Fred Kempster
The Blackburn Giant
Fredrick Kempster (1889 - 1918) an English showman known as The Blackburn Giant & The English Giant
Frederick Kempster (1889–1918) was an English showman, renowned for his extreme height and also known as the English Giant or Blackburn Giant. He was 7 ft 9.3 in (2.37 m) tall, had an arm span of 8 ft 4.5 in (2.55 m) and weighed 170 kilograms (370 lb).
Between 1967 and 1993 Kempster appeared in the Guinness Book of Records as one of the tallest men in England.
Elizabeth Ann Lewis
The Drunkards Friend
Elizabeth Ann Lewis (c1848 - 1924)
A pioneering temperance activist and missionary
She was known as the "Temperance Queen", and "The Drunkard's Friend". She received several public pecuniary presents in recognition of her public work. In 1913, when King George V and Queen Mary visited Blackburn, she was presented to them as a representative citizen. For 30 years Lewis conducted her Mission, with a single vacation that did not exceed a fortnight. She was a vice-president of the British Temperance League, the London Temperance Hospital, the Women's Total Abstinence Union, and the National British Temperance Association.
John Lewis
founder of Blackburn Rovers
John Lewis ( 1855 - 1926) An English footballer, Referee and Administrator.
Founder of Blackburn Rovers Football Club
John Lewis (30 March 1855 – 13 January 1926) was an English football player, administrator and referee. He was born at Market Drayton, Shropshire, but lived most of his life in Lancashire and was primarily associated with Blackburn Rovers F.C. He was a leading referee from the earliest days of organised football, and when well into his 60s officiated in the gold medal match of the 1920 Olympic Games football tournament in Antwerp.
On 21 April 2008 it was announced that his grave at Blackburn Municipal Cemetery had been restored to its former glory, the costs having been met by Blackburn Rovers.
James Pitts V.C
James Pitts VC ( 1877 - 1955) Reciepient of the Victoria Cross for gallantry during Second Boer War
Pitts was 22 years old, and a private in the 1st Battalion, the Manchester Regiment, British Army, during the Second Boer War when the following deed in Natal took place for which he and Private Robert Scott were awarded the VC:
During the attack on Caesar's Camp, in Natal, on the 6th January, 1900, these two men occupied a sangar, on the left of which all our men had been shot down and their positions occupied by Boers, and held their post for fifteen hours without food or water, all the time under an extremely heavy fire, keeping up their fire and a smart look-out though the Boers occupied some sangars on their immediate left rear. Private Scott was wounded.
He later achieved the rank of corporal and served in World War I. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal in 1918.
James Kenyon
Cinematographer
James Kenyon (1850 - 1925) a pioneer in cinematography in partnership with Sagar Mitchell
The Mitchell & Kenyon film company was a pioneer of early commercial motion pictures based in Blackburn in Lancashire, England, at the start of the 20th century. They were originally best known for minor contributions to early fictional narrative film and Boer War dramatisation films, but the discovery in 1994 of a hoard of film negatives led to restoration of the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection, the largest surviving collection of early non-fiction actuality films in the world. This collection provides a fresh view of Edwardian era Britain and is an important resource for historians.
George Dewhurst (1789 -1857)
George Dewhurst (8 August 1789 – 14 August 1857) was an English Radical, reformer and reedmaker, best known for his contribution towards working class Radicalism in the first half of the 19th century and reform in his home town of Blackburn.
William Billington
The Blackburn Poet
Billington was born in Samlesbury, Lancashire in 1825. His parents Benedict and Ann Billington were at the time unemployed hand-loom weavers. Billington wrote on many subjects in newspapers, broadsheets and pamphlets. He travelled in the north of England and to the midlands, reading and selling his poems.
Billington died on 3 January 1884 at Bradshaw Street, Blackburn.
Fergus Suter
Fergus Suter (21 November 1857 – 31 July 1916) was a Scottish stonemason and footballer in the early days of the game. Arguably the first recognised professional footballer, Suter was a native of Glasgow and played for Partick before moving to England to play for Darwen and Blackburn Rovers.
Suter is one of the main characters in the Netflix mini-series The English Game (2020), played by Kevin Guthrie. The series depicts him leaving Darwen to join an unspecified Blackburn-based club and winning the FA Cup in the same season with victory over the Old Etonians. Blackburn Olympic did indeed defeat the Etonians to become the first working-class team to lift the cup, but this was not the club which Suter joined and the win did not come until 1883, three years after Suter left Darwen. Suter in fact joined Olympic's local rivals Blackburn Rovers in 1880 and was in the team which lost in the 1882 Cup Final against the Old Etonians. He would later go on to star in three consecutive Cup Final victories in 1884, 1885, and 1886.
Having watched the Netflix series, a viewer noticed that Suter's grave in Blackburn Old Cemetery had become dilapidated with the gravestone fallen and the plot just a mound of grass. After she contacted Blackburn Rovers they funded a restoration of his grave which was completed in 2021.