John Carteret Pilkington

John Carteret Pilkington
Born	1730 Dublin, Ireland
Died	1763 Europe
Occupation	singer, actor, writer
Language	English
Nationality	Irish

John Carteret Pilkington (1730-1763) was an Irish singer and writer who left lively memoirs of his early life and collaborated on the memoirs of his mother Laetitia Pilkington.

Known as Jack, the younger surviving son of the art historian Matthew Pilkington and the poet Laetitia Pilkington, he was christened by the rites of the Church of Ireland in Dublin on 1 May 1730. His godparents were the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount Carteret later 2nd Earl Granville, for whom Dr Patrick Delany was proxy, a churchman, Robert Clayton later Bishop of Killala, and two women writers, Constantia Grierson and Mary Barber.

When his parents divorced and his mother left for London in 1738, he remained in the care of his father in Dublin. Unhappy there, in about 1740 he ran away to Cork, where his mother's childless uncle Dr George van Lewen gave him a temporary home. Going back alone to Dublin, he met the eccentric Richard Pockrich, inventor of the glass harp. He was then taken up for a while by the widower Charles O'Neill of Shane's Castle, who enjoyed his company and singing abilities. From there, he joined the composer Thomas Arne's operatic troupe, with whom he made his stage debut in Dublin on 7 May 1743, singing the title role in Tom Thumb. Tensions in the company led him to flee to Scotland in 1744, shortly before the outbreak of the Jacobite rising of 1745, from where he joined the ship’s company of a privateer and ended up in London in 1746. There he found his mother and gained work at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

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