On Tuesday 28 February, I unveiled a Birmingham Civic Society Blue Plaque to Sam: Timmins. Professor Ewan Fernie unveiled one to George Dawson at the same time. Timmins was a very close friend of George Dawson; they both loved Shakespeare. Timmins read and re-read the plays and could quote from them at length, and did. ‘The more he studied’, he noted, ‘the more he found to study…’. Shakespeare was ‘a poet of the people…he saw more clearly and expressed more vividly than any other poet what related to the life and character and happiness of men and women.’
Timmins was not born into a literary family. He signed his name Sam: to distinguish himself from his father, also Samuel, who, with his two brothers, manufactured heavy steel tools at premises in Hurst Street, in a business founded by Sam:’s grandfather Richard in 1790. In 1838, Sam: was sent to Edgbaston Proprietary School where he studied commerce, Greek, Latin, French, mathematics, drawing, singing and dancing. In his free time he studied literature, particularly Burns, Byron and Shakespeare. He spent 1847-1848 travelling in Italy and Greece, an intellectually curious young man.
He worked in the family business until it was sold in 1887, and it gave him money to indulge in his purchase of antiquarian books. He was a talented speaker and gave lectures to the Polytechnic Institute in Steelhouse Lane, and many other places, and refused payment for talks he gave. From 1856 – 1866, he and Dawson taught classes on English Literature at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, and contributed to the lecture series there. They hosted a Shakespeare Club, and in 1862, it was decided to mark the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death in 1865, with the foundation of a Shakespeare Library for the citizens of Birmingham. This is now the largest public Shakespeare Library in the world, and is held in Archives and Collections, in the Library of Birmingham.
The Shakespeare Library building, designed by J.H. Chamberlain, was opened on 23 April 1868, and was supported by the free libraries committee. Timmins and Dawson gave many books from their own libraries, and other subscribers from Britain, Europe and America, also provided money for the purchase of books. This Library building has been moved three times and is now on the ninth floor of the Library of Birmingham.
When fire swept through the old Reference Library in 1879, Timmins was described as ‘the saddest man in Birmingham’. In 1883 he moved to Arley, near Coventry, and gave about 6,500 volumes on Shakespeare to Birmingham Reference Library.
In 1866 he edited ‘The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham and Midland Hardware District’. He wrote ‘A History of Warwickshire’ in 1889, and a short account of ‘Our Shakespeare Club’ in 1894. Timmins was a very generous donor of miscellaneous antiquarian papers to the Reference Library. Thanks to him, there are large scrapbooks of manuscripts and photographs for Boulton & Watt (MS 49), Joseph Priestley (MS 3004/11) and John Baskerville (MS 1666). He also collected and donated the letters of Catherine Hutton (daughter of William Hutton) (MS 168), other miscellaneous Boulton & Watt records (MS 59), the scientific and philosophical medals of Edward Thomason (MS 3470), and other items.
After the death of his wife, Ann Maria Nock, in 1901, he returned to Birmingham and lived in Clarence Road, Kings Heath. He died on 12 November 1902 and was buried in Key Hill cemetery. The only flower on his grave was a bunch of rosemary from the garden of Shakespeare’s birthplace. There was a card with a quotation from Hamlet: ‘There’s rosemary; that’s for remembrance.’
For further information, see the recent book, ‘George Dawson and his Circle’ by Andrew Reekes and Stephen Roberts (2021). [78.1 DAW Birmingham Collection, Level 4, Library of Birmingham.]
The plaque has now been placed on the house in Elvetham Road, Edgbaston, where Timmins lived during his working life.
Fiona Tait
The Iron Room 