Joseph Gillow


Joseph Gillow was an English Roman Catholic antiquary, historian and bio-bibliographer, "the Plutarch of the English Catholics".

Biography

Born in Frenchwood House, Lancashire, to a recusant English Roman Catholic family able to trace an uninterrupted pedigree back to Conishead Priory in 1325, Gillow was the son of a magistrate, Joseph Gillow, and his wife, Jane Haydock, a descendant of Christopher Haydock, a Lancashire politician and a member of another prominent recusant English Roman Catholic family, the Haydocks of Cottam Joseph Gillow was educated at Sedgley Park School, Wolverhampton and St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw, where his brothers and uncles had studied for the priesthood. At Ushaw, Gillow developed an abiding interest in Lancashire Catholicism, resulting in the publication of The Tyldesley Diary in 1873.
In 1878 Gillow married Eleanor McKenna, daughter of John McKenna, of Dunham Massey Hall, with whom he had seven children. In marrying into the McKennas, Gillow secured himself a private income which allowed him to pursue his antiquarian interests..
Gillow published various researches into the history of Roman Catholicism in Lancashire, but his greatest achievement was the Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics. To fit his material into the five volumes allotted him by his publishers, he needed to abbreviate the later volumes. Cardinal Gasquet described the dictionary as a ‘veritable storehouse of information’, however, until 1986, no index was available.
Gillow was appointed honorary recorder of the Catholic Record Society at its foundation in 1904, and was a frequent contributor.

Other works