James Webbe Tobin

James Webbe Tobin (1767–1814) was an English abolitionist, the son of a plantation owner on Nevis. He was a political radical, and friend of leading literary men.^[1]

Life

He was the eldest son of James Tobin of Bristol and his first wife Elizabeth Webbe; George Tobin and John Tobin were his brothers.^[1] His father was in business with John Pretor Pinney, from 1783.^[2]

Tobin was educated at King Edward VI School, Southampton and Wadham College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1787, and graduated B.A. in 1792.^[1][3] From 1795, until his brother John's death in 1804, they lived together in London.^[4]

In the 1790s Tobin befriended Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth;^[5] Wordsworth knew, through Basil Montagu and Francis Wrangham, the sons of John Pretor Pinney, and may have met Tobin through Montagu, or the Pinneys.^[1][6] Tobin brought Tom Wedgewood to meet Coleridge and Wordsworth in September 1797; Wedgwood later became Coleridge's patron.^[7][8] In letters of 1798, Wordsworth announced to Tobin, then James Losh, his major poetic project under the working title The Recluse.^[9]

Tobin had a degenerative eye condition, and at this period he was only partially sighted, ruling out a career.^[10] During 1799 he took part in the nitrous oxide experiments of Humphry Davy.^[11] He was an observer when Davy experimented with other inhalations.^[12]

From 1807 Tobin and his family were on Nevis.^[1] He took a leading part in the cruelty case brought in 1810 against the plantation owner Edward Huggins; Huggins had bought the Montravers estate on Nevis from the Pretor Pinney family in 1808.^[13] Huggins was acquitted; Tobin made his views known, writing in particular to Hugh Elliot, the Governor of the Leeward Islands, claiming that the jury was packed.^[1][14] The Christian Observer noted that Tobin's blindness meant he could not be challenged to a duel for his stand.^[15] James Stephen wrote that others who backed him did not escape feuds.^[16]

Works

Tobin contributed to The Annual Anthology edited by Robert Southey, and edited its third volume (1802).^[17][18] In 1812 he wrote a Reply to the pamphlet A plain statement of the motives which gave rise to the public punishment of several negroes (1811), by Thomas John Cottle, son-in-law of Edward Huggins.^[19]

Family

Tobin married Jane Mallet or Mullett (1784–1837) in 1807.^[1][20][21] She was the daughter of Thomas Mullett (1745–1814), a Bristol stationer connected by marriage to Caleb Evans, a Particular Baptist minister in Bristol.^[22] They had at least four children, including the eldest son John James, born 1808/9, the friend of Humphry Davy.^[1][23]

After her husband's death, Jane Tobin and her family returned to England.^[24]

Notes

1. Small, David. "Tobin, James Webbe". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58446. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
2. Morgan, Kenneth. "Pinney, John Pretor". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50514. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. s:Page:Alumni Oxoniensis (1715-1886) volume 4.djvu/212
4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1980). The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Abbt to Byfield. Routledge. p. 89. ISBN 978-0-691-09879-1.
5. "Tobin, James Webbe (1767–1814), Romantic Circles". Retrieved 13 May 2016.
6. Stephen Charles Gill (1 June 1989). William Wordsworth: a life. Clarendon Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-19-812828-1.
7. Ayumi Mishiro, William Wordsworth and Education: 1791–1802 at p. 134
8. Levere, Trevor H. "Wedgwood, Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/28967. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
9. Stephen Charles Gill (1 June 1989). William Wordsworth: a life. Clarendon Press. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-19-812828-1.
10. Juliet Barker (13 October 2009). Wordsworth: A Life. HarperCollins. p. 118. ISBN 978-0-06-185021-9.
11. Sir Humphry Davy (1839). The Collected Works of Sir Humphry Davy ...: Researches, chemical and philosophical, chiefly concerning nitrous oxide ... and its respiration. Smith, Elder and Company. pp. 295–7.
12. June Z. Fullmer (2000). Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist. American Philosophical Society. pp. 259–. ISBN 978-0-87169-237-5.
13. Small, David. "Huggins, Edward". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53032. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
14. Thomas Southey (1827). Chronological History of the West Indies. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, & Green. p. 498.
15. The Christian Observer. Hatchard and Company. 1812. p. 434.
16. James Stephen (30 September 2010). The Slavery of the British West India Colonies Delineated: As it Exists Both in Law and Practice, and Compared with the Slavery of Other Countries, Antient and Modern. Cambridge University Press. p. 118. ISBN 978-1-108-02082-4.
17. Kenneth Curry, The Contributors to "The Annual Anthology", The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America Vol. 42, No. 1 (First Quarter, 1948), pp. 50–65, at p. 60. Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Bibliographical Society of America. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24298400
18. Robert Southey (1829). The Poetical works of Robert Southey: complete in one volume. A. and W. Galignani. p. ix note 1.
19. "Fanny Cottle (née Huggins), Summary of Individual, Legacies of British Slave-ownership". Retrieved 13 May 2016.
20. T. Whelan (2 February 2016). Other British Voices: Women, Poetry, and Religion, 1766-1840. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 225. ISBN 978-1-137-34361-1.
21. George Manners; William Jerdan (1808). Satirist: Or Monthly Meteor. S. Tipper. p. 103.
22. Timothy D. Whelan (2009). Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845. Mercer University Press. p. 423. ISBN 978-0-88146-144-2.
23. Trevor Shaw; Alenka Čuk (1 June 2015). Slovene Karst and Caves in the Past. Založba ZRC. p. 401. ISBN 978-961-254-740-0.
24. Timothy Whelan, West Country Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720–1840, The Wordsworth Circle Vol. 43, No. 1, Wordsworth Summer Conference Papers, A Selection: 2011 (Winter 2012), pp. 44–55, at p. 54. Published by: Marilyn Gaull. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24045515