas, author of A copy of verses humbly presented to all my worthy masters and mistresses in the ward of Castle-Baynard, by Thomas Verney, Bell-man (1742), BL 1870.d.1(64). Ref: ESTC.

? Vernon, Henry, of Alnwick, Northumberland, pub. Thoughts of leisure hours: poems, songs &c. &c. (Edinburgh: Commercial Printing Company, 1871). Ref: Reilly (2000), 475; Charles Cox, Catalogue 53, item 271.

Vernon, James (fl. 1842), of South Molton, Devon, and London, Chartist worker-poet, repeatedly prosecuted, got partial paralysis while in prison; pub. in The Northern Star and in separate booklets, including The Afflicted Muse (South Molton, 1842). Ref: Kovalev, 99; Scheckner, 313, 343; Schwab 219. [C]

Vernon, William, author of ‘A Journey into Wales’, Gents. Mag. May 1757; Poems on Several Occasions by William Vernon, a Private Soldier in the Buffs (1758: BL 11642.de.27). Ref: LC 2, 97-114; Radcliffe; Gents. Mag., May 1757; Poole & Markland, 109-11. [LC 2]

Waddell, James (fl. 1809), shoemaker ‘poet laureate of Plessy and the neighbouring villages’, pub. The Poetical Works of James Waddell (Morpeth, 1809). Ref: Iolo A. Williams, By-Ways Round Helicon: A Kind of Anthology (London: Heinemann, 1922), 137.

Waddington, James (1829-61), b. Horton, near Bradford, lived at Saltaire, wool-sorter, weaver, supported an aged parent; author of Flowers of the Glen: The Poetical Remains of James Waddington, ed. by Eliza Craven Green (Bradford, 1862). Waddington was of ‘retiring habits’ and enjoyed reading, esp. Coleridge, lamb, Christopher North and Wordsworth. He was elected a first-class member of the Phonetic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and for some years edited two phonetic magazines, the Pioneer and the Excelsior, ‘to which he freely contributed essays, tales and short poems’ (biography by Revd A. H. Rix, printed in Forshaw). Ref: Holroyd, 81, 104-6, 133; Forshaw, 164-7; Maidment (1987), 187, 196-7; Vicinus (1974), 161, 171, Reilly (2000), 479.

Wakefield, George (1821-88), of Uttoxeter, carpenter’s son, shoemaker, railway night watchman and porter at Uttoxeter station, pub. Poems on various subjects (1854); The River Dove and Human Life Compared (1856). Ref: Poole & Markland,173-5.

Walker, James Bradshawe (b. c. 1809), of Leeds, ‘working man’, self-educated weaver who became a schoolmaster, though he ‘struggled most of his life in Leeds as a woollen cloth drawer’ (Cross); pub. Way-Side Flowers; or, Poems, Lyrical and Descriptive (Leeds, 1840) ‘with poems on Nidderdale, Laetitia Landon and leeds Moot-Hall’ and a ‘Song of the Aeronaut’; Spring Leaves of prose and poetry (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co; Leeds: J.Y. Knight, 1845). Ref: Newsam 218-19; Holroyd, 44; Cross, 143; Charles Cox, Catalogue 51 (2005), item 282; COPAC.

Walker, John, of Liverpool, shoemaker poet, pub. A Descriptive Poem On The Town And Trade Of Liverpool (1789). Ref: LC 3, 143-52; Johnson, item 932, may possibly also refer. [LC 3]

Walker, John (b. c. 1747), farm labourer, pub. Poems in English, Scotch and Gaelic (Glasgow, 1817). Ref: Johnson, item 931. [S]

Walker, John (b. 1845), of Blackburn, son of a working-man, largely self-taught, pupil-teacher, warehouseman, journalist. Ref: Hull, 272-87.

Walker, John (b. 1857), of Rothesay, Glasgow factory worker, artist. Ref: Edwards, 10, 102-9. [S]

Walker, John (1861-1932), of Wythburn, Thirlmere, Cumberland, worked in wool manufacture from an early age, wrote for newspapers, pub. Hubert and Emmeline: poems on nature, and other poems (Edinburgh, 1887). Ref: Reilly (1994), 493.

Walker, Samuel, of Shaneshill (1803-85), contributed poems to Belfast journals but never had a separate collection. Ref. Hewitt. [I]

Walker, William, ‘Bill Stumps’ (b. 1830), cattle-herder, quarryman, pub. poems in the People’s Journal. Ref: Edwards, 3, 102-6. [S]

Wall, John (John William Henry (‘J.H.W.’) Wall, ‘Mervyn Dauncey’, 1855-1915), Bristol shoemaker, poet and activist, a leading figure in the Bristol Pioneers’ Boot and Shoe Productive Society and in the Bristol Evening Class Scholarships Association, Secretary of the local Trades Council, friend of John Gregory (qv), pub. poems (as Dauncey, including a train poem, ‘On the Rail’) and prose on local and historical matters in the Bristol newspapers. Ref Bristol Record Office, papers of John Wall ref 37886 (including memorabilia and press cuttings 37886/7/1, 37886/1/5, 37886/7/5, 37886/7/6); inf. Madge Dresser (UWE).

? Wallace, Alexander (b. 1816), of Paisley, draw boy, weaver’s apprentice, later university educated temperance writer and preacher, pub. Poems and sketches (Glasgow, London and Edinburgh, 1862). Ref: Reilly (2000), 482. [S]

Wallace, Andrew (b. 1835), of Leslie, Fife, son of stonemason, clerk, emigrated to Canada, returned to Scotland, railway cashier, inspector of the poor, pub. Essays, sketches and poems (London and Glasgow, 1869). Ref: Reilly (2000), 482. [S]

Wallace, Edgar (Richard Horatio, 1875-1932), of Greenwich, orphan, raised by the family of a Billingsgate fish-porter, began writing career while in the army as a private soldier, became the Daily Mail's war correspondent (1900), pub. The Mission that failed: a tale of the raid, & other poems (Cape Town, 1898), and numerous prose thrillers. Ref: ODNB; Reilly (1994), 495.

Wallace, George (b. 1845), ‘The Spring Poet’, cooper, soft-goods manufacturer. Ref: Edwards, 14, 354-8. [S]

? Wallace, William (b. 1862), of Edinburgh, later Glasgow, clerk at 13, telegraph messenger, porter. Ref: Edwards, 7, 202-4. [S]

Waller, John Rowell (b. 1854), of Cragg Head, County Durham, joiner, ironmonger, engineering worker, lived at Wallsend, pub. Unstrung links: dropped from the disjointed chain of a toiling life, as the ringing chorus of nature’s music beat time on the anvil of a responding heart (Darlington, 1878); Ramblings and Musings (1886); Wayside Flowers: being, The Battle of Otterburn and other poems (Bedlington, 1881); Woodland and shingle: poems and songs (Darlington, 1883), and other volumes. Ref: Reilly (2000), 483; Reilly (1994), 495; Newcastle Lit & Phil Library.

Walmesley, Luke Slater (b. 1841), of Blackburn, son of a factory ‘tackler’, schoolmate of Henry Yates (qv), member of the Billington circle of poets, and of the Mechanics’s Institute. Ref: Hull, 238-45.

Walter, Rowland (‘Ionoron Glan Dwyryd’, 1819-84), native of Blaenau Ffestiniog, Merioneth, quarryman, emigrated to USA in 1852; pub: Lloffion y Gweithiwr (1852, Wales), Caniadau Ionoron (1872, Utica). Ref: OCLW. [W] [—Katie Osborn]

Walsh, John (b. 1848), of Blackburn, printer’s devil, weaver, dialect and local poet. Ref: Hull, 302-14; biography, photograph and selection of poems online at: http://gerald-massey.org.uk/hull/c_blackburn_8.htm.

Walton, Ann (fl. 1810), ‘cottage girl poet’, of Harlestone, Northamptonshire, pub. Original Pieces on Different Subjects, Chiefly in Verse (Harleston, Northants, c. 1810). Hold locates a copy in Local Studies at Northants Central Library, but it is not listed on COPAC or Northants Library Catalogue; nothing via Google or Google Books. Ref: Hold, 143-5. [F]

? Wanless, Andrew (b. 1824), of Longformacus, Lammermoor, bookbinder, emigrated to Canada, pub. several vols of poetry and Sketches and Anecdotes (1891), dubbed the ‘Burns of the United States’. Ref: Ross, 125-35; Crockett, 228-36. [S]

Ward, Edward, ‘Ned’ (1667-1740), probably born in the English Midlands to poor parents though he claimed endowed Leicestershire relatives, popular writer and (among many other roles) publican poet; pub. The Poet's Ramble after Riches (in Hudibrastic verse; London, 1691); many satirical poems, volumes and pamphlets, and other surviving prose works. Ref: ODNB; LC 1, 1-32; Christmas, 67; Sutton, 974. [LC 1]

Ward, Richard (b. 1863), of Paisley, miner, emigrated to America but returned to Paisley, pub. pieces in papers. Ref: Brown, II, 507-11. [S]

Wardrop, Alexander (b. 1850), of Whitburn, Linlithgowshire, weaver’s son, tailor, pub. Johnnie Mathison’s courtship and marriage with, Poems and songs (Coatbridge, 1881), Mid-Cauther Fair: a dramatic pastoral, with other poems, songs, and prose sketches (Glasgow, 1887); Robin Tamson’s Hamely Sketches (Glasgow nd. c. 1902). Ref: Edwards, 4, 81-4; Bisset, 226-36; Reilly (1994), 498. [S]

Waters, Daniel (b. 1838), of Wick, house painter, pub. in Glasgow magazines. Ref: Edwards, 2, 253-6. [S]

? Watkins, John (1809-1850), popular Chartist poet and lecturer, translator, edited the London Chartist Monthly Magazine, poems included ‘The Golden Age’, also wrote a play, John Frost, and a biography of Ebenezer Elliott (qv, his father-in-law). Ref: ODNB; Kovalev, 82-6; Scheckner, 314-17, 344; Schwab 219. [C]

Watson, Alexander (1744-1831), of Aberdeen, tailor, author of ‘The Kail Brose of Auld Scotland’ and ‘The Wee Wifukie’; pub. The anti-Jacobin, a hudibrastic poem in twenty-one cantos (Edinburgh, 1794). Ref: ESTC; Eyre-Todd, 46. [S]

Watson, George (b. 1846) of Dundee, rope-spinner (‘The Roper Bard’), pub. Love’s task: poems and songs, 2nd ser (Dundee, 1899). Ref: Edwards, 14, 36-41; Reilly (1994), 501. [S]

Watson, Jean Logan (d. 7 Oct. 1885), of Peebleshire, brought up on a farm, mother died when she was seven, lived and died in Edinburgh where she had a ‘large circle of friends’; wrote epitomes of Scottish lives, including Hugh Miller (qv), pub. numerous volumes of fiction and non-fiction prose and verse including Bygone days in Our Village; Round the Grange Farm, ‘and other books full of quaint simplicity and freshness, and breathing from every page, the delightful personality of the writer’ (Anderson). Ref: Edwards, 4, 126-31; Alexander Anderson (qv), Later Poems, p, 86 note. [F] [S]

Watson, Jessie J. Simpson (b. 1854), of Greenock, miller’s daughter; poems include ‘We’re A’ Weel At Hame,’ ‘Dune Wi’ Time,’ and ‘Come Wi’ Me, Bessie’. Ref: Edwards, 3, 262-5, inf. Florence Boos. [F] [S]

? Watson, John (1793-1878), of Fearn, near Brechin, farmer and poet, wrote agricultural reports for magazines and newspapers, pub. Samples in common sense, in verse, by a Forfarshire farmer (Brechin, 1875) [poems]. Ref: Edwards, 1, 38-40; Shanks, 156-8, Reilly (2000), 486 [S]