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Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 2:41 pm
by John Upham
During lockdown I cobbled together a modest piece on Jacob Sharratt
https://britishchessnews.com/2020/11/06 ... 6-xi-1819/
I was unable (at the time) to unearth a reliable date of birth.
Those of you with multiple sources at your finger tips might be able to help?
John
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 3:27 pm
by Jon D'Souza-Eva
Bill Wall mentioned on
http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/articles/Sarratt.htm that Hazlitt was critical of Sarratt, so I had to find it:
William Hazlitt wrote:
Sarratt, the chess-player, was an extraordinary man. He had the same tenacious, epileptic faculty in other things that he had at chess, and could no more get any other ideas out of his mind than he could those of the figures on the board. He was a great reader, but had not the least taste. Indeed the violence of his memory tyrannised over and destroyed all power of selection. He could repeat [all] Ossian by heart, without knowing the best passage from the worst; and did not perceive he was tiring you to death by giving an account of the breed, education, and manners of fighting-dogs for hours together. The sense of reality quite superseded the distinction between the pleasurable and the painful. He was altogether a mechanical philosopher.
(see
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essay ... eHouse.htm)
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 4:01 pm
by John Upham
Jon D'Souza-Eva wrote: ↑Sat Oct 19, 2024 3:27 pm
Bill Wall mentioned on
http://billwall.phpwebhosting.com/articles/Sarratt.htm that Hazlitt was critical of Sarratt, so I had to find it:
William Hazlitt wrote:
Sarratt, the chess-player, was an extraordinary man. He had the same tenacious, epileptic faculty in other things that he had at chess, and could no more get any other ideas out of his mind than he could those of the figures on the board. He was a great reader, but had not the least taste. Indeed the violence of his memory tyrannised over and destroyed all power of selection. He could repeat [all] Ossian by heart, without knowing the best passage from the worst; and did not perceive he was tiring you to death by giving an account of the breed, education, and manners of fighting-dogs for hours together. The sense of reality quite superseded the distinction between the pleasurable and the painful. He was altogether a mechanical philosopher.
(see
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essay ... eHouse.htm)
Thanks for that: most interesting.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 4:12 pm
by Christopher Kreuzer
Nice bit of history.
Spotted a typo in your article, John: "Surratt" appears six times instead of "Sarratt".
Some more quotes from the piece that Jon found:
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essay ... eHouse.htm
Poor and faint are my sketches compared to his! It was like looking into a camera obscura -- you saw faces shining and speaking -- the smoke curled, the lights dazzled, the oak wainscotting took a higher polish -- there was old Sarratt, tall and gaunt, with his couplet from Pope and case at Nisi Prius, Mounsey eyeing the ventilator and lying perdu for a moral, and Hume and Ayrton taking another friendly finishing glass! -- These and many more windfalls of character he gave us in thought, word, and action.
He was once sitting where Sarratt was playing a game at chess without seeing the board
[i.e. blindfold chess]
Sarratt, who was a man of various accomplishments (among others one of the Fancy), afterwards bared his arm to convince us of his muscular strength
Does anyone know what "one of the Fancy" means?
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 4:31 pm
by Jon D'Souza-Eva
Christopher Kreuzer wrote: ↑Sat Oct 19, 2024 4:12 pm
Does anyone know what "one of the Fancy" means?
The Fancy were the aristocrats who followed, sponsored and bet on bare knuckle fighting. So saying that Sarratt was "one of the Fancy" probably means he was a bare knuckle fighter himself, rather than one of the aristocrats.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 4:35 pm
by John Upham
Thanks for the correction CK.
I assume that JHS would, in these modern times, have been an owner of several American XL Bully dogs for his amusement.
Something else that amused me at the time was the phrase:
He was regarded as a very affable fellow and very well-read but with limited taste
I can't help feeling that this is going to apply to very many persons.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 6:21 pm
by Jon D'Souza-Eva
Some 19th century references say that Sarratt died in 1821 rather than 1819. I found a burial for a Jacob Charles Sarratt, aged 43, on the 16th November, 1819.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 8:07 pm
by Richard James
We have a marriage record for 30 December 1804, where Sarratt married (Elizabeth) Camilla Dufour, a celebrated singer and writer, at St Leonard's Church, Shoreditch.
- Sarratt2.jpg (62.75 KiB) Viewed 1027 times
You'll see that he was a widower and Camilla's
Wikipedia entry informs us that she inherited two step-children.
Sarratt's death was widely reported in the press in November 1819.
This is from the
General Evening Post 11 November 1819
- Sarratt1.jpg (27.81 KiB) Viewed 1027 times
The year of birth generally given (1772) must come from these reports stating that he was in his 47th year. I haven't yet been able to find any baptismal records, or any records of his first marriage.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 8:21 pm
by Jon D'Souza-Eva
Thanks Richard. That newspaper report confirms that the 6th November, 1819, death date is correct.
Ancestry offers this as a record of his first marriage in 1790:
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/ ... 0534-00035
as image:
https://bashify.io/i/nXp3fr_jacobsarrat ... riage_1790
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 8:22 pm
by Richard James
- Sarratt3a.jpg (14.09 KiB) Viewed 1017 times
- Sarratt3.jpg (45.25 KiB) Viewed 1017 times
Here we have an extract from the Fleet Prison discharge book. Curiously, the date of discharge appears to be earlier that the date from when he was detained.
One of the names here is that of Abraham Samuda, a Jewish merchant and chess player, who was the dedicatee of
Sarratt on Chess.
Sarratt also appears in various records of the United Grand Lodge of England Freemason membership registers, from 1794 onwards.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 8:28 pm
by Richard James
Thanks Jon. I'd just discovered this as well - in Jersey.
Their two children may have been Mary Ann Louisa and Susan Catherine.
The death record from 1819 gives his age as 43, rather than being in his 47th year.
- Sarratt4.jpg (34.87 KiB) Viewed 1016 times
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 8:38 pm
by Jon D'Souza-Eva
Richard James wrote: ↑Sat Oct 19, 2024 8:28 pm
The death record from 1819 gives his age as 43, rather than being in his 47th year.
Sarratt4.jpg
Yes, I mentioned that burial record earlier. The middle name is wrong as well. Is a burial ten days after the death normal for that period? I know it was winter, but even so. I did search on ancestry and others for a Jacob Charles Sarratt, born around 1776, but without any success. It seems unlikely that two people called Jacob Sarratt died in London within a few weeks of each other.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2024 10:00 pm
by Jon D'Souza-Eva
Just to confuse matters further, this page implies that the Jacob Sarrett who married in 1790 was a different one to the chess player:
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~prsjr/g ... /alan1.htm
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2024 7:35 am
by Christopher Kreuzer
Unless you know how common a surname is, and whether there was a particular concentration of people with that surname, it is difficult to tell how likely it is that two people with the same name died in a large conurbation like London within a few weeks of each other. There were presumably a lot of Jacobs Sarrats in France, one of whom might have been in London and died. I have had similar problems with names that may appear uncommon in the UK or other English-speaking countries, but are very common in other countries.
Re: Jacob Sarratt
Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2024 7:40 am
by Christopher Kreuzer
Though I see now that the French name is spelt differently, but that it is a surprisingly common name in the UK.
Heartily wielding the mighty family motto of "Hope and Justice!" through the gathering mists of time, the proud and noble Sarratt surname strides boldly forth from the Burgundy region of east-central France.
Original spelling something like SAROT.