William Thackwray Senior
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William
died before the invention of photography. No portrait exists. This word
picture by his apprentice Thomas Stubbs is quoted in Chapter 4 of Pawns in a Larger Game: Old
Thackwray was a strange sort of man, he was very stout, and from his
talk would be taken for a Quaker, as he always said, ‘yea’ and ‘nay’
and ‘thou’. But what was the strangest thing about him, he scarcely
ever spoke without farting, for instance – he would say, “George
[George Wood, another apprentice] thou art a fool (Poop). George if
thou doesn't alter (Poop) I shall be obliged to (Poop) get rid of thee
(Poop).” Sometimes he would talk to his daughter Dolly [Dorothy] and he
would say, “Dolly ist thou going (Poop) up the Town? Because if thou
art thou must not (Poop) stay long (Poop).”
Stubbs’s description of a stout, farting, old man with a strange accent is satirical. Another contemporary description reads: He
was an amiable and intelligent man; and few, very few, possessed, like
him the qualifications requisite for the casual life he had adopted –
with a vigorous mind, and a constitution proof against the climate; he
had latterly been familiar to misfortune; and it was to repair his
shattered circumstances that he thus became the object of chance – to
forgo the comforts of home, for a novel and adventurous uncertainty …
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Biographical Notes
Arrived in the Cape in 1820 aboard Northampton in Bailie's Party.His life is treated in detail in Chapters 4, 5, and 7 - 10.
One of several
documents recording births of William Thackwray’s and Dorothy Pownall’s
children. It appears to be a copy of a document prepared by William,
probably made by a family member. The paper has a watermark “Buckland
Mill 1873” a date forty four years after William's death. It was found,
together with other drafts and a fine copy in another hand, in Joseph
Walker Jr’s family bible. Joseph had an interest in recording his own
family details but it is not in his handwriting. It might have been
made by his wife Dorothy Driver or her father Edward, who was still
alive at the time. All of William and Dorothy Thackwray’s children were
already dead. |