William Billington (3 April 1825 – 3 January 1884) was an English poet, living in

Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north-n ...

, Lancashire and sometimes writing in dialect. He became known as "The Blackburn Poet".

Life

Billington was born in

Samlesbury Samlesbury () is a village and civil parish in South Ribble, Lancashire, England. Samlesbury Hall, a historic house, is in the village, as is Samlesbury Aerodrome and a large modern brewery owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev. The population at the ...

, Lancashire in 1825. His parents Benedict and Ann Billington were at the time unemployed

hand-loom A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but th ...

weavers, working for a contractor for roadmaking. His father died in 1832; three of his children died from tuberculosis before 1837. The surviving children were supported by Ann's hand-loom weaving. He learned to read and write at Catholic Sunday schools; otherwise he was mainly self-taught. The songs composed by his uncle Robert Bolton, and the works of local poet Richard Dugdale, a lifelong friend, helped to give an interest in poetry. In 1839 the family moved to

, and Billington passed through various stages of employment in the

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning (textiles), spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Althou ...

s, from "

doffer A doffer is someone who removes ("doffs") bobbins, pirns or spindles holding spun fiber such as cotton or wool from a spinning frame and replaces them with empty ones. Historically, spinners, doffers, and sweepers each had separate tasks that wer ...

" to weaver and "taper". On 24 June 1846 he married Elizabeth Walmsley; she died in 1857. Billington wrote on many subjects in newspapers, broadsheets and pamphlets. He travelled in the north of England and to the midlands, reading and selling his poems. His knowledge of the way of thought and speech of Lancashire working people was turned to account in the period of the

Lancashire Cotton Famine The Lancashire Cotton Famine, also known as the Cotton Famine or the Cotton Panic (1861–65), was a depression in the textile industry of North West England, brought about by overproduction in a time of contracting world markets. It coincided wi ...

of 1861–65, when his rhymes were circulated in thousands of broadsheets. 14,000 copies of his

broadsheet ballad A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between th ...

"Th' Shurat Weyvur" were sold at that time. On 13 July 1867 he married Maria Fairbottom. Contemptuous of his literary interests, Maria abandoned him and their young child. From 1875 he was a publican. He liked to debate religion and politics, and his beershop in Bradshaw Street, Blackburn, was a centre for his debating; known as "Poet's Corner", it was a meeting place of local poets including

John Critchley Prince John Critchley Prince (1808–1866) was an English labouring-class poet. His ''Hours of the Muses'' went through six editions. Life Born at Wigan, Lancashire, on 21 June 1808, Prince was the son of a poor reed-maker for weavers. He learned to read ...

.William Billington
gerald-massey.org.uk Billington died on 3 January 1884 at Bradshaw Street, Blackburn.

Works

* A collection, ''Sheen and Shade'', appeared in 1861. The poems are in standard English. * ''Lancashire Songs, with other Poems and Sketches'', including poems written in dialect, appeared in 1883.

References

Attribution *

External links

gerald-massey.org.uk. It includes ''Sheen and Shade'' and ''Lancashire Songs''. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Billington, William 1825 births 1884 deaths People from Blackburn 19th-century English poets Writers from Lancashire