Author: MITCHELL, William Andrew
Biography:
MITCHELL, William Andrew (1796-1845: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born in Carlisle, Cumberland, to John Mitchell, owner and printer of The Tyne Mercury, and his wife Eleanor Armstrong. They had married in Carlisle on 6 Sept. 1795. Mitchell was baptised at Pandon Unitarian church in Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, on 22 Sept. 1796. The family lived at Chimney Mills, Newcastle. Mitchell’s earliest published works were An Essay on Capacity and Genius (1817) and The Bar Incompatible with Probity, Truth, and Mental Freedom (1818). When John Mitchell died in about 1820 he took over management of The Tyne Mercury and the associated bookselling business. He also manufactured and sold “a superior writing ink." In 1820 he sought to establish a bimonthly periodical, the Newcastle Magazine. Initially it was not a success but Mitchell relaunched it as a monthly periodical in 1822 and it lasted until 1831. His “Letters of Tim. Tunbelly,” commenting on and criticising the Newcastle town corporation, were printed in the Mercury and issued as a collection, with the addition of a fictitious memoir of Mr. Tunbelly, in 1823. Mitchell, who never married, also lectured at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, and served on the newly formed Newcastle Town Council from 1836 to 1843. He was a business partner with his brother, Henry Armstrong Mitchell (1799-1854), but the partnership was dissolved in Dec. 1841 when the Mercury was sold. The 1841 Census shows him living at Chimney Mills with his mother, Eleanor. In the early 1840s Mitchell began publishing a weekly magazine, Peter Putright’s Newcastle Register. He died at home on 25 Nov. 1845 and the Chimney Mills house was auctioned after his death. Although Mitchell wrote on a range of subjects--including ethics, angling, and politics--The Thoughts of One that Wandereth, listed in this database, is his only book of verse. (ancestry.co.uk 7 Sept. 2025; Welford; Newcastle Journal 28 Feb. 1846; Victoria E. M. Garner, The Business of News in England 1760-1820 [2025]) SR