John Ashton also had some skill at drawing, so he was able to illustrate his books with a number of drawings based on contemporary prints, drawings and paintings, thus capturing the visual style of images of the era along with its documents. He does occasionally make editorial comments, and they do have a slight Victorian sensibility, but they are still insightful and often rather amusing. He presents the facts as he found them, he does not over-analyze them, nor does he trivialize them. His social history books are a delight to read, even today. He compiled contemporary information on each period, in most cases quoting it directly from the source to maintain the flavor of the time he was presenting. This title became the first in a series of books he would publish over the years on the social history of various periods of English history. One of the titles he published in that first year was Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne. From then on, he published a new book every year for more than thirty years. John Ashton first published in 1882, when he had three books come out all in the same year. He went to the British Museum five to six days a week, where he spent many hours a day in the Reading Room there, researching the social and cultural life of the generations of Englishmen and women who had come before him. What is known is that by about 1874, when he was approaching the age of forty, he had become a professional researcher and writer of history. There are no records of young John Ashton’s school years, or of any profession or trade in which he may have engaged as a young man, though it is fairly certain he did receive a good education. Thomas Ashton died at his home in Lewisham, Kent, in 1851, and Isabella Ashton died there in 1875. John Ashton had two sisters and one brother, though their names are unknown. Interestingly, John’s mother, Isabella Ashton, was a specialist gun maker who plied her trade in the Goodman’s Fields section of Whitechapel. Ship-brokers also made deals between those who were selling and buying ships, so it is likely Thomas Ashton made a comfortable living. Thomas Ashton was a ship-broker in the City of London, brokering deals between those who had goods to transport and those who had ships available to transport them. His parents were Thomas and Isabella Ashton, of whom very little is known. John Ashton was born on Monday, 22 September 1834, in London, where he would spend most of his life. I think he deserves more recognition for all that effort in the new medium of the web than he has received to date. Yet the John Ashton of whom I write here devoted more than thirty years of his life to the study of history and published over thirty books in the course of his research. However, if you do scroll further, you will find a link to one of his books on Project Gutenberg, and if you scroll even further down, you will find a page for him at Wikisource, such as it is. But you will find no listings which provide a biography of the nineteenth-century British historian and author, John Ashton, in the first fifty results, and few people bother to scroll beyond that. If you run a Google search with the name "John Ashton," you will find results for an actor, a diplomat, a chef, an artist, a boxer, a musician, a handful of authors and an independent timber and damp surveyor, among others. I ask your indulgence as I record here the few available details about the life of a man with whom I find I have much in common. There is very little information available about John Ashton on the web, and I would like to rectify that situation. Just who is John Ashton, and why should anyone care about the death of a man which occurred one hundred years ago, a century after the Regency began? Because, without the diligent efforts of John Ashton, we would know a great deal less about the daily life of those who lived during the Regency, and in the centuries which preceded and followed it. Ashton departed this world at his home in north-west London, located at 4, Middleton-road, off Camden-road in Islington. London - 29 July 1911 - On this day, passed from this life, John Ashton, aged seventy-seven years.
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