John Purkis (1781 – 10 April 1849), was an English organist and teacher. He was blind at birth. A child prodigy, Purkis studied with Thomas Grenville (circa 1744–1827), also blind, and the organist at the Foundling Hospital in London.[1] He became organist at St Margaret's Chapel at the age of nine, and then, aged 12, at St Olave Southwark, after a public competition and three day poll. His salary there was £30.[2]
From 1804 until his death Purkis was organist at St Clement Danes, and also (after 1825) at St Peter's Walworth.[3] He was consultant to the organ building firm Flight and Robinson during the construction of the Apollonicon a self-playing barrel organ, presented to the public for the first time in 1817.[4] Over the next 21 years he performed popular Saturday afternoon recitals on the instrument at the firm's showroom, 101, St Martin's Lane.[5][6] At the recitals Purkis often played fantasias on opera themes that were later published as piano pieces by William Hodsoll, and these became very popular with home pianists in the 1820s.[3] Rachel Cowgill has called the Apollonicon recitals "virtually synonymous with the establishment of the public organ recital in England....the first to be held in a secular venue and run on a purely commercial basis".[6]
Purkis was also a skilled violinist and harpist.[2] With woodwind instrument maker Thomas Scott he formed the Scott & Purkis partnership to manufacture a double flageolet, taking out a patent in December 1805 for "an instrument on the flageolette principle, so constructed as a single instrument that two parts of a musical composition can be played thereon at the same time by one person".[7] A tutorial book by Purkis was published.[8] But rival William Bainbridge, inventor of the six finger-hole "improved English flageolet" in 1803, produced a more popular double flageolet, for which he was granted a patent in 1810.[9]
In 1811 Purkis went through a series of operations, performed by Sir William Adams of Exeter, that gained him some limited sight.[2] His pupils included the organist and music historian William Smith Rockstro.[10] He died, aged 68, in April 1849.
