JOSIAH WEDGWOOD. 89 



exercise of the boys of that, and indeed of every, time. 'At 

 this period, or rather thirty years later, ther6 was but one 

 school in Burslem, and that so ill adapted to the purpose 

 " that two parts of the children out of three are put to work 

 without any learning, by reason " of that school being " not 

 sufficient to instruct them." Probably to the only school in 

 Burslem, Josiah Wedgwood was sent, but whether there, 

 or under the tuition of his excellent father and mother, he 

 must have made exceeding good progress, for, at the age of 

 fourteen, he wrote, not a boyish, but a fine,, firm, manly 

 hand, as will be seen by the fac-simile I give of his signature 

 at that age. We are told that at the early age of eleven 

 Josiah was put to the family business of a potter, as a 

 thrower ; and thus he had not much opportunity of gaining 

 extended knowledge in any branch. 



About midsummer, 1739, when Josiah was barely nine 

 years old, his father, Thomas Wedgwood, died, and was 

 buried a few days afterwards in the churchyard at Burslem. 

 And here it may be well to correct an error which has crept 

 into all the accounts hitherto published of this remarkable 

 man. Mr. Smiles says, "His father was a poor potter at 

 Burslem, barely able to make a living at his trade. He died 

 when he was only eleven years old." It will be seen that 

 Josiah was only nine years old, not eleven, when he lost his 

 father; and the statement regarding the poverty of his 

 father is equally erroneous. I believe him to have been a 

 well-to-do tradesman, and this is borne out by the fact 

 that the house and pot-works were his own property, and, 

 apparently, were inherited by him from his father. This 

 error, and the statement which follows it, that at the time 

 when Josiah began " to work at the potter's wheel, the 

 manufacture of earthenware could scarcely be said to exist in 

 England," are so glaringly wrong, that it is well to point 

 them out in this place. The latter assertion my preceding 

 chapters will already have fully refuted, and the former ones 

 this memoir will put in their proper light. 



The will of this Thomas Wedgwood a document which 



