| John was a man of very amiable sociable and entertaining in his conversation and an earnest Christian. He has a genius for mechanical inventions, like his father, and for several years occupied with the invention of what has been called the box wheel, or Collinges Patent Axle. Before his time wheels were only fastened on the axle by the common lynch pin, which was continually falling out, when the wheel almost certainly came off, and of cause upset was the consequence. The origanal wheel far from complete was in the posession of his grand daughter, Mrs Maria Spilsbury Young. He was a devoted Christian and his veiws were those of a liberal dissenter and calvinist. He was constant and unwearying in all sorts of missionery exertions. With the help of, his son Augustus beleaves, Miss Hamilton, he established Dispensary Lane Sunday School, the first Sunday School ever opened in Dublin. He worked much among the Hackney coachmen in that city, with important and interesting results. |  Portrait by his wife |
| Maria's name as an artist is now
almost forgotten, but in the early part of the 19th century it was well
known. Her pictures were the favourites in several Royal Academy
Exhibitions. Twenty five carriages were counted one day before her door
when her pictures for that year were on private view. It was said of
her that she `painted after Fuseli', but that Fuseli painted men, Mrs
John Taylor painted angels. George IV, when Prince Regent, used to come to St. Georges Row and stand by Mrs. Taylor while she painted. Another of her critics was Susan Paradise, her childrens nurse, a woman of quick observation. On one occasion when the Prince Regent was watching the completion of a certain picture he remaarked, "Now, Mrs. Taylor, I am convinced that you can do nothing more to that picture, it is quite finished!" "You think so your Highness? Let us call Susan Paradise, she will tell us if it is complete!" On being asked, Susan remarked that the woman sewing in the picture had on no thimble; upon which the Prince rushed after her in a rage, and she fled with her capstrings flying. |
 Self portrait at age 16 |
