{"id":2245,"date":"2025-11-30T12:50:40","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T12:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/?page_id=2245"},"modified":"2026-05-29T07:44:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:44:23","slug":"on-line-exhibit-false-john-walkers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/on-line-exhibit-false-john-walkers\/","title":{"rendered":"False John Walkers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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False images of John Walker : the actor, the engineer and ‘long-hairy Johnny’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Exhibitor : Alan Middleton<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

We now know that there are no verified images of John Walker in existence. However, previous researchers identified pictures which were thought to be our John Walker but have subsequently proven to be false, and these mistakes led to some interesting and sometimes embarrassing stories. This is the story of the false John Walker images.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In her 1971 book Doreen used an image of John Walker (1732-1807), <\/strong>English stage actor, philologist and lexicographer, believing it to be correct, but in 1993 local genealogist Ray Hewitson proved it was wrong<\/li>\n
  2. In 1993 Stockton Council were donated a portrait which Doreen called “long-hairy Johnny<\/strong>” and which Ray Hewitson proved in 1995 was not ‘our’ John Walker<\/li>\n
  3. At one time the Scottish engineer James Walker<\/strong> was proposed, but this has been disproven too<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Also, no known matchbox label issued by John Walker has ever been discovered, although a fake label did circulate in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

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    Annie Wilkinson laying a wreath on her great-uncle’s grave in St Mary’s Churchyard, Norton, April 1927<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    1927, the first (false) image of John Walker<\/span><\/h2>\n

    In April 1927, on the Centenary of the first recorded sale of Walker’s Friction Lights, John Walker’s great-niece Annie Maria Wilkinson, born 1849 then aged 78, gave a fascinating insight into her famous great-uncle. She was interviewed on 7th<\/sup> April 1927 at her home in 7 Clarence Terrace Stockton by a reporter from the Stockton Herald and the story and pictures were syndicated to all the other main local Northeast newspapers, as it was a big event. It is the only official record ever given to the Press by a close Walker family member.<\/p>\n

    For the first time, a portrait of Annie’s great-uncle John was printed alongside a separate photograph of his pestles and mortars along with a photograph of Annie herself to give it provenance. It has to be assumed Annie gave her consent to this particular John Walker portrait being published alongside her own and was a true likeness of her great-uncle, as only she would have known its veracity as she was age 10 when he died. Unfortunately, the date of the portrait or where it came from was not given in the newspaper article.<\/p>\n

    A metal engraving of their great-uncle John Walker was presented by Annie Maria and Henrietta Wilkinson in 1917 to the C. of E. St. Thomas Parish Church, High Street, Stockton where John had been baptised in 1781. I surmise this was possibly a family portrait of John kept in their mother’s house (she died in 1915) but have no proof of its provenance of when or why it was made. It was hung up in the Church vestry, but its present location is unknown. This is believed to be the same portrait of John Walker in the April 7th<\/sup> 1927 Centenary newspaper article alongside a photograph of Annie Maria who must have consented to its publication. This was the first time this metal engraving portrait of John Walker appeared publicly in a newspaper.<\/p>\n

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    Metal engraving of John Walker the actor, used in the Stockton Herald on 7th April 1927 alongside Annie Wilkinson and also in Doreen Thomas’ 1971 book<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    In Doreen Thomas’<\/strong><\/a> John Walker research notes, some of which are in my possession and others in Teesside Archive, she talks about “in the vestry of Stockton Parish Church is a framed copy of the John Walker picture similar to one alongside Annie Maria Wilkinson in the newspapers in April 1927.” She thinks Annie would have known what he looked like. It can be clearly seen that Doreen used the same 1927 John Walker portrait in her 1971 and 1990 ‘Strike a Light’ books with the proof in her own words adding it was from a ‘metal engraving’.<\/p>\n

    Doreen Thomas produced a typed undated inventory, after 1977 at the earliest, containing a long list of what she personally had available in her own collection on John Walker to loan out for local displays which she was always trying to arrange. At the top of her long inventory was : “a large gilt-framed portrait of the inventor from (1781-1859) painted from a metal engraving, copper plate of Walker’s portrait for printing posters and a small steel plate of the portrait”. She also listed 24 photographs of his life and work, a microfilm of the Day Book and individual prints and negatives from the Day Book for further research. The question has to be asked : where are all these items now?<\/p>\n

    In another Doreen Thomas note of March 1993, she claims that in his 1894 Stockton lecture Joseph Parrott presented a portrait of John Walker lent to him by Mrs Sanderson, wife of Alderman Francis Sanderson, but I cannot find the newspaper report for it. In her 1971 first book, Doreen Thomas thought Joseph Parrott was a ‘wonderful man’ and included a picture of him, but in her second 1990 book he got a much smaller and muted mention. Had Doreen changed her opinion of him and why?<\/p>\n

    Assuming that Joseph Parrott’s statement that the Walker portrait he showed in his 1890’s lecture had come from Mrs. Sanderson was true, was this actually the “large gilt framed portrait or the copper engraving” Doreen Thomas was referring to in her 1977 inventory? What has happened to these portraits and engravings and where are they now? Perhaps there were a number of similar engraved copies made of John Walker but by whom? Did Mrs. Sanderson have her own copy of it, or was it a family picture loaned by Ann Wilkinson for the lecture? Her husband Alderman Francis Sanderson wrote in the 1880’s that he knew John Walker “intimately”‘ from his father’s saddlers shop at 60 High Street next door to John, and it is also likely he too would have been also well acquainted with the Wilkinson family. It is a distinct possibility Mrs Sanderson, through her husband was also a friend of the Wilkinson family as he was a well-known Stockton dignitary and the Wilkinson’s (Ann, Maria and Henrietta) were a respected and noted family of the Stockton community who associated with the leaders in the town.<\/p>\n

    Fast forward to the 1990’s. What John Walker looked like, or rather what he did not look like became the subject of copious national newspaper and television comments. The well-known portrait of John Walker in the 1927 newspapers alongside Annie Maria Wilkinson was claimed not to be him. It was even said that she had been ‘hoodwinked’ to agree to her photograph being alongside an imposter.<\/p>\n

    There was also a scurrilous suggestion in the local Stockton & Darlington and Northern Echo newspapers on 28th<\/sup>\/29th<\/sup> May 1993 that Stocktonian businessmen Joseph Parrott and Michael Heaviside in the 1890’s, when setting out to prove that the match was actually invented by John Walker in Stockton, to strengthen and add credibility to their case, had ‘borrowed’ the image of the actor John Walker (1732-1807) from a 1791 book on elocution that he had written.<\/p>\n

    In October 1993, Doreen Thomas wrote ‘The Final Chapter’ in the North Western Phillumenists Bulletin saying “no likeness of the match inventor is known to exist<\/b>“. The background to her statement was that in early 1993 the Stockton genealogist Ray Hewitson gave Doreen a photocopy of the title page of the ‘John Walker Teacher of Elocution’ 1798 book on ‘Classical Pronunciation’ which he and his daughter Carolyn had discovered in Palace Green Library, Durham University. This book included an identical image of the actor author<\/strong> to that which had appeared in the 100th<\/sup> Anniversary 1927 newspapers and which Doreen had used in her own 1971 and 1990 John Walker books. This wrong image could have come from the framed copy of ‘John Walker’ from a metal engraving in the vestry in Stockton Parish Church from about 1917 which Doreen knew about and was in her research notes. This metal engraving has since disappeared.<\/p>\n

    Alternatively, I am speculating now but Doreen did say in her Hardcastle’s pamphlet published in 1971 that she met Irene Wright in the 1960’s when she was doing her initial John Walker research. Irene’s father John William Price had been the manager of the old Hardcastle’s  chemist shop in 2 Finkle Street before his death in 1962. It was Mr. Price who preserved the shop and its contents for posterity by selling them for \u00a350 in 1962 to Frank Atkinson, then Curator of Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham, who then became a Director of the Beamish Hall Open Air Museum. The critical importance of the sale to Beamish was that William Hardcastle had bought Walker’s shop stock, including the Day Book and his pestles and mortars when Walker retired in 1858 and perhaps the John Walker portrait was included amongst these purchases?<\/p>\n

    An old John Walker scrap book was sent to Stockton Council in March 1993 and displayed in the Green Dragon Museum at the BML&BS Stockton Golden Jubilee Anniversary meeting in October 1995. It featured newspaper cuttings from the 1927 Centenary and claimed that the 1927 picture of John Walker made from the metal engraving was actually the actor John Walker.<\/p>\n

    Doreen passed away in July 1997 and even though a lot of her John Walker research notes and correspondence have survived, the controversy over his image still exists to this day.<\/p>\n

    However, to add further to the doubt of the veracity of the 1927 newspaper image, my researches have discovered three further identical John Walker portraits (similar to the 1927 image), two of them in the National Galleries Scotland catalogued as being the actor John Walker by two engravers T Clerk and James Barry. Their portraits may have been plagiarised from a third 18th<\/sup> century engraver J W Alais who specialised in portraits of actors from London’s Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres. Interestingly the identical Alais portrait to Clerk and Barry was claimed to be an American Senator John Walker (1744-1809)! This is conclusive proof that the well-known John Walker image used over the last century in the newspapers and by Doreen Thomas was actually the Middlesex actor John Walker (1732-1807) and not<\/strong> the Stockton match inventor John Walker (1781-1859).<\/p>\n

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    1833 reprint of a 1791 book by John Walker the actor showing his image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Right, the title page of “A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary<\/strong>” by John Walker (1732-1807) originally published in 1791.  Comparing this image, it is clear that this is the same one that has been used in various publications illustrating John Walker the inventor of the Friction Match.<\/p>\n

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    Northern Echo 10 August 2016<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

     <\/p>\n

    There is a big doubt in my mind whether Joseph Parrott deliberately conspired to deceive the people of Stockton including the three Wilkinson women, with the co-operation of Mrs Sanderson, by using a John Walker portrait in the full knowledge it was actually the actor John Walker. He was lecturing in high profile, well-attended meetings to the great and the good of Stockton including Walker\u2019s great-niece Annie Wilkinson, to champion John Walker as the inventor of the friction match and I believe he simply made a mistake. Parrott would not want to lose his own reputation as a champion for John Walker or that of the many Stockton citizens, dignitaries and the many prominent local businessmen who also supported his John Walker campaign.<\/p>\n

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    John Walker tableau in Peace Day Celebrations Parade in Stockton, 19 July 1919, image : Michael Heavisides<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    The only other depiction of John Walker I have seen in any publication prior to 1927 was a Stockton school teacher Mr. T W Croft dressed up as Walker wearing a white wig. It was 19th<\/sup> July 1919 and there was a \u2019Peace Day\u2019 procession in Stockton, where printer and author Michael Heaviside designed with local school children a tableau in honour of John Walker. Heaviside was another champion of John Walker and had published a pamphlet in 1909 on \u2019The True History of the Invention of the Lucifer Match\u2019, significantly without a portrait of him. However, the question is left hanging in the air of why didn\u2019t Heaviside ask to borrow the John Walker portrait from whoever had it – the Wilkinsons, Parrott or Mrs. Sanderson for his publication? Could it be because Joseph Parrott wanted to publish a John Walker book of his own and Michael Heaviside beat him to it, and he would not lend him the portrait? There was certainly no suggestion by Heaviside at any time the portrait shown by Mrs Sanderson at a Parrott lecture in 1894\/96 was surreptitiously taken from an old book written by the actor John Walker showing an image of himself.<\/p>\n

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    Painting in Preston Park Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Long-hairy Johnny<\/h2>\n

    Also in 1993, another portrait was donated to Stockton Council allegedly of John Walker in later life with long white hair taken from a ‘Carte de Visite’ photograph.<\/p>\n

    There is strong evidence from genealogist Ray Hewitson, in a letter<\/strong><\/a> to Doreen Thomas in October 1995, proving beyond doubt this \u2019long hairy Johnny\u2019 portrait (as Doreen called him) was from a different Walker family who only came to live in Stockton after the match inventor’s death in 1859.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

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    James Walker portrait by John Prescott Knight, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    James Walker<\/h2>\n

    A third man James Walker<\/strong><\/a> FRSE FRS FRSA<\/span> (14 September 1781 \u2013 8 October 1862) was then put forward but he was proved to be a prominent Scottish civil engineer and contractor. <\/p>\n

    A postscript to the Heaviside’s connection happened in November 1995 when a stock of over 2,000 old metal engraving printing blocks was found, originating from Heaviside’s print shop, some of them going back to Stockton in the 1800’s. They are now in Preston Park Museum in the print shop in the Victorian Street, and it would be interesting to see an inventory of them all, and what they show because printer Henry Heaviside was in business in Finkle Street Stockton from 1857 and there could be even earlier plates from other printers in this treasure trove of Stockton images.<\/p>\n

    21st<\/sup> Century, the mistakes continue<\/h2>\n

    The furore on what John Walker looked like got out of hand in the 21st<\/sup> Century. There was some sniggering at the expense of Stockton Council on the BBC satirical program ”Have I Got News for You” for the Council having erected in 1977 a bust of John Walker on a plinth honouring the wrong man. A councillor in a 2016 Council meeting complained the statue in the town’s John Walker Square outside the Castlegate Shopping Centre (now demolished) was ‘hidden away’ and deserved more prominence. The Council’s Head of Culture then admitted the Council had known for more than twenty years that the face on the bust sitting on top of the plinth was of the wrong man. It was widely reported in the national media at the time to great mirth that the bust was actually of the actor John Walker, and there is no evidence he ever came to a Stockton theatre.<\/p>\n

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    A faked John Walker matchbox label, Joan Rendell 1968<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Fake matchbox label<\/h2>\n

    In her 1968 book “Matchbox Labels” Joan Rendell included an image of a John Walker label which she thought was genuine. However, this sparked a debate about the authenticity of the label.<\/span><\/p>\n

    It is clearly a fake, because the label says “Walker’s Friction Matches” and we know from the existing Day Book that Walker called his matches “Friction Lights” never “Friction Matches”. King William IV reigned from 26 June 1830 to 20 June 1837, a time when the town was known as Stockton-upon-Tees<\/strong>, it did not become Stockton-on-Tees until after<\/strong> the 1841 census which is another reason we know the label is a fake.<\/p>\n

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    Dick Holton letter explaining where the photo came from<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    This label came from a photograph which the eminent collector Dick Holton took in the 1950s, as explained in this letter that he wrote about it. <\/p>\n

    In December 1970 the “Matchbox Label Panel” published a report<\/strong><\/a> on forgeries, including this fake John Walker label. The Panel consisted of a dozen major collectors from across the world, including Dick Holton.<\/p>\n

    Click here<\/strong><\/a> to return to the Exhibition Catalogue.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Exhibitor : Alan Middleton We now know that there are no verified images of John Walker in existence. However, previous researchers identified pictures which were thought to be our John Walker but have subsequently proven to be false, and these mistakes led to some interesting and sometimes embarrassing stories. This is the story of the […] Read more<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2245","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2245"}],"version-history":[{"count":50,"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7312,"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2245\/revisions\/7312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phillumeny.com\/johnwalker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}