1829 when his elder brother, non-conformist Jonathan Martin, deliberately set fire to York Minster. The fire caused extensive damage and the scene was likened by an onlooker to Martin's work, oblivious to the fact that it had more to do with him than it initially seemed. Jonathan Martin's defence at his trial was paid for with John Martin's money. Jonathan Martin, known as "Mad Martin", was ultimately found guilty but was spared the hangman's noose on the grounds of insanity. Martin from about 1827 to 1828 had turned away from painting, and became involved with many plans and inventions. He developed a fascination with solving London's water and sewage problems, involving the creation of the Thames embankment, containing a central drainage system. His plans were visionary, and formed the basis for later engineers' designs. His 1834 plans for London's sewerage system anticipated by some 25 years the 1859 proposals of Joseph Bazalgette to create intercepting sewers complete with walkways along both banks of the River Thames. He also made plans for railway schemes, including lines on both banks of the Thames. The plans, along with ideas for "laminating timber", lighthouses, and draining islands, all survive. Debt and family pressures, including the suicide of his nephew (Jonathan's son Richard) brought on depression which reached its worst in 1838. From 1839 Martin's fortunes recovered and he exhibited many works during the 1840s. During the last four years of his life Martin was engaged in a trilogy of large paintings of biblical subjects: The Last Judgment, The Great Day of His Wrath, and The Plains of Heaven, of which two were bequeathed to Tate Britain in 1974, the other having been acquired for the Tate some years earlier. They were completed in 1853, just before the stroke which paralysed his right side. He was never to recover and died on 17 February 1854, on the Isle of Man. He is buried in Kirk Braddan cemetery. Major exhibitions of his works are still mounted. Legacy Martin enjoyed immense popularity and his influence survived. One of his followers was Thomas Cole, founder of American landscape painting. Others whose imaginations were fired by him included Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Brontës – a print of Belshazzar's Feast hung on the parlour wall of the Brontë parsonage in Haworth, and his works were to have a direct influence upon the writings of Charlotte and her sisters, who