James Webbe Tobin

He was the eldest son of James Tobin of Bristol and his first wife Elizabeth Webbe; George Tobin and John Tobin were his brothers.^[1] His father was in business with John Pretor Pinney, from 1783.^[2]

Tobin was educated at King Edward VI School, Southampton and Wadham College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1787, and graduated B.A. in 1792.^[1][3] From 1795, until his brother John's death in 1804, they lived together in London.^[4]

In the 1790s Tobin befriended Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth;^[5] Wordsworth knew, through Basil Montagu and Francis Wrangham, the sons of John Pretor Pinney, and may have met Tobin through Montagu, or the Pinneys.^[1][6] Tobin brought Tom Wedgewood to meet Coleridge and Wordsworth in September 1797; Wedgwood later became Coleridge's patron.^[7][8] In letters of 1798, Wordsworth announced to Tobin, then James Losh, his major poetic project under the working title The Recluse.^[9]

Tobin had a degenerative eye condition, and at this period he was only partially sighted, ruling out a career.^[10] During 1799 he took part in the nitrous oxide experiments of Humphry Davy.^[11] He was an observer when Davy experimented with other inhalations.^[12]

From 1807 Tobin and his family were on Nevis.^[1] He took a leading part in the cruelty case brought in 1810 against the plantation owner Edward Huggins; Huggins had bought the Montravers estate on Nevis from the Pretor Pinney family in 1808.^[13] Huggins was acquitted; Tobin made his views known, writing in particular to Hugh Elliot, the Governor of the Leeward Islands, claiming that the jury was packed.^[1][14] The Christian Observer noted that Tobin's blindness meant he could not be challenged to a duel for his stand.^[15] James Stephen wrote that others who backed him did not escape feuds.^[16]

Tobin contributed to The Annual Anthology edited by Robert Southey, and edited its third volume (1802).^[17][18] In 1812 he wrote a Reply to the pamphlet A plain statement of the motives which gave rise to the public punishment of several negroes (1811), by Thomas John Cottle, son-in-law of Edward Huggins.^[19]

Tobin married Jane Mallet or Mullett (1784–1837) in 1807.^[1][20][21] She was the daughter of Thomas Mullett (1745–1814), a Bristol stationer connected by marriage to Caleb Evans, a Particular Baptist minister in Bristol.^[22] They had at least four children, including the eldest son John James, born 1808/9, the friend of Humphry Davy.^[1][23]

After her husband's death, Jane Tobin and her family returned to England.^[24]