John Nicholson

Nicholson's father was a manufacturer of worsted cloth in Eldwick, Yorkshire and was a conscientious Methodist and raised John to be one too. He sent his son to school in Eldwick and then to the nearby Bingley Grammar School.

Although interested in Literature from an early age he gained his living as a woolsorter or woolcomber.

Nicholson married early but his wife died in childbirth in 1810 and it seemed as if this might have led him into the Methodist Ministry but he remarried 3 years later and two years later severed his connections with the church.

Nicholson's writing was popular locally and his employers were willing to allow him latitude (over his drunken behaviour) because of the prestige he brought to them as a member of Bradford's Intellectual Society. He was notorious for his verbal humour and as a writer of satirical pieces.

He was commissioned to write for the Bradford Old Theatre and produced a Byron-esque play entitled the Robber of the Alps but his next play was The Siege of Bradford, a local history piece set at the time of the English Civil War. This was first performed in 1820 and was published, with some of his poetry, the following year.

For a while Nicholson gave up his regular employment and roamed around the North of England selling his books from door to door. It was at this time that he started drinking heavily but it is said (by his sons) that he would often return home with substantial sums of money so he cannot have drunk it all away. Encouraged by this success perhaps Nicholson moved to London but was not able to take up his imagined place in London Society and was considered something of a boorish Northerner and eventually he returned to Bradford.
He made a second foray into london Society somewhat later but with similar results and was brought back by his wife.

Nicholson soon resumed his drinking and became well known in the locality as a drunkard.

On April 12th 1843 Nicholson was trying to cross the stepping stones across the river Aire near the point where his employer, Sir Titus Salt, would build his famous mill and he fell in the river. He managed to pull himself out of the water onto the bank and was heard groaning by a boy going for milk early the next morning. However Nicholson's groans scared the boy who continued on his way, telling no one at that time. Within the hour Nicholson's dead body was found by another early riser. He was buried in Bingley churchyard.

Although his poetry continued to be published and his work performed over the next 25 years it then ceased to be much heard away from the local area.

There has been some revival of interest in Nicholson's work and in 1993 a play, Poetry or Bust, was commissioned from Tony Harrison by the entrepreneur Jonathon Silver and was performed in the renovated mill at Saltaire just yards from where the poet had died.