Background
Collings was the youngest son of Thomas Collings, Littleham-cum-Exmouth, Devon, and Annie Palmer. His father was a bricklayer, who later established a small building firm. He was educated at a Dame School and for a time at Church House School, Stoke, Plymouth. He started work as a shop assistant aged 15 years, later becoming a clerk and a traveller for an ironmongery firm. In 1850, he started working for Booth and Company, a firm of ironmongers in Birmingham; in 1864 he became a partner in the renamed business, Collings and Wallis. In 1879, he retired from the partnership. Jesse Collings came under the influence of George Dawson and worshipped in the Unitarian Church of the Saviour along with other prominent families.
In 1858 he married Emily Oxenbould, the daughter of a master at King Edward's Grammar School, Birmingham. They had one daughter.
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
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