William Burton

William Burton was a printer and stationer at 82 Fetter Lane, 1799 to 1808. He married Maria Ann Blow of Whittlesford in 1798 (see letter 76). Burton may have been a General Baptist and, like Benjamin Flower, a Unitarian, for in 1799 he printed William Vidler’s God’s love to his creatures asserted and vindicated; being a reply to the “Strictures upon an address to candid and serious me,” a Unitarian-universalist tract. He may have been a relation of Samuel Burton, who placed numerous advertisements in the Cambridge Intelligencer (see 31 December 1796, 7 January 1797, and 9 November 1799).  He first appears in the London directories as an appraiser and auctioneer at 8 Houndsditch, London (Lowndes [1787]: 28; UBD 1.ii.93).  In later directories he appears as a stationer, bookbinder, and printer at 152 Houndsditch (1798-1810), and at 156 Leadenhall Street (1811-27). He may have been a Dissenter, but clearly an evangelical, for he was an early subscriber to the Sunday School Society. See Plan of a Society Established in London, Anno Domini 1785, for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday-Schools in Different Counties of England (London: Sunday School Society, 1789), 20.