Author: Halpin, William Henry
Biography:
HALPIN, William Henry, pseudonym Peter Quince, the Younger (1795-1848: GM)
Born in Ireland, the second son of Anne (Crosthwaite) and William Henry Halpin of Dublin, and thus the younger brother of Nicholas John Halpin (q.v.), he established himself as a journalist and editor first in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and later in London. He married Elizabeth Prestage (or Prestidge) of Cheltenham by licence on 7 Aug. 1823. When Elizabeth Halpin applied as his widow to the RLF for assistance in Jul. 1849, she included Samuel Young Griffith's New Historical Description of Cheltenham (1826) in the list of her husband's works, and two letters of reference confirmed that Halpin had been the real author. (Of another volume of poems by him, The Woman of Canaan and Other Poems on Sacred Subjects, advertised in Aug. 1827, no extant copy has been found and its existence though likely is not certain.) Halpin's own Cheltenham titles brought him into controversy with a proponent of the spa waters, and he was found guilty of libel at the Gloucester summer assizes in 1828. His sentence of twelve months' imprisonment was remitted in 1829 on a surety of three years of good behaviour. Another referee for the RLF, James Sheridan Knowles (q.v.), maintained that ill treatment at Cheltenham had driven Halpin away from there. In London he lived by contributions to periodicals but he continued to struggle financially. In 1846, giving his residence as 23 Grafton St., Fitzroy Square, he was declared bankrupt. He returned to live in Dublin, where he died at an address on Newcomen Terrace on 8 May 1848. His wife Elizabeth stayed in England. The death-duty register gives her place of residence as 7 Gloucester Place, Windsor, but she may have been visiting friends, as she was doing at the time of her application to the RLF, which granted her £25. (findmypast.com 14 Jan. 2022; ancestry.com 18 Jan. 2022; Dublin Evening Post 9 May 1848; Bristol Mirror 16 Aug. 1823; GM July 1848, 109; RLF #1208; Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Advertiser 16 and 18 Aug. 1827; contributions by AA)
Other Names:
- William Henry Halpin, Jr.
- W. H. Halpin