John Brown (historian)

He laboured on a history of Bolton; went to London to advocate the claims of his friend, Samuel Crompton, the inventor; but committed suicide, seemingly in despair at his lack of success in life.

Laying aside his History of Bolton, he drew up The Basis of Mr. Samuel Crompton's Claims to a second Remuneration from Parliament for his Discovery of the Mule Spinning-machine (1825).

Moving to London, Brown there prepared a memorial on this subject, dated May 1825, addressed to the Lords of the Treasury and signed by many inhabitants of Bolton, with a petition to the House of Commons (6 February 1826) on the part of Crompton, which briefly setd out the grounds of his claim.

[3] He was, however, completely unsuccessful, owing, as he wrote to Crompton, to secret opposition on the part of "your primitive enemy", as he called the first Sir Robert Peel.

[1][2] Brown's most memorable work, published after his drath, was a biography of Robert Blincoe about the horrors of child labour in the cotton mills, entitled A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, an orphan boy sent from the workhouse of St. Pancras, London, at seven years of age to endure the horrors of a cotton mill.