Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/154

 trustees belonging to Ipswich, where they desired that the money might be paid.

[Calendars of State Papers, Dom.; Granville Penn's Memoirs of Sir William Penn.] 

PEACOCK, JAMES (1738?–1814), architect, born about 1738, became assistant to George Dance the younger [q. v.] when Dance was appointed architect and surveyor to the city of London at Guildhall. He retained his post for ‘nearly 45 years,’ and was also employed by Dance in his private practice. Finsbury Square (1777–1791) was a result of their joint labours, and at No. 17 Peacock himself lived and died. His former residence was at Coleman Street Buildings. In 1801–2 Peacock designed the first Stock Exchange in Capel Court, and he ‘restored and preserved’ St. Stephen's, Walbrook. There is also a drawing by him in the King's collection, British Museum, of the elevation of the Mines Royal, Dowgate Hill. Peacock published a few books connected with his professional studies. These were ‘Oikidia,’ a little tract containing plans for houses, London, 1785, 8vo, published under the pseudonym of Jose Mac Packe; ‘A new Method of Filtration by Ascent,’ London, 1793, 4to; and ‘Subordinates in Architecture,’ London, 1814, 4to. He also contributed ‘An Account of Three Simple Instruments for Drawing Architecture and Machinery in Perspective,’ printed in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1785.

Peacock was also interested in economic and social problems, and his treatises on these subjects, small as they are, are more remarkable than his architectural works. His ‘Outlines of a Scheme for the General Relief, Instruction, Employment, and Maintenance of the Poor’ was published in 1777 (cf. London Review of English and Foreign Literature, viii. 156), and is described by Peacock as ‘an imperfect and crude performance’ in another tract entitled ‘Proposals for a Magnificent and Interesting Establishment,’ London, 1790, 8vo. In 1789 he published ‘Superior Politics,’ and in 1798 ‘The Outlines of a Plan for establishing a United Company of British Manufacturers.’ All of these tracts set forth, with various modifications, Peacock's main project of ‘giving protection and suitable incitement, encouragement, and employ to every class of the destitute, ignorant, and idle poor who shall be healthy, able to work, and willing to conform … to such … regulations as the company shall enact, and which are intended to be of mutual benefit and advantage to the company and the workpeople, and eventually so to society at large.’ Peacock asserts that ‘very considerable use has been made of the original thoughts’ in his two earlier pamphlets by several writers, and refers to the first two reports of the Philanthropic Society, which was a flourishing and important institution.

Besides these published works, Peacock wrote a folio volume, still in manuscript, and preserved in the Soane Museum, on ‘Terms of Contracts for Bricklayers', Slaters', and Joiners' Works, on the Peace Establishment, for the Service of the Board of Ordnance.’ He died on 22 Feb. 1814, ‘universally beloved and respected,’ ‘in his seventy-ninth year,’ according to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine;’ but according to the tombstone in the back cemetery of St. Luke's, Old Street, he was in his seventy-sixth year.

[Dict. of Architecture; Gent. Mag. 1814, pt. i. p. 411; Peacock's Works; London Review; Brit. Mus. Cat.] 

PEACOCK, JOHN MACLEAY (1817–1877), verse-writer, son of William Peacock, was born on 31 March 1817 at Kincardine, Perthshire, the seventh of eight children. While his family was young the father died, and the struggle for existence became severe. Peacock was sent to work at a very early age, first at a tobacco factory, and afterwards at some bleaching works. Ultimately he was apprenticed to boiler-making, and this became his trade. Commercial fluctuations, and a strong natural disposition to travel, took him in the course of his lifetime to many parts of the world. Thus he gathered knowledge which went far to compensate for the want of school-training. He became a man of wide information, and a clear and original thinker. In both politics and religion he was always radical. He shared actively in the chartist movement, and afterwards, for many years, until his death, was an energetic secularist. For a considerable period he was employed at Laird's iron shipbuilding works, Birkenhead, where the Alabama was built; but this did not prevent him from openly advocating the cause of the north in the American civil war. Undoubtedly his outspokenness helped to keep him poor. Physically he was delicate, and, his occupation being arduous, in middle life his health failed; thenceforward he only earned a precarious income, chiefly as a newsvendor. He died in Glasgow of heart disease on 4 May 1877.

If Peacock's worldly circumstances had been better, or his disposition less modest, he might have become more famous, for wherever his work was known it was highly valued. At Birkenhead, at the Shakespeare tercentenary (1864), he was considered the