Researching Charles Swain

Born in Brisbane, Swain participated in the 1500 metres at the 1908 Summer Olympics held in London, he was drawn in a heat with five other runners, but Swain was one of the four athletes who did not finish the race and qualify for the final.

Swain was a member of the Toowong Harriers in Brisbane, and his best race at the National Track and Field events came in the 1909–10 season when he was runner-up in the 880-yard race.

Charles Swain was born to an English father and French mother in Every Street, Manchester, England, on 4 January 1801, He received an education and began work when aged 15 as a clerk for Tavaré and Horrocks, a dye-works that was part-owned by a maternal uncle. He married Ann Glover in January 1827 and the couple went on to have five daughters and a son, of which four daughters lived to become adults.

Swain left his job at the dye-works after fourteen years to become a bookseller. That venture did not last and two years later he joined Lockett & Co., a firm of engravers and lithographers in Manchester. He had artistic interests – as indicated by his memoir of Henry Liverseege, the Mancunian artist, and books such as A Cabinet of Poetry and Romance: Female Portraits from the Writings of Byron and Scott (1845) – and he went on to buy the engraving department from the firm and to run it himself.

By the time the bookselling venture ended, Swain was already friends with Robert Southey and with other literary names. His poems had been published in journals from 1822 onwards and he had also had various more substantial works published, such as Metrical Essays on Subjects of History and Imagination (1827), Beauties of the Mind: a Poetical Sketch with Lays Historical and Romantic (1831) and The Mind (1832).

Swain died on 22 September 1874 as the result of an epileptic fit. He had been living at Prestwich Park, Prestwich, at the time, in a house bought for him by friends. His wife died four years later.