Although anxiety and overwork may have contributed to Jackson’s death, the immediate cause was a severe attack of scarlet-fever, which carried him off on January 14th, 1792, in the 59th year of his age. The last few years of his life had been considerably troubled. In 1790 his foundry was destroyed by a fire, in which his moulds and matrices were seriously damaged. The shock of this calamity affected both his health and his energy, and the management of his business was, during his later years, left almost entirely in the hands of his trusted servant, Mr. Vincent Figgins. The foundry was rebuilt, and the damaged materials were, as far as possible (though not wholly), replaced at the time of his death. Mr. Jackson was twice married—first to Miss Elizabeth Tassell, originally a whinster in Spitalfields, “a very worthy woman,” says Nichols, “and an excellent wife, who greatly contributed by her care and industry to his getting forward in his first entering into business” She died in 1783, and, in the following year, Mr. Jackson married Mrs. Pasham, widow of a well-known printer in Blackfriars,[672] a union which materially assisted him in the means of carrying on his {325} business. This lady died in 1791, her husband surviving his bereavement only a few months. He was buried in the same grave with his two wives in the ground of Spa Fields Chapel. Of Jackson’s private character his contemporaries concur in speaking very highly. “By the death of this ingenious artist and truly worthy man,” says Nichols, “the poor lost a most excellent benefactor, his own immediate connexions a steady friend, and the literary world a valuable coadjutor in their labours.” He was a deacon at the Meeting-House in Barbican, where a funeral sermon was preached by the Rev. Mr. Towers, who also delivered a “neat funeral oration,” at the grave. He died possessed of some considerable property. There is an oil portrait of him in the possession of Mr. Blades, and an engraved portrait in Nichols’ _Literary Anecdotes_, from which our copy is taken. It is unfortunately impossible to ascertain in what condition his foundry was left at the time of his death—how far it had recovered from the consequences of the fire, or how far that calamity had destroyed, beyond replacing, any of its contents. It was offered for sale in 1792, and Mr. Figgins, the presumptive successor to the business, not finding himself in a position to become its purchaser, it was acquired by William Caslon III, who had recently disposed of his share in the Chiswell Street Foundry, over whose affairs he had for some years been presiding.[673] He removed the Foundry from Dorset Street to Finsbury Square, where for a few years it remained located; but presently transferred it back to its old quarters, leaving the house in Finsbury Square to be converted by James Lackington, the celebrated bookseller, into the “Temple of the Muses,” one of the largest and most popular old book-shops of the day.