Author: Mogridge, George
Biography:
MOGRIDGE, George (1787-1854: ODNB)
Pseudonym Old Humphrey
Mogridge was a prolific writer but his natural medium was prose, so the few works included in this bibliography represent only a tiny fraction of his work. Even those are hardly adequate, since there were many undated reprints and some editions under ten pages long. He was born on 17 Feb. 1787 and baptised on 13 Mar. at St. Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham, Warwickshire, the son of a canal agent, Matthias Mogridge, and his second wife Mary Phillips, who had married at the same church on 19 Sept. 1782. He boarded at a boys’ school near Bromgrove from the age of five and was apprenticed to a japanner at 14; his habits of reading and writing date from his school days. As an apprentice he was encouraged by Samuel Jackson Pratt (q.v.) and began to write regular columns for local newspapers under the pseudonym “Jeremy Jaunt.” In partnership with a brother, he set up a japanning business; when it failed in 1826, freelance writing became his main source of income. Mogridge had married Elizabeth Bloomer on 2 Apr. 1812 at St. Martin’s; the couple had three children. After her death in 1822 he married Mary Ridsdale at Wakefield, Yorkshire: there are some discrepancies in the public records but the most probable date is 8 Mar. 1825, with newspaper reports starting on 10 Mar. They had one child. Mogridge was rescued from financial disaster by the Religious Tract Society, which offered a steady (though small) income for their commissioned articles, books, and pamphlets but required that he relocate to London in 1827, where his family eventually joined him. In 1851, for the sake of his health, they moved again to Hastings, where he died on 2 Nov. 1854 and was buried at All Saints. Under a range of over twenty pseudonyms Mogridge produced an estimated 226 titles for various publishers: juvenile fiction, travels, working-class education (Learning to Think, 1846; Learning to Converse, 1854), and other genres. His wife assisted him as transcriber and editor and wrote the preface to the posthumous Domestic Addresses (1863). (ODNB 27 June 2023; findmypast.com 27 June 2023; “George Mogridge, Writer,” Wikipedia 27 June 2023; Leeds Intelligencer 10 Mar. 1825; Birmingham Chronicle 17 Mar. 1825; WorldCat)
Other Names:
- G. Mogridge