He was
educated at the Grammar School, but the teaching there, as I have
said, was very poor. The step-mother used to send messages to the
head master begging him soundly to thrash her step-son, for he was
sure to deserve it, and school thrashing in those days was no joke.
She also compelled my father to clean boots, knives and forks, and
do other dirty work.
I do not know when he opened the shop in Bedford as a printer and
bookseller, but it must have been about 1830. He dealt in old
books, the works of the English divines of all parties, both in the
Anglican Church and outside it. The clergy, who then read more than
they read or can read now, were his principal customers. From the
time when he began business as a young man in the town he had much
to do with its affairs. He was a Whig in politics, and amongst the
foremost at elections, specially at the election in 1832, when he
and the Whig Committee were besieged in the Swan Inn by the mob. He
soon became a trustee of the Bedford Charity, and did good service
for the schools. In September 1843, the Rev. Edward Isaac Lockwood,
rector of St. John's, in the town, and trustee of the schools,
carried a motion at a board meeting declaring that all the masters
under the Charity should be members of the Church of England.
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