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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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ENEAS MACKENZIE (1778 - 1832) Mackenzie, born in Aberdeen but transplanted to Newcastle aged three, was a Baptist minister turned printer and publisher. He brought out a History of Northumberland in 1811, and (in 1827) his History of Newcastle which borrows heavily from John Brand (q.v.). As a radical Mackenzie took a leading part in the Peterloo protests, presiding over the great meeting on the Town Moor of 11 October 1819. He was also involved in the agitation over the Great Reform Bill and spoke to a crowd of 50,000 on Cow hill on 17 October 1832. In his scholarly persona, Mackenzie was a founder, with the Rev. William Turner, of the Newcastle Literary, Scientific and Mechanical Institution, set up in 1824 as part of the first wave of these establishments. Mackenzie considered the Lit and Phil to be 'daily becoming more reclusive and aristocratic'. Its committee, he aid, 'seemed resolved to shut the doors of the society in the face of those who have not a heavy purse'. The indefatigable Mackenzie was at work on a History of Durham when he died in the great North East cholera epidemic,
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