Financial pressure from a wife and nine children drove him to supplement his income through painting and writing, producing inn signs, portraits, and grotesque caricatures which he distributed himself across northern England, reaching as far as the American colonies. Working under the pseudonym Tim Bobbin, he styled himself the "Lancashire Hogarth", a direct claim of kinship with William Hogarth, whose satirical print series were a clear influence.
His first publication, A View of the Lancashire Dialect (1746), is recognised as the earliest significant work of Lancashire dialect literature. The largest collection of his work is held by Touchstones Rochdale; prints from Human Passions Delineated are also in the British Museum.
