212 



Wilts Obituary. 



Steeple Ashton Manor House — The Granary. Folio plate, containing 

 south and west elevations and plan. Photo-litho, from drawings by R. 

 Shekleton Balfour. Architect. Assoc. Sketch Book, 3rd Series, Vol. II. 



Edington Church — Pulpit. Folio plate— elevation and details. Ink photo, 

 from drawings by R. Shekleton Balfour. Architect. Assoc. Sketch Book, 

 3rd Series, Vol. II. 



mats m\tmx%. 



Sir Isaac Pitman. Died January 22nd, 1897, at Bath, cremated at Woking. 

 Born January 4th, 1813. Son of Samuel Pitman, then manager of the 

 cloth factory of Mr. James Edgell, at Trowbridge, afterwards owner of a 

 factory, at first at Trowbridge, later on removed to Kingston House, 

 Bradford-on-Avon. Isaac was educated at the Trowbridge Grammar 

 School, and, after serving a while as clerk in the cloth factory, went to the 

 Normal College of the British and Foreign School Society, after leaving 

 which he became master of the British School at Burton-on-Humber (1832), 

 and subsequently at Wootton-under-Edge (1836). He married, first, Mary, 

 widow of Mr. George Holgate, of Barton, who died 1857 ; and secondly 

 Isabella, daughter of Mr. James Masters. In 1837 he joined the " New 

 Church " (Swedenborgian), and was accordingly dismissed from the service 

 of the B. & F. School Society. He was also a strict teetotaller, vegetarian, 

 non-smoker, and anti-vaccinationist. In 1837 he took up the study of 

 shorthand, and issued a little book containing the cardinal principles of the 

 system that he afterwards perfected — the writing of sounds instead of letters, 

 Stenographic Sound-hand, by Isaac Pitman. London : Samuel Bagster. 

 Price Fourpence. Royal 32mo. Pp. 12. The first edition of three 

 thousand copies were sold by 1839, when he removed to Bath, where for a 

 time he kept a private school. The second edition, " Phonography, or 

 Writing by Sound, being also a Neto and Natural System of Shorthand,'" 

 was issued as a penny plate in 1840 ; and in 1842 the first number of his 

 monthly Phonographic Journal appeared. From 1843 he gave himself up 

 entirely to the development and propagation of Phonography and Phonetic 

 spelling, writing and lecturing all over England in the most indefatigable 

 way. In 1845 he established a printing press in his own house, from which 

 the Phonotypic Journal and other works were issued. Phonography 

 reached a sixth edition in 1844, and a seventh in 1845. The Fonetic Niuz, 



