Artists footsteps henry parkes biography

National Library of Australia, Forced off their farm in by debt, the Parkes family moved to Glamorganshire and about settled in Birmingham, where Thomas was a gardener and odd-job man. Henry's formal education was in his own words, 'very limited and imperfect'; he briefly attended Stoneleigh parish school and later joined the Birmingham Mechanics' Institute.

Artists footsteps henry parkes biography: Sir Henry Parkes, the 'Father

Obliged as a boy to help in supporting the family, he worked as a road labourer and in a brickpit and rope-walk, before being apprenticed to John Holding, bone and ivory turner of Moseley Street. Having served his articles, he began his own business in They regularly attended Carr's Lane Independent Chapel under the formidable John Angell James, whose precepts and oratorical style left a permanent impress on Parkes.

He heard Attwood, Scholefield and Edmunds orate at Newhall Hill, sported the union badge and in dedicated a poem on the wrongs of Poland to Attwood's son. The business failed and in Parkes took Clarinda to London in search of better prospects. They survived a few weeks by pawning his tools, then determined to leave for New South Wales as bounty migrants.

In March Hetherington's Charter published verses from Parkes as 'A Poet's Farewell', indignantly condemning a society through whose injustices 'men like this are compelled to seek the means of existence in a foreign wilderness'. Parkes assured his Birmingham family of his certainty of 'making my fortune and coming back to fetch all of you'.

He and Clarinda sailed from Gravesend on 27 March in the Strathfieldsaye , their ears 'incessantly assailed by the coarse expressions and blasphemies' of other steerage passengers.