The Bowyer Bible
John Albinson (1785-1854)
The Bowyer Bible came to Bolton after it was purchased by a local collector of antique books.
By all accounts John Albinson was a very distinctive local character, known in his later years as "Owd John". His collection of books and manuscripts was so large that he bought an entire row of cottages where he lived on Chapel Alley in Bolton to store them all.
During his lifetime he was an estate agent and also a land surveyor for all kinds of interests in the Lancashire region as well as parts of Yorkshire. He also took on public duties acting as Clerk to the Great Bolton Improvement Trustees (Police Commissioners) in 1800.
Despite being a man of considerable means he lived very simply with few home comforts and his only companion, according to the Journal and Guardian in 1949, was a "soot begrimed and repulsive old woman" who tended to his limited needs.
Even in his eighties he was conspicuous when out and about. He would wear worn leather breeches, an old hat that he periodically freshened up with a lick of paint and an old coat that had once been bottle green but latterly became covered in patches.
He was not too fond of new technology. When offered a steel nibbed pen, which at the time were beginning to replace quills, his response was, "None of your murdering,railway, metallic, new-fangled sort of thing for me. It may do very well for fops - tak' it away!" before destroying the offending item. Even as he lived a simple life he was generous in making donations to needy causes throughout his life, all the while keeping a sharp eye out for unworthy scroungers.
After his death the full extent of his life's work was made apparent. Over 20,000 volumes and manuscripts were auctioned along with the Bowyer Bible, in an auction that took 9 days to sell 1800 lots at the Assembly rooms in Bolton.
