John Man is now mainly known as Reading’s second historian. His very name sounds like a pseudonym - John Doe meets Everyman, perhaps - but he was real enough; what we know of him comes from his published and unpublished writings, occasional mentions and adverts in the Mercury, a very helpful website charting the family’s history, and a few other sources listed in the bibliography. He was born and baptised in Whitechapel in 1749, when his parents were living in Mansell Street, just outside the City of London. John was almost certainly educated alongside his brother Henry by the Rev. John Lamb at Whitgift School in Croydon. This is now a large and prestigious establishment, but in the 1760s it was in decline; its historian F H G Percy describes it as ‘a small school for unambitious pupils’. His brother Henry’s DNB entry refers to a ‘nonconformist background’ which prevented him from entering a university; we know nothing more of young John’s life until he moved to Reading.

He arrived in 1770, and at some time within the next five years was appointed assistant master at William Baker’s Academy in Hosier’s Lane, north of Castle Street. This may well have been in 1773, when Baker felt obliged to publicly deny a rumour that he was about to retire. The introduction was possibly made by Henry Man, who was working in the City near Baker’s son, also William; the latter is mentioned in the Stranger’s Letter IV, and achieved sufficient fame as a printer to merit an entry in the DNB. In 1775 John married Baker’s daughter Sarah - his senior by nine years - and acquired a half share in the school. The couple soon had four children: Henry was born in 1776, William in 78, Anna Maria in 80 and Horace in 82. (Horace’s name may have been inspired by Sir Horace Mann – no relation - who in 1782 advocated a government of national unity; he was also an early devotee of cricket, and had played in Berkshire. This may be a clue to John’s opinions and interests.)

School Man

When Baker did retire, in 1779, he put a notice in the Mercury in which he ‘begs leave to recommend Mr Man as every way qualified to succeed him’, and it is from Man’s teaching career that we learn most about his character. In the late 18th century - and indeed until 1870 - no child was obliged to undergo any formal schooling. J M Guilding estimated that in 1812 some 900 children went to school when the population was about 11,000. The sons of the rich could go to Eton, Harrow and the like, which were taking custom away from local grammars such as Reading School (which was still officially ‘free’, but effectively charged fees). The poor had to rely on an assortment of charitable institutions; from Man’s History we learn that in 1809 there was one for boys, one mixed, and two for girls; one of these last he chides for being little more than a sweatshop producing cheap needlework. But times were changing fast: within two years both the Christian National (mixed) and the Lancastrian or British Schools (boys) had opened.

Between these extremes, the moderately well-off had a widening choice of private academies such as Man’s; most were single-sex, and boys of course fared better than girls. Baker had run his school since about 1740; Coates, in his History, describes him as ‘a man of amiable character and manners, of great classical and mathematical learning’. In 1773 he was boarding young gentlemen and teaching them writing, arithmetic, mathematics, Latin and Greek; young ladies had to be content with writing and ‘accompts’ – i.e. household accounts. By the time Man took over, girls are no longer mentioned; the boys could also learn French, Italian, merchants’ accounts, the use of the globes, and ‘natural shorthand’; a few months later he added ‘every branch of useful and polite literature’ and ‘dancing and drawing by the best masters’. Navigation joined the curriculum in 1782, and in 1786 he promises ‘mensuration in its various kinds’, geometry, trigonometry and geography; he stresses the importance of French since the signing of a new commercial treaty. His fees were 16 guineas a year; these, and the range of subjects offered, were very similar to other local schools. After his retirement, when he was seeking a new tenant-schoolmaster in 1799, he boasted that ‘the house has been built within a very few years for the express purpose of a Boarding School, and has every accommodation for 40 pupils, with a good kitchen garden, and spacious play-ground walled in…’.

As well as Baker’s recommendation we have two or three other clues to what sort of schoolmaster - and man - Man was. In January 1782 the Mercury printed a letter from ‘An Advocate for a Liberal Education’ condemning corporal punishment in schools. This could have been written by anybody, but it followed four consecutive weeks’ adverts for Man’s school; and later that year he was seeking an English assistant ‘whose natural disposition will lead him to treat the young gentlemen with good nature, affability and affection’.

That Man himself embraced this ethos is evident from a pupil’s-eye view to be found in Reminiscences of a Literary Life (1836) by Thomas Frognall Dibdin (1776-1847), nephew of the composer Charles Dibdin. His memories of the school date from his fifth to eleventh years (c1781-87) when, as an orphan, he was sent to live with a great-aunt in Reading. With hindsight he was glad to have escaped Richard Valpy’s regime at Reading School; instead he joined Man’s ‘small establishment’ in ‘an obscure part of the town' on ‘proportionately moderate terms’. Dibdin paints an affectionate picture of his mentor: ‘He was a singular, naturally clever, and kind-hearted man: had a mechanical turn; and could construct electrifying apparatuses, and carve a picture frame.’ (In 1778 a Mr Banks, ‘experimental philosopher’, was touring locally with scientific lectures and demonstrations featuring electricity. The Museum of the History of Science in Oxford has a number of ‘electrifying apparatuses’ dating from 1786; they were ‘popular with amateurs’.) Dibdin continues: ‘His studio, of this description, was at the top of the house; and many an hour do I remember to have spent therein, gazing with surprise and delight upon the mysteries of turning, planing and chisselling.’ The young Dibdin had to share a bed with John’s son Henry; he looked weak and emaciated, and tells us that ‘Mr and Mrs Man’s unremitting attention and kindness perhaps saved my life’. He was allowed to go into Man’s private room whenever he pleased. ‘It was sufficiently well filled with books … here, for the first time, I caught, or fancied I caught, the electric spark of the BIBLIOMANIA. My master was now and then the purchaser of old books by the sack-full; these were tumbled out upon the floor, the arm-chair, or a table, just as it might happen.’ Dibdin was also welcome in old Mr Baker’s study. His ‘rapturous days’ at Reading included bathing in the Holy Brook at the Old Orchard, Coley Park. He says that by the time he left he had made ‘little progress in anything but writing, arithmetic and French’, but in no way blames Man for a defective education. He went on to become librarian to Lord Spencer, and among his own publications was indeed a volume entitled Bibliomania.

Barge Man

In the summer of 1795 Man retired, let the school to James Taylor, and moved to the High Street. He was only 45, and by no means idle: very soon he was Secretary of the Reading Provident Society, and within two years had embarked on a new venture in the growing business of waterborne transport.

‘What thing is that I see,
Perch’d like a shuffle in a tree;
Or rather, like a candle snuff,
When just extinguish’d by a puff?
So meagre, sorrowful, and lean…

The mystery object proves to be Man himself, and this is the only clue we have to his appearance; but the joke may have been that he was actually portly… ‘shuffle-wing’ was an old and apt nickname for the dunnock or hedge-sparrow.

In April 1802 the ‘New Canal’ shown on the Stranger’s map - the 500-metre short cut passing under Watlington Street and the King’s Road - was opened, and the Mercury tells us that ‘a barge freighted from London, belonging to the Navigation Company, on board of which was a great number of respectable inhabitants of this town, sailed up it. There was a blue flag and a laurel bough hoisted at the mast head, and the men were decorated with blue ribbons; she sailed to her moorings amidst a grand discharge of cannon … Afterwards the Navigation Company dined together in their office, where the day was spent with the utmost festivity and hilarity’. In July 1804 the company asked for its sacks to be returned and encouraged debtors and creditors to settle up; it is not clear whether the business was folding. Man certainly retained an interest in water transport until at least 1811, when he was a signatory to a notice calling a meeting of ‘noblemen, gentlemen and other friends to the Thames Navigation’; they were concerned at the competition threatened by the many proposals for new canals. A list of Reading barge-owners in 1812 includes Blandy but not Man. Blandy became an alderman and mayor, and worked for the good of the town: he repaired Caversham Bridge and campaigned for the preservation of the Forbury as a public space.

Pen Man

The idea of writing about his adopted town had already been in Man's mind before he retired: he had for some time been collecting material for the Anecdotes and the History (see below). 1798 saw his first publication: a plan of Reading ‘trigonometrically surveyed and carefully delineated, engraved by W Poole and dedicated to the Worshipful the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses’. The lack of early maps is a constant disappointment to local historians: Reading’s first surviving plan is Speed’s of 1610, followed by an anonymous sketch-map of the Civil War defences in 1643. Rocque (1761) and Pride (1790) covered a wider area and have little detail of the town. Man’s pioneering effort used a bigger scale than any of these, but was soon eclipsed by the more accurate one by Tomkins, drawn for Coates’s History of 1802. In a corner of his map Man includes a note giving his estimate of the town’s population at 8350 (he was not far out: the first census in 1801 counted 9421).

In 1807 Man’s son William joined Robert Snare’s printing and bookselling business. The partnership produced a mixture of works, notably including things that might have displeased a less tolerant father: a supplement to Coates’s rival History; some verses by J B Monck upon the opening of the Literary Institution, rival to the Permanent Library (see below); and psalms and hymns edited by Henry Gauntlett, who (as we shall see) had taken exception to the Stranger. In 1816 William left Snare and set up on his own in Broad Street, but he printed very little more. At the age of 83 he married a 22-year-old on the Isle of Wight and fathered a daughter; he died in 1874. John’s wife Sarah died in May 1809. Details of their son Henry’s life are a little perplexing. In 1793 - when he was only 16 - Henry Man of Castle Street advertised himself as an importer of foreign spiritous liquors. In December 1797, according to John’s Anecdotes, ‘Harry the lad, who’s seldom sad’ supplied the beer for the family’s New Year party. By 1808 he had progressed to London, and was married (by his old schoolfellow and bedfellow Thomas Dibdin) to Mrs Dennett, a widow with a small family. Dibdin says he died in 1810, but there are later extant letters; he clearly did not outlive his father, as he is not mentioned in John’s Will.

Both John and Horace were on the committee of the Reading Permanent Library, founded in 1807, which in the event proved decidedly temporary; the rival Literary Institution fared better. In 1809 John, William and Henry were signatories to a request for a meeting on Forbury Hill to discuss ‘the propriety of celebrating George III’s Jubilee’: they objected to Corporation-sponsored fireworks, and asserted ‘the right of the people to assemble and express their own sentiments, in their own style, on all public occasions’. (The political journalist William Cobbett made a similar complaint.) By 1810 – the year of the Stranger -Man is listed in a Poll Book as a Gentleman, of Castle Street, having apparently moved back from the High Street. In 1816 he produced his History, insisting in his preface that he is ‘not an author by profession’.

Horace had taken a steady job as agent for the Globe Fire Office in 1804. He contributed to a fund for the relief of the poor in 1813, but otherwise there is no news until his death in 1817 at the age of 35 in ‘a melancholy accident’. He was sailing up to Pangbourne with two friends when they were caught by a strong wind, and the boom knocked him into the Thames. William took over his insurance job. John Man wrote an account of the churches of Wallingford in 1818; and died, aged 75, on 10 April 1824. The Mercury merely noted his death, with no obituary. His Will left two adjacent houses in Castle Street – then numbered 47 & 48, they were demolished to make way for the IDR roundabout - along with six cottages that he had built at the north end of the property, and also some land at Binfield which he had probably inherited. He had already given his books and instruments to William, and his furniture to his daughter Anna Maria; she remained a spinster until her death in 1860 at Jesse Terrace.