Thomas Chandler Haliburton
Jurist, Writer and Politician
1796 - 1865
Creator of Sam Slick
He is, perhaps, best remembered for the series of humorous books chronicling the activities of Samuel (“Sam”) Slick, the itinerant clockmaker of Nova Scotia. These books were peppered with witty aphorisms which have entered the language: “he drank like a fish”, “the early bird gets the worm”, “it's raining cats and dogs”, “you can't get blood out of a stone”, “six of one and half a dozen of the other”, "a stitch in time saves nine", "truth is stranger than fiction", “whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience”.
Reviewing "The Clockmaker" in 1828, The Times quoted Alexander Pope, that other master of aphorisms, noting that the dunces on both sides of the Atlantic were "Safe from the bar, the pulpit and the throne / And touch'd and shamed by ridicule alone." Sam Slick continues to be remembered in Windsor today, his creator Haliburton regarded as the Tobias Smollett of Canada.
In his diary entry for 5 October 1894 Grant Duff wrote: "Mrs Cunard told me that a man had once come up to her father, Judge Haliburton, with whom I sat for a short time in the House of Commons, and had said to him: 'Sir, I hear that you live in the same place as Sam Slick the Clockmaker. Do you happen to know him?' 'Well, I ought to do so', was the reply. I have shaved him for the last forty years'. The querist, thoroughly mystified, was afterwards heard to say: 'Strange! that man looks like a gentleman; but he is really a barber!'"
Settles in England
Haliburton retired to England in 1856, taking a lease of Gordon House, St Margarets, on the banks of the Thames from the Earl of Kilmorey. His wife had died in 1841 and he married again, Sarah Harriet Williams, herself a widow. In 1859 he became the Member of Parliament for Launceston in Cornwall following encouragement from the Duke of Northumberland. He did not regard this as a satisfactory career move, though.
He died on 27 August 1865 and was buried in Isleworth churchyard.
Further reading
Alan C B Urwin, Railshead - the History of Gordon, Lacy and St Margaret's Houses, The Hounslow and District History Society, 1974Richard A. Davies (ed), The Letters of Thomas Chandler Haliburton