Today is Baskerville’s Baptismal day. We don’t know the exact date of John Baskerville’s birth, but the Wolverley parish register recording Baskerville’s baptism at Wolverley church in Worcestershire states: ‘1706 John ye Son of John Baskervile by Sara his wife, was baptized January ye 28’. Before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the new year began on 25 March, so that 28 January 1706 fell in the year 1707.
Baskerville was the youngest of nine children born to John an illiterate farmer and his second wife Sarah. The family holding of six acres and a meadow was small and in the circumstances it was likely that Baskerville’s father looked for other sources of income to support his growing family. A clue is recorded in the Quarter Session presentments in early 1709 (Epiphany 1708-9). William Hoult, constable of Wolverley, reported Baskerville’s father for ‘entertaining a woman that lay with bastard child and for keeping a disorderly house.’ A disorderly house probably refers to an inn or hostelry, which suggests that he was an innkeeper and disreputable. The inn was known as Le Cock and it stood yards from the junction with the main road from Kidderminster to Wolverhampton and Stourbridge. The possibility that Le Cock may also have been a brothel should not be discounted, its name is highly suggestive and a reason why Baskerville may have wished to draw a veil over his early life.