Catherine Hutton

Catherine Hutton (1766-1856) was a popular writer and novelist. She lived most of her life in Birmingham, though she visited Leicester often to see her close friends and relations, the Coltmans of St. Nicholas Street (friends but unrelated to Elizabeth Coltman’s family in the Newarke). She lived with the Coltmans for an extended period in 1802, at which time she first met Elizabeth Coltman. Hutton’s father, William Hutton, was a Birmingham historian and friend of the scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley and the novelist Robert Bage. Catherine Hutton published an account of the Priestley Riots in Birmingham in 1791 and a biography of her father in 1817 (Narrative of the Riots in Birmingham, July 1791 [reprinted in Birmingham in 1875] and The Life of William Hutton [1817]). Her popularity, however, came from three novels—The Miser Married (1813), The Welsh Mountaineer (1817), and Oakwood Hall (1819)—as well as numerous periodical pieces.  Other works include A Christmas Box for the Advocates of Bull-Baiting (1809); Bull-Baiting: A village Dialogue Between Tom Brown and John Simms (1809); Immediate not Gradual Abolition of Slavery; or an Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting rid of West Indian Slavery (1824). No British Slavery; or, an Invitation to the People to put a Speedy End to It (1824).