Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/330

 King's and Queen's College of Physicians. He became a fellow of the Chemical Society in 1857, and was vice-president from 1872 to 1874. He was president of the chemical section of the British Association at its Dublin meeting in 1878.

After his retirement in 1891 from the chair of chemistry at Cork, he resided in London, and died at 7 Damley Road, Holland Park Avenue, London, on 26 Feb. 1902. He was buried in Fulham cemetery.

He married in 1846 Mary (d. 1900), daughter of Samuel Martin of Longhome, co. Down, and sister of John Martin, M.P., the Irish politician [q. v.]. She was enthusiastically interested in her husband's work. There were six children of the marriage, of whom two survived him. Simpson was a man of wide culture, lively humour, and kindly personality.  SIMPSON, WILFRED. [See, F.R.S. (1828–1909), geologist.]

SINGLETON,. MARY. [See (1843–1905), author under the pseudonym of '']

SKIPSEY, JOSEPH (1832–1903), the collier poet, born on 17 March 1832 at Percy, a parish in the borough of Tynemouth, Northumberland, was youngest of the eight children of Cuthbert Skipsey, a miner, by his wife Isabella Bell. In his infancy his father was shot in a collision between pitmen and special constables during some labour disturbances. Skipsey, who worked in the coal pits from the age of seven, had no schooling, but he soon taught himself to read and write. Until he was fifteen the Bible was the only book to which he had access. After that age he managed to study Milton, Shakespeare, Burns, and some translations from Latin, Greek, and German, particularly the poems of Heine and Goethe's 'Faust.' In 1852 he walked most of the way to London; and after finding employment connected with railway construction, and marrying his landlady, returned to work first at Coatbridge in Scotland for six months, then at the Pembroke Collieries near Sunderland, and subsequently at Choppington. In 1859 he published a volume of 'Poems,' no copy of which seems extant (cf. pref. to Miscellaneous Lyrics, 1878). The book attracted the attention of James Clephan, editor of the 'Gateshead Observer,' who obtained for him the post of under storekeeper at the Gateshead works of Hawks, Crawshay, and Sons. In 1863, after a fatal accident to one of his children in the works, he removed to Newcastle-on-Tyne, to become assistant librarian to the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society. The duties proved uncongenial, and he returned in 1864 to mines near Newcastle, remaining at work for various coal firms until 1882. Subsequently he obtained fighter employment. From 1882 to 1885 he and his wife were caretakers of the Bentinck board schools in Mill Lane, Newcastle. From September 1888 to June 1889 he was janitor at the Armstrong College (Durham University College of Science).

Meanwhile his poetic and intellectual faculty steadily developed, and his literary ambitions were encouraged by his friend Thomas Dixon, the working-man of Sunderland to whom Ruskin addressed the twenty-five letters published as 'Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.' Skipsey published 'Poems, Songs, and Ballads ' (1862); 'The Collier Lad, and other Lyrics ' (1864); 'Poems' (1871); and 'A Book of Miscel- laneous Lyiics' (1878, re-issued with additions and omissions as 'A Book of Lyrics,' 1881). There followed 'Carols from the Coalfields' (1886); and 'Songs and Lyrics' (1892). Skipsey's published work soon received praise from critics of insight. D. G. Rossetti commended his poems of mining life. 'A Book of Miscellaneous Lyrics' was appreciatively reviewed in the 'Athenaeum ' (16 Nov. 1878) by Theodore Watts-Dunton. Oscar Wilde likened his 'Carols from the Coalfields ' to the work of WiUiam Blake. In 1884-5 Skipsey acted as first general editor of the 'Canterbury Poets' (published by Walter Scott of Newcastle), and wrote rhetorical and disciu'sive but suggestive prefaces to the reprints of the poetry of Burns (two essays), Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, and Poe. A lecture, 'The Poet as Seer and Singer,' was delivered before the Newcastle-on-Tyne Literary and Philosophical Society in 1883, and was published in 1890.

Meanwhile in 1880 Dixon brought Skipsey to London and introduced him to Burne-Jones, to whose efforts the grant of 