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T WOULD MAKE an unusual beginning if his biographer could state with confidence that Arthur Rackham was descended, however remotely, from a pirate. There is a touch of macabre romanticism about the idea that is attractive and could be significant; one goes on to imagine a humorously ineffective pirate, who might have stepped out of Peter Pan, and who spent his time sketching on the quarterdeck when he should have been boarding the enemy with his cutlass.

John Rackham was undoubtedly a pirate. He operated from Providence Island and in 1718 commanded a brigantine. Captured by a man-o’-war in 1720, he was hanged with a number of his crew at Port Royal, Jamaica, on 17th November of that year. Can we connect dishonest John with the entirely respectable branch of the family from which Arthur Rackham sprang? Links in the chain of evidence are lacking. But the theory is supported by family tradition.

For a sound beginning, however, we had better turn to Thomas Rackham, born in the Minories, London, in or about the year 1800. The Rackham family was probably of East Anglian descent. The name Rackham has been derived from the Old-English word for a tick; it may have been a tribute, say the etymologists, to a specially large rick, or to the prominence of ricks around a homestead. Be that