Author: Dibdin, Charles, Jr.
Biography:
DIBDIN, Charles, Jr. (1768-1833: ODNB)
The eldest child of Charles Dibdin (q.v.) and Harriet Pitt, he was born on 17 Oct. 1768 and baptised Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, on 6 Nov. After his parents separated, he used the name Charles Isaac Pitt. His mother entrusted him and his brother to her uncle Cecil Pitt, who sent them first to a local school in London and then to a boarding school at Barnard Castle, Co. Durham. Charles was apprenticed to a pawnbroker in London at fourteen and worked in the shop until he began to be able to make a living through writing and performing on the stage--both of which he did under the name Charles Dibdin Jr. or Charles Dibdin the younger. On 13 June 1798 he married an actress, Mary Bates; the couple had eleven children, nine of whom grew to adulthood. They travelled with touring theatre companies for a few years before Charles secured the position of manager at Sadler's Wells. In 1802 he and his brother Thomas became shareholders in the theatre. But Dibdin's fortunes declined after the Napoleonic Wars. Mary died in 1816; in 1819 Charles was imprisoned for debt--not for the last time. In 1821 he sold his shares in Sadler's Wells. Between 1824 and 1832 the RLF came to his assistance with grants of £110 in all. In his application of 1829 he gave the "long-standing stagnation of the Bookselling Trade" as one of the causes of his distress. He continued throughout to write poetry and pieces for the theatre, besides memoirs which were not published in his lifetime. He died on 15 Jan. 1833 and was buried on 20 Jan. at St. James, Pentonville, London. A newspaper report gave the cause of death as a cold caught on Christmas Day while sitting through a service of worship in wet clothes. Some confusion remains over the attribution of songs and other entertainments to "Dibdin" in contemporary collections, but broadly speaking, Dibdin the elder was known for songs and Dibdin the younger for comic poems. (ODNB 6 Feb. 2020; ancestry.com 5 Feb. 2025; findmypast.com 5 Feb. 2025; RLF #504; Leicester Journal 25 Jan. 1833) HJ
Other Names:
- Charles Dibdin, the younger
- C. I. Pitt