Joseph Gillow

Joseph Gillow (5 October 1850 in Preston, Lancashire – 17 March 1921 in Westholme, Hale) was an English Roman Catholic antiquary, historian and bio-bibliographer, "the Plutarch of the English Catholics".[1]

Biography

Born in Frenchwood House, Lancashire,[2] to a recusant English Roman Catholic family able to trace an uninterrupted pedigree back to Conishead Priory in 1325, Gillow was the son of a magistrate, Joseph Gillow (1801-1872), and his wife, Jane Haydock (1805-1872), a descendant of Christopher Haydock, a Lancashire politician and a member of another prominent recusant English Roman Catholic family, the Haydocks of Cottam[3] [4] Joseph Gillow was educated at Sedgley Park School, Wolverhampton (1862-1863) and St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw (1864-1866), where his brothers and uncles had studied for the priesthood. [5] At Ushaw, Gillow developed an abiding interest in Lancashire Catholicism, resulting in the publication of The Tyldesley Diary in 1873. [6]

In 1878 Gillow married Eleanor McKenna, daughter of John McKenna, of Dunham Massey Hall, [7] with whom he had seven children.[8] In marrying into the McKennas, Gillow secured himself a private income which allowed him to pursue his antiquarian interests.[9]

Gillow published various researches into the history of Roman Catholicism in Lancashire, but his greatest achievement was the Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (5 vols, 1885-1902). To fit his material into the five volumes allotted him by his publishers, he needed to abbreviate the later volumes.[9] Cardinal Gasquet described the dictionary as a ‘veritable storehouse of information’, however, until 1986, no index was available.[10]

Gillow was appointed honorary recorder of the Catholic Record Society at its foundation in 1904, and was a frequent contributor.[11]

Other works
  • The Tyldseley Diary, (editor)
  • The Haydock Papers
  • St. Thomas Priory: the Story of a Staffordshire Mission
  • Lancashire Recusants
  • A Catalogue of the Martyrs in Englande for Profession of the Catholique Faith since the yeare of Our Lord 1535[12]

See Also


References
  1. Thomas Bridgett, in The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook, 1908; quoted in ODNB.
  2. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
  3. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
  4. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/haydock-christopher-1499-1566-or-later
  5. http://supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com/2016/03/william-haydock-of-whalley-abbey.html
  6. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
  7. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-41282
  8. https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/gillow/genealogy/tree/1a.shtml
  9. J.F.X. Bevan, ‘Gillow, Joseph (1850–1921)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; accessed 1 August 2008
  10. Bevan, J. F. X., Index and finding list to the bibliographical dictionary, 1986
  11. Catholic Records Volume List 1-76 Archived 2008-08-28 at the Wayback Machine, catholic-history.org.uk; accessed 21 October 2014.
  12. Burnand, Francis Cowley Burnand. "Gillow, Joseph", The Catholic Who's who and Yearbook, Burns & Oates, 1908, p. 171
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