William Thom (poet)
Scottish poet
William Thom (1788 – 29 February 1848) was a Scottish poet who wrote in the Scots language. He was author of The Mitherless Bairn and other works. He was known as the "Inverury Poet".
Life and work
Thom was a native of Aberdeen, where he worked as a handloom weaver, enduring considerable hardship and poverty.
He was born in Sinclair's Close, Justice Port, Aberdeen, in 1799 or 1800. His mother was a widow. He was educated at a school run by Elspet Davie before becoming apprenticed as a weaver. At the age of fourteen, he began work at the School Hill Mill, where he was employed until 1830. He sang in his workplace, and some of his early poems were published in the Aberdeen Herald, Aberdeen Journal and Whistle-Binkie.
By 1837 he was working in Newtyle in Angus, but a trade slump resulted in him losing his job.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “William Thom (poet)” is scottish poet. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Thom and poet, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8019280. VIAF identifies the subject as 74232051. The Library of Congress control number is n88225509. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1788, 1848, 1799 and 1800.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Thom (poet)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.