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son of Principal Blackwell of Marischal College in
Aberdeen, and was born in that city in or about the year
1700.1 His early training seems to have been careful.
Already in his fifteenth year he could boast of a fair
knowledge of Greek and Latin. When sixteen he
entered the University of Edinburgh or Aberdeen, but
how he spent his time there, and with what object in
view, we are not told. We only know that about 1722
he left the city secretly, “ urged by ambition and
restlessness ” to see the world and to seek his fortune elsewhere.
It is said that he first went to London and learned printing
in the printing-office of one Wilkin. In London also we
find him married. But who this Elizabeth Blackwell was,
whether the daughter of a small shopkeeper and
stocking-merchant in Aberdeen2 with whom he eloped, or the
daughter of a well-to-do London citizen, is not known.
Certain it is that she was a lady of much intelligence and
unselfish devotion. She was to have occasion soon to
prove the latter, for Blackwell, after having travelled
on the Continent, studied at Leyden, and taken his medical
degree at Aberdeen,3 founded a printing-establishment of
his own at London, an undertaking which, through the
trade jealousy of other printers, led to his ruin. He
became a bankrupt and inmate of the Debtors’ Prison.
1 There is uncertainty almost in every step of BlackwelPs life. The
Dictionary of National Biography inclines to the view that his father
was a learned Scotch minister and Professor of Divinity at Aberdeen,
called Thomas Blackwell (1661-1728), who married a sister of Dr
Johnston. Other sources, inspired by the opposite party, maintain that
his father was a petty shopkeeper (and stocking-merchant) in Aberdeen.
Even the date of his birth is uncertain.
2 See Em. Bruce, Eminent men of Aberdeen.
8 That he took a medical degree has also been denied. But during
his long trial, when everything was ferreted out that could injure the
accused, no doubt was expressed as to this, and even in his sentence the
title of Doctor of Medicine was retained.
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