Author: Neale, W. Johnson
Biography:
NEALE, W. Johnson (1812-93: ODNB)
The name he used as an author is the one given here but several variations on it emerged at different stages in his life. He was baptised William Johnston Neale at the church of St. John in the Wilderness, Withycombe Raleigh, Devon, on 24 Dec. 1812, the second son of Margaret Johnston Young and Adam Neale, who had married in Edinburgh in 1799. His father, an Edinburgh MD, was physician to the British forces during the Peninsular War and author of Letters from Portugal and Spain (1809). William Neale joined the navy as a midshipman in 1824 and earned a medal for his service at the Battle of Navarino (1827). After leaving the navy he turned to the law and was called to the bar in Nov. 1836—by which time he had already embarked on a career as a writer. The Lauread is anomalous among his many works, nearly all of which are prose fictions about the sea, from the pseudonymous Cavendish, or The Patrician at Sea (1831) to Scapegrace at Sea (1863). On 10 Dec. 1846 at St. Dunstan, Fleet St., London, he married Frances Herbert Nisbet (1823-98), the daughter of a navy officer and the grand-daughter and coheir of Viscountess Nelson. The couple gave the name Nelson to each of their six children and William Neale adopted it himself: his obituary notice is for “W. J. Nelson Neale.” It seems to have been after his marriage that he also started spelling his middle name “Johnstoun” or “Johnstoune.” As a barrister he was for a time High Bailiff of the Birmingham County Court and in 1859 was appointed Recorder of Walsall, Staffordshire, a post he held for the rest of his life. Neale divided his time between London and Birmingham later in life, when he and his wife lived apart. The 1881 census has her living with three of their children as head of a household at Ledbury, Herefordshire, while in 1891 he was living in London with a “sister” Jane Olive, aged 33 and born in Rome. He died at Cheltenham on 27 Mar. 1893 leaving an estate of about £1000. A newspaper obituary described him as Recorder and so forth but also as “a somewhat prolific writer of fiction.” (ODNB 26 Feb. 2024; ancestry.com 26 Feb. 2024; findmypast.com 26 Feb. 2024; The Citizen [Gloucester] 28 Mar. 1893)