Alexander Cruden - Corrector

Corrector

As well as producing the concordance, Cruden worked as a proofreader and bookseller, several editions of Greek and Latin classics are said to have owed their accuracy to his care.

Cruden opened a booksellers shop in the Royal Exchange. In April 1735 he obtained the title of bookseller to the Queen by recommendation of the Lord Mayor and most of the Whig aldermen. The post was an unremunerative sinecure.

After failing to obtain the honour of knighthood, he was nominated as Parliamentary candidate for the City of London in 1754, but he decided to withdraw. Some point after this, Cruden adopted the title of Corrector. Cruden saw it as his personal mission to safeguard the nation's spelling and grammar, and through that, the nation's moral health. He was particularly concerned with misspelt signs, graffiti, swearing and the keeping of the Sabbath.

He was in the habit of carrying a sponge, with which he effaced all inscriptions and signs which he thought incorrect or contrary to good morals.

He was treated with the respect due to his learning by officials and residents in both (Oxford and Cambridge) universities, but experienced some boisterous fooling at the hands of the undergraduates. At Cambridge he was knighted with mock ceremonies. There he appointed deputy correctors to represent him in the university.

He also visited Eton, Windsor, Tonbridge, and Westminster schools, where he appointed four boys to be his deputies. (An Admonition to Cambridge is preserved among letters from J. Neville of Emmanuel to Dr. Cos Macro, in the British Museum.)

Against the Northern republican John Wilkes, whom he hated, he wrote a small pamphlet, and used to delete with his sponge the number 45 wherever he found it, this being the offensive symbol of Wilkes.

The Correctors Earnest Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain, published in 1756, was occasioned by the earthquake at Lisbon. In 1762 he saved an ignorant seaman, Richard Potter, from the gallows, and in 1763 published a pamphlet recording the history of the case.

In 1769 he lectured in Aberdeen as Corrector, and distributed copies of the fourth commandment and various religious tracts. The wit that made his eccentricities palatable is illustrated by the story of how he gave to a conceited young minister whose appearance displeased him A Mother's Catechism dedicated to the young and ignorant.