▶Date of birth:  12 May 1809        Place of birth: Penrith

▶Father: John Gaskin    Mother: Elizabeth

▶Spouse(s): Maria Orton, daughter of Thomas Orton, of March, Cambridgeshire     Date(s) of marriage:  12 July 1842     Place(s) of marriage: Grantchester, Cambridgeshire

▶Occupation: Clergyman

▶Lifestory: Thomas Gaskin was educated at Sedbergh School, and St John’s College, Cambridge, BA (second wrangler and prizeman) 1831, MA 1834. He was elected a Fellow of Jesus College in 1831, and FRS in 1839 (“a Gentleman well acquainted with various branches of Science more particularly mathematics”); he was also an FRAS. In 1834 he was ordained Deacon and Priest (Carlisle, by letters dimissory from Ely), and was appointed Vicar of St Clements, Cambridge in 1835, on the presentation of his college.

He resigned from the office two years later, returning to his work within the University, including duties as an examiner and junior and then senior proctor; in 1835 he was also appointed Barnaby Lecturer in Mathematics at the University. In 1851 he lived with his wife, two sons, and daughter at 5 Scrope Terrace, in Cambridge, a clergyman “without cure of souls”. He published several books when he was an active Fellow of Jesus College, including The solutions of geometrical problems  (1847), The solutions of trigonometrical problems (1847), and Geometrical construction of a conic section (1852).

Between about 1855 and his death in 1887 he lived with his household at 7 (now 47) Pittville Lawn, still “without cure of souls”. In 1856 his name was removed from the University’s electoral roll, for “non-residence”. According to John Venn, he “retired to Cheltenham where he took private pupils. A distinguished mathematician and a good classical scholar. He had a marvellous memory. It was said that when he left Sedbergh [School] he could repeat 20 Greek plays by heart.

Gaskin died in Cheltenham in 1877, at the age of seventy-seven; his wife predeceased him by six years. “Mr Gaskin is a native of Penrith and one of the brightest ornaments of literature of the present day” (Carlisle Patriot, 17 December 1842).

Reference to Gaskin in J. S. Reynolds, Canon Christopher (Abingdon) 1967, 456.

▶Moved to Pittville from:   Moved from Pittville to: (deceased)

▶Date of death:  17 February 1887     Place of death: 7 Pittville Lawn, Cheltenham

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes:        ID: 1296

Contributor(s):  Alan Munden/John Simpson