Elizabeth Dawbarn, was an English nurse and a pamphleteer from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, who wrote on the nature of Christ, the influence women can exert on men, and the rights and needs of young children. Her works were distributed through the Baptist movement.
Life
Originally Elizabeth Saltonstall, she came from Alford, Lincolnshire and was described as "a lady of substance". She is said to have been the only surviving member of a family descended from Samuel Saltonstall, the elder brother of Richard Saltonstall, Lord Mayor of London from 1597 to 1598. Little is known of her before she married Richard Bunbury Dawbarn of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire on 30 April 1782. She then encouraged her husband to leave the Church of England and join the Particular Baptist congregation in Wisbech. He later became a Baptist preacher. Their eight children were Mary, Thomas, Richard, John, Elizabeth, Ann, Robert and Frances. Her husband predeceased her in 1829 at the age of 72. A later pamphlet of hers on child care is addressed to her daughter Elizabeth. Little more is known of her private life.
Works
Dawbarn's religious writings, addressed to children and to adults, are centred on the Old Testament, and are intended to demonstrate "the historical and symbolic connection between the Old and the New Testaments". The Eternal Existence of the Son of God shows parallel literal and symbolic readings of the Old Testament in its treatment of Proverbs 8. In the Young Person's Assistant in Reading the Old Testament Dawbarn writes in the person of a mother to her children, who underlines the importance of instilling Christianity into them, pausing to define difficult terms and passages. Her work on the nature of Christ probably dates from 1800, and that on The Rights of Infants; or, a Letter from a mother to a daughter, relative to the nursing of infants from 1805. The latter presses for the importance of infant care and of kindly commonsense in applying it. Dawbarn's earlier anonymous, Dialogue between Clara Neville and Louisa Mills, on Loyalty is strongly conservative in its preference for monarchy over liberty. It underlines the importance to God of comforting the poor and the influence that women can exert over men in this respect. In 1805 she published an anthology of writings against the theatre: ''Sentiments selected from Writers of Ancient and Modern Celebrity concerning Theatrical Amusements. Presented to Mrs. T. Robertson, author of "An Answer to the Effusions of Gratitude, &c." Dawbarn's writings were published locally in Wisbech, but disseminated more widely through the Baptist movement.
Note
Elizabeth Yelverton of Liverpool married Elizabeth Dawbarn's grandson William Dawbarn in 1843, becoming another Elizabeth Dawbarn.
