NATURAL HISTORY TRANSACTIONS 



OP 



NORTHUMBERLAND, DURHAM, AND NEWCASTLE- 

 UPON-TYNE. 



I. — Memoir of the Life of John Hancoclt. By D. Embleton, M.D. 



John, the subject of this memoir, the fourth child and third son 

 of John Hancock, was horn in his father's house, Nos. 49 and 

 50, at the north end of Tyne Bridge, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on 

 the 24th of February, 1808, and died on the 11th of October, 

 1 890, at No. 4, St. Mary's Terrace, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His 

 grandfather, Thomas Hancock, of whose ancestors I find no cer- 

 tain record, was a saddler and ironmonger, and had a shop on 

 Tyne Bridge before its destruction by the great flood in 1771 ; 

 his name, however does not occur in the list to be found in 

 Sykes' Local Records of the sufferers from that catastrophe. 

 After that occurrence he established himself and carried on his 

 business till his death in the house above named. In White- 

 head's (the first) Directory of Newcastle, 1778, under the heading 

 'Hardware Shops,' we find, at page 24, "Hancock, Thomas 

 opposite Tyne Bridge end." 



He married the younger of the Misses Baker, of whose rela- 

 tives we only know that they were by the maternal side allied 

 to the family of Henzells, who, with the Tisacks or Tyzacks 

 and Tytterys, brought the art of glass-making to Tyneside and 

 Staffordshire in the latter half of the 17th century. See Gentle- 

 man's Mag., Vol. CO. and CCI. The elder Miss Baker, being in 

 Holland, a Dutch gentleman, a lawyer, named Van Paas, fell 

 in love with her at first sight, obtained an introduction to and 

 married her ; of this marriage there were four children, who all 

 died early. A painting of this family Miss Hancock possesses. 



