Tommy Osborne, Itinerant Bookseller of Exeter

Thomas, or Tommy, Osborne was an itinerant bookseller and stationer who achieved local fame as one of Exeter’s distinctive street characters in the early nineteenth century. As such he was commemorated in two oil portraits in RAMM and in an engraving. The little that is known of his life is based largely on accounts of his involvement in the Mock Election, held at Ide after the real Exeter parliamentary election of 1812.