Rev. John Baillie is best remembered to those with an interest in Newcastle’s past as the author of one of the noted histories of the town, namely, An Impartial History of the Town and County of Newcastle Upon Tyne, published in 1801. But he was not your average, strait-laced, dusty-haired antiquarian. And nor was he your typical cleric, either.
Born in 1741, Baillie was trained for the ministry in Scotland, becoming a minister of the Secession Church (an off-shoot of the Church of Scotland). In 1767, he was elected minister of the United Secession Chapel at what was known as Newcastle’s Sallyport Meeting House, and was, by all accounts, a popular preacher for several years – known especially for his scathing attacks on the Papacy. But what has been described as his “convivial habits” resulted in behaviour inappropriate for a man of his standing, and he was suspended in 1784. He ended up in debt, finding himself in Newgate debtors’ prison – where he was afforded a certain amount of freedom, being allowed to preach on Sundays (accompanied, though, by a gaoler).
On one such occasion, he slipped his guard’s attentions and escaped to Scotland. There he preached for a few years, before clearing his debts and returning to Newcastle in 1789. He taught in partnership with mathematician William Tinwell for a while at a school in Dog Bank; and took to preaching once more – firstly at a schoolroom in St.Nicholas’ Churchyard, then for a few troubled years at Sunderland, before popping up at Newcastle again in 1797 at the Postern Gate Chapel.
He thus made his living through ministerial income, teaching and, of course, by writing: his history of Newcastle being accompanied by works on religious treatises and sermons, the history of the French Wars, and assisting in the writing of a history of Egypt (supposedly littered with a good deal of “flagrant indecency”). Despite his various scrapes and troubles, he was a respected scholar and a member of the prestigious Newcastle Literary & Philosophical Society.
He is understood to have married in about 1776 and had at least one daughter. In his declining years his financial problems returned, until “death extricated him from his difficulties” whilst resident in Gateshead in 1806. He was buried in the nonconformist Ballast Hills Cemetery, Newcastle – the town being a good deal less colourful for his absence.
[article taken from Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Fragments of the Past, Vol.1]
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