John Pass (engraver)

John Pass or Paas (c.1783–1832) was an English engraver and murder victim.

Life
James Cook, the murderer of John Pass

Pass was an established copper plate engraver in Pentonville, London.[1] He made plates for The History, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester (1798–1801) by John Milner.[2] John Wilkes the London bookseller, who was from Winchester, knew him at the end of the 18th century, and took him on for illustrations of his Encyclopaedia Londoniensis. Pass produced plates for volume 13 of the work.[1]

John Paas (name used legally) was murdered in Leicester by James Cook, in a criminal case that attracted wide attention. He was aged 49, a partner in the firm Paas & Co. of High Holborn, London, engravers. He was in Leicester as a travelling salesman of specialist hardware.[3] Cook, a printer and bookbinder, was exhibited on a gibbet after being hanged, the last British criminal to be so treated.[4]

Paas & Co.

The firm of C. and A. Paas & Co. was in business at various Holborn addresses in the second half of the 18th century. One of the partners, Cornelius Paas, an engraver from Germany, came to London around 1765.[5]

Notes
  1. Bernard Adams (1 January 1983). London Illustrated, 1604-1851: A Survey and Index of Topographical Books and Their Plates. Oryx Press. p. 261. ISBN 978-0-85365-734-7.
  2. William Upcott (1818). A Bibliographical Account of the Principal Works Relating to English Topography. R. and A. Taylor. p. 288.
  3. Ben Beazley (29 February 2012). Leicester Murders. History Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-7524-8423-5.
  4. Jeremy Beadle; Ian Harrison (2007). Firsts, Lasts and Onlys: Crime. Pavilion Books. pp. 55–. ISBN 978-1-905798-04-9.
  5. "Paas (Biographical details), British Museum". Retrieved 12 July 2016.
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