John Fenwick political radical and journalist (2)
From 1801, John Fenwick worked as a journalist and newspaper editor. Noted as either purchasing or editing the radical newspaper the Albion in 1801, when its proprietor Allan MacLeod was in Newgate, and the Plow in 1802. For the latter, Fenwick wanted to develop a network of regional correspondents. The extent to which he was successful, or harnessed a news communications network to political purposes, is not known. In the years that followed, he occasionally travelled from London for work.
Report of a political meeting in Nottingham by an ‘able pen’, Statesman 31 May 1810 British Newspaper Archive
From April 1810, if not before, Fenwick likely worked on the radical daily newspaper the Statesman which continued to print while its proprietor and publisher Daniel Lovell was in Newgate in 1810-15. Other than a letter from Charles Lamb to Barron Field in 1817, direct evidence that Fenwick edited the Statesman is scant. Political meetings were occasionally reported by an unnamed ‘able pen’. In October 1810, the Statesman published a warmly appreciative theatre review which focused exclusively on the Covent Garden debut of Eliza Ann Fenwick, John and Eliza Fenwick’s daughter.
Theatre review on the Covent Garden debut of Eliza Ann Fenwick, John and Eliza Fenwick’s daughter, Statesman 6 October 1810 - British Newspaper Archive
John Fenwick’s family relied partly on Eliza Fenwick’s income as a children’s writer, and neither parent had guaranteed earnings. Fenwick was briefly subject to the rules of Fleet prison as a debtor. The creditors named alongside his discharge in April 1808 confirmed that his unpaid bills comprised those of the school master Samuel Boucher Allen, who may have taught their son Orlando Fenwick; and the apothecary surgeon James Moss, of Somers Town where the Godwins lived, who might have prescribed for or been called to attend any member of the Fenwick family. A John Fenwick published a well reviewed A new elementary grammar of the English language (1811), shortly after William Hazlitt completed A new and improved grammar of the English tongue (1810) for Godwin’s Juvenile Library.
Masthead for The London Moderator and National Adviser 14 October 1818 printed and published by Thomas James Fenwick - British Newspaper Archive
In March 1812, John Fenwick’s brother Thomas James Fenwick (1768-1850), a draper and slop seller in Limehouse, started a weekly newspaper The London Moderator and National Adviser which continued to print until 1823. Eliza Fenwick noted that
My brother has offered to pay me, if I will write, by the sheet, as I advance. He has bought printing premises types etc for a newspaper he has started, and as he must keep a certain number of men he wishes to purchase manuscripts to print.
It is likely that John Fenwick edited this weekly newspaper from 1812, and he may have continued to do so until 1823. On the masthead, John Fenwick appeared as the proprietor of this newspaper in December 1818, before the paper was purchased in January 1819 by a John Twigg.
Masthead for The London Moderator and National Adviser 30 December 1818 printed and published by John Fenwick - British Newspaper Archive
Fenwick briefly employed Charles Lamb to write for the Albion in the Summer of 1801. Two decades later, in 1820, Charles Lamb lampooned his former employer as the ‘excellent tosspot’ Ralph Bigod, an impecunious republican newspaper editor. And so commenced the laughable legend, which led the academic Lissa Paul to bluntly reinvent the hard to research John Fenwick as ‘a deadbeat’, in her 2019 biography of the novelist and children’s writer Eliza Fenwick.
CC-BY
Dr Charlotte MacKenzie
Independent researcher
@HistoryCornwall
Creative Commons Attribution licence
Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive - much free content, including The London Moderator and National Adviser and Statesman
John Fenwick political radical and writer (1)