author

John Brown

d. 1829

An early 19th-century English writer with a taste for local history and social reform, he is best remembered for chronicling Bolton and for recording the harsh realities of child labor. His life ended tragically in 1829, but his work still offers a vivid glimpse of industrial England.

1 Audiobook

A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy Sent from the workhouse of St. Pancras, London, at seven years of age, to endure the horrors of a cotton-mill, through his infancy and youth, with a minute detail of his sufferings, being the first memoir of the kind published.

A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an Orphan Boy Sent from the workhouse of St. Pancras, London, at seven years of age, to endure the horrors of a cotton-mill, through his infancy and youth, with a minute detail of his sufferings, being the first memoir of the kind published.

by John Brown

About the author

John Brown was an English historian and miscellaneous writer associated with Bolton in Lancashire. In the early 1800s he worked on a wide range of literary projects, including a planned History of Great and Little Bolton, of which a number of parts were published in 1824 and 1825.

He is also linked with the story of Samuel Crompton, the inventor of the spinning mule, whose claims Brown tried to support in London. Another work connected with his name is A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an important early account of the suffering of child workers in cotton mills.

Brown's life appears to have been marked by financial struggle and disappointment. Sources describe his death around 1829 as a suicide, apparently following despair over his lack of success. No suitable verified portrait image was found from the sources checked, so none is included here.