Pickersgill had one son, who predeceased him, by his marriage, on 5 Aug. 1847, with Mary Noorouz Elizabeth, eldest daughter of James Hook, judge in the mixed commission courts of Sierra Leone, Africa, and sister of Mr. J. C. Hook, R.A. Mrs. Pickersgill died on 21 June 1886.
A portrait of Pickersgill, painted by Henry Gibbs, is in the possession of his son's widow, and a plaster bust made by H. Montford in 1887, an excellent likeness of the painter, belongs to Miss C. J. Hook of Bognor.
Pickersgill was not a prolific painter, for he exhibited only fifty pictures at the academy, and six at the British Institution (1841-7), during the thirty-seven years of his active career. His British Institution pictures included a subject from Spenser, scenes from 'The Taming of the Shrew' and 'King Henry IV, Pt. I,' actiii. sc. 1, 'Huon and Amanda' from Wieland's 'Oberon,' and 'Gaston de Foix before the Battle of Ravenna.' Among other works may be mentioned 'The Fairy Yacht,' an engraving of which, by F. Bacon, was published in 1856, and 'The Birth of Christianity,' which formed part of the Jones bequest (1882) to the South Kensington Museum. His design for a lunette in fresco in the large hall of the same museum, 'The Industrial Arts in Time of Peace,' was not carried out ; a sketch and a finished design for this subject are the property of the museum. His work was of a kind now out of fashion ; but it had solid technical merits, while few artists of his period had so much genuine imagination or were so happily inspired by the masterpieces of English poetry. In addition to his oil-paintings Pickersgill designed illustrations to Massinger's 'Virgin Martyr' (1844), Milton's ' Comus ' (1858), and Poe's 'Poetical Works' (1858). He issued six 'Compositions from the Life of Christ,' engraved on wood by Dalziel, in 1850, and illustrated the 'Lord's Prayer,' jointly with H. Alford, in 1870. He was also a contributor to Dalziel's Bible Gallery (1881).
[Morning Post, 22 Dec. 1900; Athenæum, 29 Dec. 1900: Royal Academy and British Institution Catalogues ; private information.]
PICKLE THE SPY, pseudonym. [See Macdonell, Alastair Ruadh (1725?–1761), thirteenth chief of Glengarry.
PITMAN, Sir ISAAC (1813–1897), the inventor of phonography, born at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, on 4 Jan. 1813, was son of Samuel Pitman, who then held the post of overseer in an extensive cloth factory, and who afterwards established a factory of his own. He acquired the rudiments of an English education in the grammar school of his native town, but he left it at the age of thirteen, and subsequently received lessons from a private teacher in his father's house. In 1831 it was decided that he should become a schoolmaster, and he accordingly went through a brief course of training at the college of the British and Foreign School Society in Borough Road, London. He was sent in January 1832 to take charge of an endowed school at Barton-on-Humber, Lincolnshire. Four years later he removed to Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where he was invited by a committee to establish a school on the model of the British and Foreign schools. In 1837 he was dismissed from the mastership because he had given grave offence to the managers by joining the 'New Church,' founded by Emmanuel Swedenborg, of which during the remainder of his life he was a devoted adherent. He was also a strict vegetarian. In June 1839 he settled in Bath, and established at 5 Nelson Place a private school, which he conducted till 1843.
He had begun to learn Taylor's system of shorthand about 1829 [see Taylor, Samuel], and it was this apparently trivial circumstance that altered the whole tenor of his career. Having derived great advantage from the use of the system in the saving of time, he earnestly desired to popularise the stenographic art by having it taught in schools as part of the ordinary curriculum. At that period there were no cheap shorthand manuals in existence. He therefore drew up a brief exposition of Taylor's method, which was to be illustrated with two plates and sold for threepence. This he forwarded in the spring of 1837 to Samuel Bagster (1771-1852) [q. v.], the London publisher, whose friendship he had previously gained by the gratuitous correction of references in the 'Comprehensive Bible.' The manuscript was shown to an experienced reporter, who pronounced against the reproduction of a system already in the market, and in forwarding this opinion Bagster intimated that if an original system were devised by his correspondent he would undertake the publication of it. Pitman at once set to work, and on 15 Nov. 1837 'Stenographic Sound-Hand' made its appearance in the shape of a little fourpenny book with two neatly engraved plates. In the introduction the inventor set forth the advantages of a system of shorthand written by sound over methods which followed the current orthography. He admitted that previous short-hand authors had to a limited extent
