Biography

George Garbutt (1791-1859)

George Garbutt was a Sunderland printer who wrote and published A Historical and Descriptive View of the Parishes of Monkwearmouth and Bishopwearmouth and the Port and Borough of Sunderland in 1819. Garbutt was a member of Sunderland’s Sea Captains’ Lodge (now Palatine Lodge No.97) and he relied on a fellow freemason, the actor James Field Stanfield, to write the sections of his history dealing with theatre and masonic activities. Garbutt had published Stanfield’s Essay on the Study and Composition of Biography in 1813. In 1819 Garbutt involved himself in local controversy by publishing various addresses related to the character of Bishopwearmouth’s George Wilson Meadley, a founding member of the town’s Subscription Library whose conversion to Unitarianism had caused contention among members of the town’s literati.

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