John Holt

Who was John Holt?

John Holt was a London bell ringer of the 18th century. One John Holt who was baptized at Christ Church Greyfriars on the 31st March 1726 is suggested to have been him although someone of the same name was also baptized in October of the same year at St Botolph-without-Aldgate, East Smithfield. He died in the year 1753, at the age of twenty-seven. Holt was not born into wealth, being described years later in the 1788 Clavis Campanalogia as "a poor unlettered youth", which could well account for his untimely death. By trade he was a shoemaker, but very little else is known about his personal life.