Dorcas Lackington

Standing shoulder high and topped with yellow lichen, Dorcas Lackington’s gravestone faces the east end of St Mary’s church, Merton and reads: Dorcas, wife of J. Lackington / Bookseller, Finsbury Square / Died January 27th 1795 Age 45 years

Dorcas caught my attention on lockdown walks in 2020. Her unusual name stands out, as does the first verse of her elegy which directly asks passers-by to stop and think about her:

Ladies who chance to frisk this way

With honest hearts and spirits gay

A serious moment give to one

Who sleeps beneath this earth & stone

A quick google reveals that Dorcas’ husband ‘J. Lackington’ was not an obscure Merton tradesman but an 18th century celebrity entrepreneur. In 1793, James Lackington opened the largest bookshop in the world of his day. His Finsbury Square premises - the Temple of the Muses - was one of the wonders of London and so vast that ‘a mail-coach and four were driven round the counters at opening.’ The son of a Somerset shoemaker, James rose to wealth in the 1780s using a business model which ‘revolutionised the book trade’ - selling remaindered books at bargain prices, provoking precisely the wrath generated by Amazon today amongst Lackington’s competitors.

We know a great deal about James because he was a brilliant publicist who wrote three books of self-congratulatory memoirs, in which Dorcas herself appears tantalisingly infrequently - submerged in James’ showmanship. We do know that Dorcas paid ‘a constant and unwearied attendance to bookselling’ and probably played a key role in Lackington’s success, but what more could be found?

The register of St Luke’s Church, Old Street records Dorcas’ baptism on 1 April 1750: ‘Dorcas, d. of Samuel Turton & Jemima’. Her city childhood was initially shared with siblings Jemima and John, but tragedy is heavily indicated by the family’s parish records and Dorcas may have been the Turton’s only surviving child. James describes Dorcas’ father gambling away a large fortune and being forced into trade as a bridle cutter - a maker of saddles and harnesses - from their home at 46 Chiswell Street. But Samuel’s gambling continued, and his ‘final ruin’ was a stay in debtor’s prison before his death.

Aged just 23, Dorcas was now in sole charge of the family business. She ‘cheerfully submitted to keep a school’ whilst renting the shop to her lodgers, James Lackington and his first wife Nancy. After Nancy’s sudden death, James ‘wastes no time’ in marrying Dorcas at St Luke’s Church just months later because: ‘so amiable a daughter was very likely to make a good wife. I also knew that she was immoderately fond of books… I was in raptures with the thought of having a woman to read with.’ Dorcas’ own feelings are not recorded but James’ recollections show a romantic side to her nature: ‘This girl had for some years divided her spare hours between devotion and novel reading. On Sundays she would attend the sermons… and after her return… the novel was resumed, and not quitted until she had seen the hero and heroine happily married, which often kept her out of bed until morning.’

Dorcas proved even more valuable to James during his frequent travels to booksellers across the UK: ‘Her extreme love for books made her delight to be in the shop… she could readily get any article that was asked for. Accordingly, when I was out on business, my shop was well-attended.’ Dorcas occasionally accompanied James and they took the waters at Buxton, promenaded with ‘their majesties and the four princesses’ at Weymouth and visited Stonehenge – an ‘amazing pile.’

With their new-found social mobility, the Lackington’s moved to rural Merton, renting Spring House on Kingston Road (now the site of 1930s flats). The couple started horse-riding for exercise on doctor’s orders, acquired a pet dog called Argus and provoked speculation from neighbours when they bought a carriage and servants in livery – described by James as ‘base envy.’

A less idyllic incident was reported in May 1794: ‘On Sunday evening last, as Mr. Lackington, was reading to a Lady in an unfrequented lane, near Merton, they were suddenly addressed from behind a hedge… if they did not lay down their money and watches, he would immediately blow out their brains; at the same time pointing a gun through the hedge… On this Mr. L. threw down half-a-guinea, some silver, and an antique brass coin. The fellow… effected his escape.’

Country living ended abruptly in 1795. Dorcas’ cause of death is not known but her obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine notes that she ‘bore a complication of disorders with uncommon patience and fortitude’. James wrote the poem on her gravestone and promptly married her distant cousin Mary, living on for a further twenty years.

Although I wish James had written more about Dorcas and less about his own brilliance, he does give us rare glimpses of an 18th century life that deserves a ‘serious moment’ of our time. Dorcas was a landlady, a schoolteacher, manager of the largest bookshop in the world and a voracious reader who endured illness and pain in the last years of her life. James’ final lines of her epitaph read:

And whether you are maid or wife

Go imitate her former life

And when to Heaven you yield your breath

May you like her have peace in death.