Thomas Dodd (printseller)

Thomas Dodd (1771–1850) was an English auctioneer and printseller.

The son of Thomas Dodd, a tailor, he was born in the parish of Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, on 7 July 1771. When he was ten years old his father left home, and he was taken from school at Shooter's Hill. His first employment was in the service of an Anglo-American colonel named De Vaux, an eccentric adventurer: he was taken about the country as a member of his band of juvenile musicians. After a time the colonel left him with a butcher; he ran away in quest of the colonel, going penniless on foot from London to Liverpool, and from there to Matlock Bath.

At another time Dodd was left with an itinerant harper at Conway. Harsh treatment induced him to seek the protection of a Welsh innkeeper; then he lived a while with a sporting parson, ultimately returning to London in 1788, and taking a menial position in the shop of his uncle, a tailor named Tooley, in Bucklersbury. His next place was as a footman. In 1794 he married his employer's waiting-maid, and opened a day-school near Battle Bridge, St. Pancras. He gave up his school to accept a situation as engrossing clerk in the enrolment office of the court of chancery.

In 1796 Dodd took a small shop in Lambeth Marsh for the sale of old books and prints. Two years later he moved to Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. His dealings in prints gradually extended, and his stock assumed large proportions. In 1806 he opened an auctionroom in St. Martin's Lane, and there he sold some famous collections, among them being that of General Dowdeswell in January 1809. In the course of his business he had large sales of prints and books at Liverpool, Portsmouth, and elsewhere. When he was at Ludlow in 1812, he found in the possession of an innkeeper a copy of Henry Holland's Basioloogia (1618), but it was not till seven years later that he was able to buy it.

Good fortune deserted him and his stock dwindled. He settled in Manchester about 1819 as an auctioneer, and in 1823 projected a scheme which led to the establishment of the Royal Manchester Institution in Mosley Street, and the holding of annual exhibitions of pictures.

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