Author: Fitch, Joseph
Biography:
FITCH, Joseph (1782?-1838: findmypast.com)
Joseph Fitch, the author of the Poetical Grammar and a complementary schoolbook, the Monitor's Manual, is described in advertisements for the two books in 1823 as "Master of the Academy, Old Rd., Stepney"--a dissenting academy, predominantly Baptist. Fitch was a Universalist who as the Rev. Joseph Fitch spoke about his beliefs at City chapels in Grub St. and Cripplegate in 1828. His Universal Liturgy . . . for the Use of the Congregation of Universalists at the City Chapel, Cripplegate (1828) drew fire from the radical publisher Richard Carlile for "mongrel and misnamed universalism." It appears that he spent his life in London's east end. He was most probably born in Bethnal Green in 1782, the son of John Fitch, a weaver, and his wife Mary; in 1821 he published articles in the Public Ledger as "an inhabitant of Limehouse"; he died in Stepney in 1838. After his death, another schoolmaster brought out a revised edition of the Poetical Grammar (1839). He does not appear to have married. (findmypast.com 31 Aug. 2021; ancestry.com 31 Aug. 2021; Richard Carlile, The Lion 1 [1828] 359; Public Ledger 23 Dec. 1823, 28 Feb. 1828; Examiner 30 Mar. 1828) HJ