[5] Bicknell participated in the late 1760s in the initial stage of Day's plan to train a suitable wife from himself, at Shrewsbury orphanage.
[15] Bicknell on 16 April 1784 married, at St Philip's Church, Birmingham, Sabrina Sidney, the girl he had selected with Thomas Day at Shrewsbury about 15 years earlier.
After Day dropped his plan to marry her, she had remained a ward of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and lived in the West Midlands.
[16][17] After Bicknell's death she became housekeeper and manager for Charles Burney the younger, a schoolfellow of her late husband at Charterhouse.
Sabrina as widow had financial support from Day and Edgeworth, and George Hardinge and Anna Seward organised collections for her.