Author: Belcher, William
Biography:
BELCHER, William (fl 1791-98)
No public records have been located that can be linked with certainty to this author. He was a Unitarian and was probably the son of James Belcher, a Unitarian bookseller in Birmingham. He (or his father) was the author of An Authentic Account of the Riots in Birmingham (1791). In 1793 he was convicted and imprisoned for selling seditious works, including those by Thomas Paine (q.v.). Likely it was just after his release that he moved to London; some accounts state that he became a bookseller in Fleet Street. He published Belcher’s Cream of Knowledge (1795), Precious Morsels (1795), Belcher’s Address to Humanity (1796), and Intellectual Electricity (1798). Some of his publications give his address as 9 Lower Thornhaugh Street, Bedford Square, London. Address to Humanity recounts how he was labelled insane and confined to a lunatic asylum. A William Belcher, Non-Conformist, was buried in London on 9 Dec. 1813; his address is given as Tower (possibly Tower Hamlets) and he was penniless at the time of death. Some catalogues confuse him with William Belcher whose books of grammar were published by Longman in the 1810s. Others, including ESTC, identify him as William Belcher, MD; this is almost certainly an error. (Northampton Mercury 10 Aug. 1793; D. Rivers, Literary Memoirs of Living Authors [1798]; findmypast.co.uk 18 Mar. 2023) SR
Other Names:
- W. Belcher