| Administrative History | William Thom was born in Aberdeen at the end of 1798 or beginning of 1799, and not in 1788 as given in some biographical sources. After a rudimentary education he commenced work as a weaver at the age of ten and was employed in firms in Aberdeen for 21 years when he went to Dundee accompanied by his wife. The marriage proved a failure and she left him to return to Aberdeen, where she died some time between 1870 and 1880. Two other women, Jean Whitecross and Jean Stephen, to whom he was devoted, were the mothers of his children; the former died in childbirth at Inverurie in 1840 and the latter there also a few weeks after the death of Thom himself in Dundee in 1848.
Thom had returned to Dundee, impoverished, shortly before his death, having spent several years in London, writing for various periodicals and becoming involved with Chartist leaders, whilst preparing further editions, in 1845 and 1847, of his 'Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom Weaver', first issued in Aberdeen in 1844. In this work Buchan gives an account of his early life in Aberdeenshire and Angus, which was amplified by a biographical sketch prefaced to a later edition published in 1880 by William Skinner, which includes material taken from William Buchanan's 'Glimpses of Olden Days in Aberdeen' (1870) and contains previously unpublished poems, some of which were of dubious authorship. In 1970, Robert Bruce, the grandson of Thom's friend of Inverurie days, William Bruce, produced a further biography and appreciation of the poet, 'William Thom the Inverurie Poet - a New Look', which incorporates some fresh material from letters and manuscripts preserved by William Bruce, corrects mistakes or injustices which had appeared in earlier biographies, and includes a bibliography of Thom's works. Bruce also mentions a missing portfolio of Thom's papers, which many years later came into the hands of the editor of the 'Aberdeen Weekly Free Press', who published four articles based on this material, Jul - Aug 1899, before further issues were suppressed, at the request of the poet's daughter, Marion, wife of David Scott, Peterhead (as is related in MS 2304). |