The Tragic Life of Thomas Mayhew

 

by Robert J. Kirkpatrick 

The name of Mayhew will be very familiar to students of 19^th century literature. Henry Mayhew was one of the founders of Punch, but perhaps better-known for his monumental work London Labour and the London Poor. His brother Horace was a journalist (he wrote for, amongst others, The Illustrated London News and Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper) and comic novelist; and another brother, Augustus, was a journalist (on The Illustrated Times), novelist and comic dramatist. A fourth brother, Thomas, also had a very brief and ultimately tragic career as an author, and consequently has been all but airbrushed from history.

The Mayhew brothers were born into a wealthy family headed by Joshua Dorset Joseph Mayhew, a solicitor, and his wife Mary Ann. Their first son, Thomas Charles Wilson Mayhew, was born on 19 May 1807 and baptised at St. James’s Church, Westminster, on 1 March 1811. He entered Westminster School on 31 May 1820, and after leaving he was articled to his father for five years in November 1825, and wrote his first book, A Complete History of an Action at Law, published by J. & W. Clarke, whilst still a student at Lincoln’s Inn (to which he been admitted in January 1827) in 1828. Two years later, his translation of the French drama Ambition, or Marie Mignot, was performed at the Haymarket Theatre, with the script published by Thomas Richardson in the same year. Also in 1830 he was enrolled as Attorney of the Court of the King’s Bench, and was subsequently admitted as Attorney of the Court of Common Pleas.

His journalistic activities also began in 1830, when he became editor of Henry Hetherington’s Penny Papers for the People, an unstamped series of one penny weekly pamphlets, and the following year he edited the first issues of Hetherington’s The Poor Man’s Guardian. A syndicated newspaper article after his death claimed that he was “the proprietor of Barnett’s Library of Music, The Parterre, and a number of other literary productions…. [and] part proprietor of the Fitzroy Theatre,”[1] although his assocaition with The Parterre was subsequently denied by its editors.[2] A subsequent article claimed that he was also “the proprietor and projector of several cheap popular works,” and was “connected at one time with Figaro, The Studio, compiler of The Diamond Shakespeare, superintended and almost wholly edited The Popular Dictionary of Universal Information…..”[3]

In the meantime, he had married Catharine Lawrance (born in Somerset in around 1806) at St. James’s Church, Westminster, on 1 January 1831. They had a still-born son on 20 November 1831, but went on to have a daughter, Catharine Mary Anne, born on 15 October 1833.

As a solicitor, he was briefly in partnership in 1831 with Thomas Edlyne Tomlins, as Tomlins and Mayhew, at 3 Staple Inn, and he was also in partnership with his father and James Johnson at 26 Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn, but he left in March 1833.[4] According to an affidavit which was an adjunct to his will he had homes in Amwell Street and Myddleton Square, Clerkenwell, although a syndicated newspaper article reporting that he was living in Camden Town  at the time of his death.

In August 1832 he launched The Penny National Library, an ambitious project (published by Frederic Lawrance at 113 Strand – by December 1832 it had moved to 369 Strand). This initially consisted of six weekly serial educational publications – a grammar and dictionary, a universal biography, an ancient history, a history of England, a law library and a geography and gazetteer, with other similar serial works being added a few weeks later. Other publications soon followed, including The Comic Magazine, edited by “The Editor of Figaro in London” i.e. Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, and, in March 1833, The Critic, a literary and satirical journal.  

However, Thomas soon found himself in financial difficulties, and on 30 October 1833 he was arrested on a unpaid bill of exchange for £159, and was committed to the Fleet Prison. He disputed his arrest, claiming privilege as an attorney, although the person to whom Mayhew owed the money had him arrested on the basis he was trading as a printer and publisher.[5] The following month he entered into partnership with George Frederick Isaacs and Irenaeus Mayhew (his uncle), as printers and publishers, from 369 Strand and 14 Henrietta Street, although steps were already being taken towards his liquidation[6] – the partnership was formally dissolved in March 1834.[7] It was later suggested that Mayhew had lost £10,000.[8]

Thomas Mayhew committed suicide on Thursday 23 October 1834 at his chambers at 2 Barnard’s Inn, Holborn. This fact, and the subsequent inquest, was widely reported in London newspapers. It was initially reported that his body was discovered by his wife and her brother, who were concerned that he hadn’t come home and that he was in straitened financial circumstances, and that they forced open the door to his rooms.[9] This version of events was contradicted during the inquest, which was held on the evening of Saturday 25 October at the Swan and Sugar-Loaf public house, Fetter Lane. This heard that a solicitor, Philip Lawrence, had been approached by Thomas’s wife, concerned about his absence – he went to the chambers, where the porter gave him a package which contained the keys to the chambers, and these were used to gain access.[10]

It was clear from the evidence given that Thomas had swallowed a large quantity of prussic acid, and had also deliberately inhaled the fumes from a piece of burning charcoal. The inquest was told that that as well as his financial problems, Thomas was overwhelmed by work. At the time of his death he was apparently working on a history of England, an encyclopaedia, and a translation of French plays. He was subsequently buried in the churchyard of St. James’s Church, Westminster, on 29 October.

It is hard to believe that in the short period of time between 1832 and 1834 Thomas Mayhew was both working as a solicitor and had his fingers in so many literary projects. Yet there is no doubt that this was the case, as confirmed in the Law Report referred to earlier. It was rare for writer in Bohemian Fleet Street to commit suicide, although several killed themselves in other ways, so this was a measure of just how overwhelming the pressure on Thomas Mayhew was. 

His wife Catharine subsequently moved back to her parents in Somerset, and went on to marry James Thomas, a solicitor, in Lyncombe, on 29 February 1848. She died later that year, and was buried in the cemetery at Bath Abbey on 29 September 1848. His daughter Catharine married Charles Arthur Raynsford in 1864, and they went on to have one daughter born in 1866. They divorced in 1890. She went on to spend a year in Otto House, a private asylum in Hammersmith, between August 1894 and 1895, and she was re-admitted in February 1900 – she died there on 14 March 1900, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, Kensington.

---

[1] See, for example, Morning Post, 25 October 1834, p 4.

[2] See, for example, Morning Post, 31 October 1834, p 3.

[3] See, for example, Morning Advertiser, 27 October 1834, p 1.

[4] London Gazette, 30 August 1833, p 1614.

[5] The Law Journal for the Year 1834, Vol. 3, p 47.

[6] Morning Herald, 4 December 1834, p 7.

[7] London Gazette, 25 April 1834, p 755.

[8] Men of the Time, Kent & Co., 1857, p 522.

[9] See, for example, Morning Post, 25 October 1834, p 4.

[10] See, for example, Morning Post, 31 October 1834, p 3.

[•!•]

S. Clarke Hook (1857-1923)

S. CLARKE HOOK

by

Robert J. Kirkpatrick

S. Clarke Hook was one of most popular boys’ story paper writers of his era. He was best-known for his stories of “Jack, Sam and Pete”, a trio of rich adventurers whose comic exploits took them all over the world, and which began in Alfred Harmsworth’s The Marvel in 1901, and ran until 1922.  He also wrote countless other stories, mainly school stories, for many other Harmsworth papers. For a long time it was thought that his first name was Samuel, until Bill Lofts, writing in The Collectors’ Digest in November 1973, revealed that it was actually Sydney. Yet, despite his popularity and longevity – his working career spanned around 35 years – nothing has been written before about his life.

S. Clarke Hook was born on 7 July 1857 and baptized, as Sydney Clarke Hook, on 14 August 1857 at St. Anne’s Church, Hornsey (then a village in Middlesex north of London). His father was Adam Clarke Hook, born on 12 October 1824 in Clerkenwell, and baptized at the Wesleyan Methodist Registry in Paternoster Row, London, on 9 November 1824. His father, James Hook, was a draper and later a judge in Sierra Leone; his mother, Eliza Frances Clarke, was the second daughter of Dr Adam Clarke (hence the family’s second name of Clarke), a Methodist theologian and biblical scholar. James and Eliza had 13 children, the first of whom, James Clarke Hook (born in 1819, died in 1907) became a highly-respected artist.

Adam Clarke Hook became a Land Agent and Surveyor. He married Charlotte Ann Hennell, born in Kensington in 1830, the daughter of Charles Hennell, a Special Pleader (i.e. a law practitioner who specialized in writing legal pleadings for prosecuting or defence barristers), on 2 October 1851 in Kensington. At the time of Sydney’s birth they were living in Dartmouth Park, Maiden Lane, Hornsey. Adam was sufficiently well-off to be able to afford two servants a nurse (1861 census).

Sydney was the fourth of their 10 children. The others were a son who died shortly after his birth in 1852, Ada Francis (born in Putney St. Mary, Wandsworth in 1853), Evan James (born in Hornsey in 1855);, Louisa Mary (born in Wandsworth in 1859), Harry Lionel (born in Malden, Surrey in 1863), Beatrice Maud (born in Epsom, Surrey in 1866), Ella Caroline (born in Chichester, Sussex in 1869), Edith Charlotte (born in Staines, Middlesex in 1871), and Constance Elizabeth, born in North Dulwich in 1874).

At the time of the 1871 census the family was living at Mulgrave Road, Sutton, Surrey, with Adam again employing two servants and a nurse. Sydney was being educated at Ewell College.

On 30 November 1876 Sydney Clarke Hook married Alice Elizabeth Gray at Holy Trinity Church, Gray’s Inn Road, London. Born in London in 1858, she was the daughter of Charles Gray, an architect, and was living in Shepherds Bush.  Sydney was described on the marriage certificate as a merchant.

Sydney and Alice subsequently moved around the country (Bill Lofts claimed that Hook also “travelled round the world many times” – Collectors Digest, November 1973), as evidenced by the births of their children. Their first child, Sydney Victor, was born in Brixton in the summer of 1877, and baptized at St. Matthew’s Church, Brixton, on 27 January 1878, when Sydney and Alice were living at 14 Atlantic Road, Brixton, with Sydney working as a Spanish translator. Two years later, they had moved to High Cottage, North Road, Hendon, Middlesex, where their first daughter Beatrice Madeline was born in the summer of 1880, and subsequently baptized at St. Lawrence’s Church, Little Stanmore, on 8 May 1881. In the 1881 census, Sydney was recorded as working as a Notary’s Clerk.

Sadly, Beatrice Madeline died in West Ham in 1882, and Sydney Victor died in Brentford the following year.

Sydney and Alice’s second son Herbert Clarke was born in Brentford on 23 April 1883, and later baptized at St. Mary’s Church, Acton, on 8 June 1884. The baptism record gave their address as 5 Avenue Gardens, Acton, with Sydney rather oddly recorded as an engineer. Two years later, they had moved to Brighton, where Evelyn Irene was born in early 1886, and Mabel Inez in late 1887.

At the time of the 1891 census, the family was living at 15 Croppers Hill, Eccleston, Preston, Lancashire, with Sydney working as a Spanish Corresponding Clerk for a glass works in St. Helens. Their last child, Sybil Dora, was born in St. Helens in the summer of 1893, and baptized at St. Helen’s Parish Church on 5 November 1893, with the family address given as 106 Prescot Road, St. Helens.  Sydney was then working full-time as an author. In 1895, Hook was listed in the local Kelly’s Directory living at 106 Cropper’s Hill, St. Helens.

The 1901 census records the family living at Alexandra Villa, Prescot Road, employing a 19 year-old servant.

They then moved to the south coast – between 1905 and 1909 they were living at Hollingside, Stanley Road, Hastings (Kelly’s Directory). In October 1909 Hook placed an advertisement in The Evening Standard:

WANTED to Rent, with option of Purchase, a gentleman’s COUNTRY HOUSE, standing in secluded grounds of 2 acres, not isolated, near a good town, not clay soil, not less than 50 or more than 100 miles from London, unless having exceptionally fast service of trains; containing at least 3 rec., 6 bed rooms, bathroom (h. and c.); rent £50-£60 p.a., with option of purchase; freehold preferred; purchase would be made at end of first year if house found suitable. S. Clarke-Hook, Esq., c.o. The Property Editor, “The Standard”.

This advertisement was clearly successful, as by the time of the 1911 census the family had moved to The Hawthorns, Elton Road, Clevedon, Somerset, where they were employing a cook and a maid.

By 1918 they had moved again, to St. Adhelm’s Grange, Leicester Road, Poole, Dorset, Two years later, they were living at 31 Surrey Road, Bournemouth (then in Hampshire but now in Dorset).

Sydney Clarke Hook subsequently died at Rogate Lodge, Surrey Road, Bournemouth, on 14 August 1923, leaving a small estate worth £730 (around £38,000 in today’s terms).

His widow, along with her daughters Mabel and Sybil, subsequently moved to The Cottage, Russells Green, Hailsham, Sussex (1939 Register). (Rather strangely, they gave their dates of birth as 13 December 1859, 10 September 1899, and 13 August 1903 respectively – these do not tally with earlier records).

Alice died in Sussex in September 1947. She did not leave a will.

Although S. Clarke Hook was working as a translator in 1891, he had already began his career as a writer – his novel Victor Gonzalez’s Secret had been published by the St. Helens Printing and Publishing Company in 1890. In 1893, he had two short stories (The Maiden’s Vow and For His Sake) syndicated to local newspapers, such as The Hertfordshire Illustrated Review and The Newcastle Courant, and his stories subsequently appeared in other local newspapers, such as The Weekly Irish Times, The Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, The Cardiff Times and Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper. In November 1893, he provided the very first story, Dead Man’s Land, in Alfred Harmsworth’s first boys’ story paper, The Halfpenny Marvel. He went on to contribute numerous stories to this and other subsequent Harmsworth (later the Amalgamated Press) papers, including The Union Jack Library, Pluck, The Popular, The Boys’ Friend, Comic Cuts, The Gem, The Magnet, The Nelson Lee Library, Young Britain, Dreadnought, The Boys’ Friend Library and The Ranger. He also had stories published in United Newspaper’s Lloyd’s Boys’ Adventure Series and Lloyd’s Detective Series, C. Arthur Pearson’s Big Budget, Trapps Holmes’s Funny Cuts and The World’s Comic. He was best-known for his “Jack, Sam and Pete” stories, which ran in The Marvel from March 1901 until January 1922, with many other stories of the trio appearing in The Boys’ Friend Library between 1906 and 1924. He also wrote a series of school stories for The Gem, set at “Stormpoint College”, under the pseudonym of Maurice Merriman.

According to Brian Doyle (in his Who’s Who of Boys’ Writers and Illustrators, published in 1964), Hook retired from writing in 1922, and was awarded a small pension by the Amalgamated Press in recognition of his services.  It was possibly ill-health that led to his retirement, as he died the following year, aged 66.

Of his five surviving children, Herbert Clarke Hook became an author, working for the Amalgamated Press from around 1907 onwards. (He was recorded in the 1911 census as an author, living with his parents and three sisters). He enlisted in the army in May 1916, transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in May 1916, and then to the RAF in April 1918. Afterwards, he returned to writing. Amongst the story papers he wrote for were The Boys’ Magazine, Pluck, The Magnet, The Gem, The Boys’ Herald, Boys’ Realm, Boys’ Friend, Chums and The Scout. Many of his stories appeared under his pseudonym of Ross Harvey. He apparently married, although no details of when and to whom are known. He died in Hastings in September 1957.

His sister Evelyn Irene had died, unmarried, in Eastbourne in 1930. His two other sisters, also unmarried, Mabel Inez and Sybil Dora, died in Hailsham, Sussex, and Hastings, Sussex, in 1960 and 1977 respectively.

}f{

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire Schools

   

★ Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby and the Yorkshire Schools; Fact v Fiction, is a new book by Yesterday’s Papers contributor, Robert J. Kirkpatrick.

IN 1838, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens set out to expose the “scandal” of cheap Yorkshire boarding schools. Controversy over the accuracy and fairness of Dickens’s claims about these schools, as portrayed by Dotheboys Hall and its tyrannical master, Wackford Squeers, has raged ever since. Most attention has been focused on the supposed model for Dotheboys Hall, Bowes Academy in what was then the North Riding of Yorkshire, and its proprietor William Shaw. This has left many other aspects of the controversy under-explored. Dickens and his supporters, and many critics, made claims about the schools and the effect that Nicholas Nickleby had on them which can now be shown to have been wildly inaccurate.

This book sets out to explore these myths, to present a comprehensive history of the Yorkshire schools (in particular told through their advertisements), and to collect all the previously-published accounts of life at these schools — those that appeared before 1838 and those that appeared afterwards — bringing them all together for the first time. It is hoped that, by presenting all the evidence in one place, a full and balanced picture of the Yorkshire schools will help differentiate between the facts and the fiction.

Published by Mosaic (Teesdale) Ltd., Snaisgill, Middleton-in-Teesdale,

Co. Durham DL12 0RP 

Paperback, 380 pages.

Available HERE.

Pennies, Profits and Poverty in Bohemian Fleet Street

There is scarcely a writer at the present day, I believe, connected with the periodical press, but who has written picturesque, humorous, or descriptive sketches, upon the sights, characters and curiosities, natural and physical, of the Great Metropolis, the Great Wen, the Modern Babylon, the World of London, the Giant City, the Monster Metropolis, the Nineveh of the nineteenth century, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. — Curiosities of London, in Household Words, June 23, 1855

ROBERT J. KIRKPATRICK’s new information-packed book Pennies, Profits and Poverty; A Biographical Directory of Wealth and Want in Bohemian Fleet Street is an arresting account of the lives, trials and tribulations of the publishers and authors who roamed Fleet Street and environs in the nineteenth century. A small part of this book appeared originally in posts published on Yesterday’s Papers and Steve Holland’s Bear Alley. Those posts have been expanded by Kirkpatrick. Much new biographical material is also added with the aid of digital newspapers, genealogical sites, and the hitherto almost untouched archives of the Victorian era Royal Literary Fund set up in 1773 to provide aid to the beggared and the destitute.

HIS FOCUS is on the contrast of wealth and poverty among the habitués of subliterary London who produced cheap radical newspapers, comic periodicals, domestic romances, boys’ weeklies and sensational literature for the amusement of what was generally referred to among the educated classes as “the mob” or “the million.”

SOME 150 LIVES and finances of publishers and authors are examined in depth. The first part, PUBLISHERS AND PROFITS, begins with the radical publishers of the penny press, among them the Duncombes, Henry Hetherington, James Watson, John Cleave, William Strange and the arch-pornographer William Dugdale. All of the publishers of penny bloods, major and minor are represented; Lloyd, Clark, Pattie, Clements, Caffyn, Pierce, Dipple, Harrison and John Dicks. Moving into the period of the boys’ weeklies and penny dreadfuls we are introduced to Brett, Fox, Ritchie, Lucas, Farrah, Allingham, the Shureys and Alfred Harmsworth. 

HACKS AND HANDOUTS, the title of Part II, examines the often precarious lives of the scribblers Pierce Egan, Hannah Maria Jones, Henry Downes Miles, G.W.M. Reynolds, John Frederick Smith, Thomas Peckett Prest, Thomas Frost, James Lindridge, James Greenwood and James Malcolm Rymer. The lives of the founders of Punch are illuminated with essays on the Mayhews, the à Beckett’s, Ebenezer Landells, Mark Lemon and Shirley Brooks. Some of those featured established good literary reputations with the establishment; Angus Bethune Reach, George Augustus Sala, the Blanchard’s and the Jerrold’s. A list that doesn’t cover half of the lives represented in this 549-page volume.

A DEFINITIVE WORK —lPennies, Profits and Poverty is a learned classic of the celebrated and the obscure; at one and the same time a biographical dictionary, a financial study of the cheap press, a definitive reference work, and an intimate portrait of Bohemian Fleet Street in the nineteenthlcentury.

Pennies, Profits and Poverty; 
A Biographical Directory of 
Wealth and Want in Bohemian Fleet Street
—
Available through 
Amazon Books.

Who was “Captain Jack”?

[1] Captain Jack, “The Embarkation” — detail of full-page woodcut in the Shot & Shell series, Vol. 1, 1868

by Robert J. Kirkpatrick

THE SERIAL Captain Jack; or One of the Light Brigade was a story about the Crimean War written by George Emmett and first published in The Young Englishman’s Journal in 1868. It was inspired by the success of publisher Edwin J. Brett whose Boys of England, launched in 1866, had become an extremely popular weekly boys’ story paper.

EMMETT BROTHERS. George was the eldest of five brothers who established their own publishing concern in London and for a few years were Brett’s greatest rivals. All five brothers — George, William, Henry, Thomas and Robert — wrote for their own papers, with George becoming the most prolific and the best-known.

GEORGE EMMETT. Captain Jack, which was also published in 21 weekly one-penny parts, was the first in a sequence of six war stories by George Emmett which were later grouped together as Shot & Shell. A Series of Military Stories. It was generally regarded as an authentic account of the Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade, as well as being a vivid and powerful story. It had all the hallmarks of an eyewitness account, and it seems to have been accepted at the time that it was, indeed, based on personal experience. A contemporary of the Emmetts, fellow author and publisher John Allingham (better known by his pen name “Ralph Rollington”) wrote in his memoir A Brief History of Boys’ Journals (1913) that “George Emmett in his younger days was an officer in the Cavalry, and fought at the Battle of Balaclava, where he was wounded.”

[2] George Emmett

George also suggested that he had been a cavalry officer present at the siege of Lucknow in the Indian Mutiny in 1857, as recorded in his story The King’s Hussars, A Tale of India, serialised in The Young Englishman’s Journal in 1869. Other sources repeat the claim that he had served in the army — reviews of his stories in the press occasionally referred to him as a soldier and a man who had seen active service, while a review of a third story, For Valour, or How I Won the Victoria Cross, referred to him as “an old Lancer.”

TRUE OR FALSE. But was this true? It is certainly the case that the Regiment of the 17th Lancers (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) fought at Balaclava and took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade in October 1854, and also helped with the mopping-up operations after the Indian Mutiny in 1858. But there is no record of a George Emmett having served with any regiment in Balaclava, let alone the 17th Lancers, and furthermore he does not appear on any of the casualty lists from the Crimean War.

“HEMMETT”? There is, however, a record of a Private George Hemmett — spelled with an H — who served with the 8th (King’s Royal Irish) Hussars in the Crimea in 1855. He enlisted at Westminster on 28 November 1853, aged 19. It is thought that the writer George Emmett was born in 1834, so he would have been around 19 years old in 1853. George Hemmett joined his regiment in the Crimea in 15 June 1855 (eight months after the Charge of the Light Brigade), and was promoted to Corporal on 2 March 1856. Just over a year later, after serving for 3 years and 133 days, he was discharged on 9 April 1857 (before the Hussars were sent to India to help deal with the Indian Mutiny). The discharge record gave his name as “Emmett”… He was awarded the Crimean medal with clasp for Sebastopol, meaning that he served at the fall of Sebastopol which took place on 8 September 1855.

A record in the 1861 census shows a George Emmett serving as a private in the 10th Lancers, stationed in Hounslow, Middlesex. It gives his age as 22 (i.e. born in 1839) and his birthplace as Ireland — intriguing, as the publishing Emmett family originated from there. This may be the same George Emmett who was discharged from the Hussars, and who simply reenlisted, giving false information as to his age etc., but it cannot be proved or disproved. There are no further census records for a George Emmett born in Ireland in or around 1839. Neither are there any census records for a George Hemmett.

The mystery is compounded by the fact that George Emmett the writer is not recorded in the census returns for 1851 and 1861, although it is known that he was in England in 1866 when he married Emily Dawes. He went on to have five children with her, and the census return for 1871 shows him living at Herbert House, Spencer Road, Brixton (his name was shown as Emmitt), along with his wife and their first four children.

[3] William Emmett birth certificate

WILLIAM EMMETT. A further mystery involves George’s brother William Leeson Emmett, who became an active partner in the family’s publishing business as well as a writer of boys’ adventure stories. William was born on 15 July 1838 (with his birth being registered on 27 July 1838) in Newington, London, and baptised, as William Leeson Emmett, at St. Dunstan-in-the-West, Fleet Street, London, on 4 July 1841. In the 1851 census record he is living at 6 Great Western Terrace, Chelsea, along with his parents, sister Sophia and his brothers Thomas, Robert and Henry.

In September 1857 he married Laura Elizabeth Crisp, in Camberwell, Surrey, the marriage record giving his occupation as shopkeeper. They went on to have at least five children, the first born in 1858 and the second, rather strangely perhaps, born in 1867. Only the first child, Laura (born 30 September 1858) was baptised, at St. Dunstan’s, Stepney, on 28 November 1858. The baptism record shows William’s occupation as that of a letter carrier.

[4] William Emmett discharge papers (detail)

[5] William Emmett discharge papers

Was this, by any chance, the same William Emmett who served, albeit briefly, in the Crimea in early 1855?

The records state that a William Emmett, born on 28 July 1837, enlisted in the Rifle Brigade at Westminster on 28 July 1854, on his 17th birthday. He was described as being 5 feet 7 inches tall, having a fresh complexion, hazel eyes and light brown hair, previously a servant, who was transferred to the 8th Hussars at his own request on 12 October 1854 (therefore serving alongside George Hemmett). He was then sent to the Crimea on 29 April 1855, where he served for four months (and subsequently awarded the Crimea Medal with clasp for Sebastopol) before being moved to Turkey, where he served for a further five months. He was discharged from the Hussars’ barracks at Dundalk, still a Private, on 21 October 1856, on the grounds of reduction of the army and being totally unfit for the service (regarded as having general bad health and debility attributable to service in the Crimea at too young an age) and not likely to become an efficient soldier. He therefore only served as a soldier for 1 year and 85 days. The records also show that after his discharge he was living in Walworth, of which Newington was a part.
 
Just to confuse matters, there is an online record of an auction of medals which included a Crimean Medal with clasp for Sebastopol awarded to a Wm. Emmett of the 95th (i.e. 95th Regiment of Foot, otherwise known as the Rifle Brigade).

1880 DEATH. William Leeson Emmett died, at 85 Loughborough Road, Brixton, on 2 February 1880, and was buried in Norwood Cemetery, Lambeth, on 9 February 1880 — he was only 41, with the cause of death given as “Bronchitis — 3 days.” Bronchitis was not, in itself, a fatal illness, unless the sufferer had a particularly weak constitution…

1897 DEATH. His brother George Emmett died in August 1897, aged 62, and was also buried in Norwood Cemetery. He had had a chequered career as a publisher — for several years he was the driving force behind the Emmett’s publishing business, which had begun in Essex Street, Strand, in 1867 before moving to Fleet Street and then to Hogarth House, Fetter Lane, in 1871, and finally taken over by Charles Fox in 1877; he was fined £50 for publishing an obscene magazine, The London Peep Show, in September 1879, and later that year was declared bankrupt. He continued writing, but was in constant financial difficulties, and was obliged to turn to the Royal Literary Fund for help three times between 1893 and 1896.

♦♦

FACT OR FICTION. The evidence suggests that George Emmett’s account of the war in the Crimea was fiction, pure and simple, and not based on his own experiences but drawn from contemporary published accounts, of which there were many. Even John Allingham hinted at his doubts as to the veracity of George Emmett’s claims, noting that Emmett told the story of his involvement and injury at Balaclava “several times, but (…) slightly varying in details…” Similarly, it would appear that he was not present at the Siege of Lucknow, and that his story was, again, based on contemporary accounts. He may well have served in the army, but he was not present at the conflicts he portrayed. His brother William may also have served in the army at around the same time, but even this is unproven, and he, too, would not have been a witness to the battles described by George, and therefore could not have been a source of information.

[6] William Emmett death certificate

There is, of course, no concrete evidence that the William Emmett recorded as serving in the Rifle Brigade and then 8th Hussars was the same William Emmett who went on to become a writer and publisher, although the available evidences is persuasive. There is also no concrete evidence that the George Hemmett who served for the 8th Hussars was George Emmett the writer.

It is, though, telling that William Emmett was transferred from the Rifle Brigade to the Hussars at his own request, which might indicate that, if George Hemmett of the Hussars was his brother, they wanted to serve together.
     

[7] Captain Jack wrapper

Thanks to Philip Boys.

See Lives of the Light Brigade HERE.
See Captain Jack; or One of the Light Brigade HERE.

♦♦
   

Douglas Edmund Jerrold

   

[1] “Incidents of the Texas contest — Sketched by Douglas E. Jerrold,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 21 Feb 1874

     

by Robert J. Kirkpatrick

        

DOUGLAS EDMUND JERROLD was the second son of Douglas Jerrold, the well-known 19th-century dramatist and wit, perhaps most famous for his association with Punch between 1841 and his death in 1857, and for his editorship of Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper between 1846 and 1857. His first son, William Blanchard Jerrold, succeeded him in this latter role, and became a well-known journalist and writer in his own right. His third son, Thomas Serle Jerrold, also became a writer, albeit less successfully. Two of Jerrold’s grandsons, Evelyn Douglas Jerrold and Walter Copeland Jerrold, also became writers and journalists.

The life of Douglas Edmund Jerrold has always been shrouded in mystery. He hardly merited a mention in William Blanchard Jerrold’s biography of his father (The Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold, 1859), although a later biography by grandson Walter (Douglas Jerrold: Dramatist and Wit, 1914) revealed Douglas Jerrold senior’s efforts to find a 21-year-old Douglas Edmund — known as Edmund or Ned within the family — a suitable job:

…as is so often the case with young men of no special natural bent, it was thought that he had best go into the Civil Service, or out to the Colonies and be forced by circumstances to find a bent.

The most recent biography of Douglas Jerrold senior, Michael Slater’s Douglas Jerrold: A Life (2002), is similarly lacking in information. Slater does remark that Edmund “was destined in due course to become the family’s problem child,” but as to Edmund’s career Slater could only unearth a request for information in Notes and Queries of January 1971, in which Gaines Kincaide, writing from Austin, Texas, claimed that Edmund had moved to Austin in the early 1870s with a theatre company that soon folded. He then went on to work as a political cartoonist for a Republican newspaper, the rival Democratic newspaper refusing to believe that he was Douglas Jerrold’s son. When the Republican newspaper folded, Edmund returned briefly to acting, although he remained known locally as an artist. Kincaide’s request for further information went unanswered.

HOWEVER, it is now possible to expand on Douglas Edmund’s story, thanks largely to online genealogy records and digitized newspapers, although gaps still remain. If any reader can add to what follows, then please do so!

Douglas Edmund Jerrold was born in London on 18 July 1828 and baptized in the parish of St. George, Bloomsbury, on 21 September 1828. He was educated, partly at least, at a school in Boulogne, a place his father often visited. When he came of age, his father, as mentioned above, tried to launch him on a career, pointing out in a letter to his friend, the biographer and critic John Forster, that Edmund was “healthy, strong and active; and rather of the stuff for the bush than the clerk’s desk. His only wish is to be set on his feet somewhere abroad, and his expectation of official advantage very limited. I can vouch for his probity and steadiness of conduct.” (Quoted in Douglas Jerrold: Dramatist and Wit.)

It took around eight months, between May 1850 and January 1851, before a post could be found for him in the Commissariat Department (responsible for the provision of supplies for the army) at the Treasury, which he took up in January 1851.

At the time of the 1851 census (the entire family appears to be absent from the 1841 census, possibly away in France) he was living with parents at West Lodge, Putney, having begun his job as a clerk in the Treasury. On 27 March 1853 he married Caroline Stretton, the daughter of Charles Stretton (deceased) at St. Margaret’s, Westminster — he was living in Circus Road, Marylebone, at the time.

[2] 27 March 1853

Rather strangely, Walter Copeland Jerrold claimed in his biography of his father that Edmund was given a post in the Commissariat in Canada in 1852. He quoted the journalist George Hodder who attended a farewell ball for Edmund shortly before his departure:

[Edmund] being a young gentleman of somewhat graceful proportions, and not a little proud to exhibit himself to the best advantage, wore his uniform on the occasion, and was, of course, a very conspicuous object during the evening. In short, his glittering appearance was almost calculated to monopolize the attention of the lady visitors; and his father, being anxious that he should distinguish himself in some way beyond that of displaying his elegant costume, hoped, when his health was proposed, as it was in due course, after supper, that he might make a speech which would be considered “an honour to the family.” When Edmund rose, champagne glass in hand, to express his acknowledgements, he seemed so full of confidence, and presented so bold a front to the assembled guests, many of whom were standing in clusters around the room, that his father must have thought he had a son of whose oratorical powers he should doubtless one day be proud.

The young officer, however, had scarcely got beyond the words “Ladies and Gentlemen, for the honour you have done me” ere he suddenly collapsed and resumed his seat! Never was astonishment more strangely depicted upon the human countenance than it was upon that of Jerrold at this singular fiasco on the part of his hopeful son. He was literally dumbfounded, but at length he exploded with a sort of cachinnatory splutter — not to call it laughter — and looking round the room, in doubt as to where he should fix his gaze, he murmured, “Well!”

Nevertheless, Edmund was still in London in 1853, as evidenced by his marriage, and he did not acquire a passport until 13 August 1854. He then, however, moved to Canada more or less immediately — on 4 October 1854 he launched what appears to have been a very short-lived periodical, Douglas E. Jerrold’s Newsbag (the Toronto Public Library has only the first number HERE). Whether or not his wife moved to Canada with him is not known. Some American newspapers were later to report that he had worked for the British Commissariat for five years, but this seems to be incorrect — Gaines Kincaide stated in his Notes and Queries piece that the Canadian archives had no record of Edmund taking up his post.

In fact, Edmund may have returned to England very soon after arriving in Canada — Michael Slater states that he joined his father on Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper in 1855, although he had turned down the role of Paris correspondent.

[3] Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 19 April 1856

However, if he did return to England it was only for a brief period — two years later he was in America, working as an artist — one of his sketches was published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on 19 April 1856. In 1857 he found himself stranded in Zanesville, Ohio, where he was able to obtain a commission to produce a copy of a Landseer painting from Joseph Crosby, an English grocer, which enabled him to pay his debts and move on. (The Times Recorder, Zanesville, Ohio, 1 January, 1928).

[4] Zanesville, Ohio, 1857

Within a short while he had built up a reputation as an artist, and several newspapers carried a brief report in April 1860 that he was visiting Charleston, Carolina, where he had “placed his drawings on public display.”

PRIVATE. His career then took an unexpected turn when, on 8 August 1862, he enlisted as a Private in the New York 8th Heavy Artillery Company. He was promoted to Corporal on 3 October 1862, and to 1st Lieutenant on 17 September 1863. He left the regiment the same day, and immediately joined the 3rd Regiment of the Maryland Cavalry, with whom he fought, as a Unionist, in the Civil War until he was discharged on 10 August 1864.

[5] Enlistment, 1862

He subsequently moved to Louisiana, where he married Alice V. Carradine (born in Mississippi in 1946) on 7 July 1865 in St. Tammany, which is where they settled for several years. At the time of the 1870 census, they were living in the 9th Ward in St. Tammany, with Douglas not having an occupation, and having had two children: Douglas, aged 3, and Georgiana, aged 1.

BIZARRE. In 1872 he launched a comic illustrated paper, Bizarre, in New Orleans (Chicago Daily Tribune, 21 July 1872, p.4), although how long this survived is not known, no copies appear to have survived.

In February 1874 he was in Austin, Texas (as stated by Gaines Kincaide), where he produced a series of drawings illustrating the contest between the Republicans and Democrats, published in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

[6] Austin, Texas — Sketched by Douglas E. Jerrold, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 21 Feb 1874

His last appearance in the American press appears to have been in the summer of 1878, when several newspapers reported that he was “ill at Greenville, Mississippi, and his wife and three children are in so destitute circumstances that he has appealed to the public for help.”

[7] Illness, 1878

NED. What became of him, and his family, after this is a mystery. One clue may lie in the marriage index for Louisiana, in that a Ned Jerrold married a Sallie Polk in West Feliciana on 12 December 1887 — Douglas Edmund was widely-known as “Ned”…

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