John Middleton

John Middleton, a London artists’ colourman, lived in St. Martin’s Lane, next to Charing Cross. He was raised a Churchman, but became a Dissenter, eventually worshiping among the Particular Baptists, though his views were moderately Calvinistic at best. He was a good friend of Mary Hays's and Benjamin Flower’s favorite preacher, Robert Robinson. Miss Middleton’s sister, Sara, married Robert Aspland in 1802, which further explains Flower’s friendship with the Middletons.  Aspland first met the Middletons in 1798 while living in the home of Timothy Thomas, pastor of the Particular Baptist congregation at Devonshire Square.  Aspland and Middleton’s son, Joshua, who attended Thomas’s school, became good friends.  Aspland even worked in Middleton’s shop after returning from his studies in Scotland in 1801.  Most likely the Middletons attended the General Baptist church at Worship Street, for they were clearly Unitarians and consistent subscribers, both father and daughter, to the Unitarian Fund after its inception in 1806. In 1819 Miss Middleton appeared as a subscriber to the Fund, living now in Hackney, prob­ably to be nearer her sister, Mrs. Aspland (Rules 24). See Rules of the Unitarian fund, established 1806: to which are added, a Statement of the Society’s accounts, and a List of Subscribers, &c &c for 1819 and 1820 (Hackney: Stower and Smallfield, 1820), 24; Robert Brook Aspland, Memoir of the Life, Works and Correspondence, of the Rev. Robert Aspland, of Hackney (London: E. T. Whitfield, 1850), 160-62; J. T. Whitehead, A Historical Sketch of the Congregation now Meeting in the New Gravel-Pit Church, Hackney, and of its Successive Ministers (London: Book-room, Essexhall, 1909), 35-36.