Author: Moorhouse, William Vincent
Biography:
MOORHOUSE, William Vincent (1797-1830: Leicester Chronicle)
It is not known where he was born or who his parents were. In later life he lived at Repton, Derbyshire, but published at Wellington, Shropshire, so a birth in one of these counties is most likely. He did not receive a classical education but developed a passion for poetry in early youth. On 20 May 1816 he lost his left hand in a gunshot incident while out hunting. With limited employment prospects, he seems to have diligently networked to obtain subscriptions for The Thrasher: And Other Poems (1828). With more than fifteen hundred subscribers, mostly from Shropshire and Derbyshire, including over ten members of the nobility, twenty-five physicians, and various headmasters, his plight was clearly well known. However, at least one critic quickly picked up that he had blatantly plagiarised Stephen Duck’s (q.v.) earlier poem, “The Thresher’s Labour” (1730) in his Poems on Several Occasions (1736). Other plagiarisms were soon detected. In his “Address to the Subscribers,” Moorhouse complains of “calumnious reports which have been spread abroad, unfavourable to my interests” (The Thrasher, vii) which were probably complaints about the delay in publication despite subscriptions having been raised (possibly over several years). This may have led him to plagiarise in order to produce something to satisfy subscribers. He was possibly the William Moorhouse who married Elizabeth Williams on 1 June 1819 at Repton. They had at least a daughter and a son. He died on 3 Nov. 1830, after a short illness, and was buried three days later at Repton. (Leicester Chronicle 13 Nov. 1830; Johnson, item 634; Kaleidoscope [Liverpool] 28 Oct., 2 Dec. 1828; Goodridge) AA