Author: Roche, Eugenius
Biography:
ROCHE, Eugenius (1786-1829: ODNB)
He was born on 23 Feb. 1786, probably in Paris, where his Irish father was a professor of languages at the Ecole Militaire. (The GM obituary states that he was born in Dublin, went to Paris at the age of two, and to London at eighteen.) The “Memoir” in London in a Thousand Years (1830) gives Paris as his place of birth and an exact arrival date in London, aged 18, on 30 May 1804. His burial record also supports 1786. The day and month are supported by his poem, “Stanzas by the Author on his Birth-day.” The names of his parents are not known. In London he was soon contributing to periodicals, most notably the Belle Assemblée. In 1807 he started a monthly magazine, Literary Recreations, which published early poems by Byron and Campbell (qq.v.) but failed after eighteen months. In June 1808 he published a quarterly periodical, The Dramatic Appellant, which published neglected or rejected plays—including two of his own, listed here--but this too failed. In 1810, as editor of The Day, he was imprisoned for libel in the King’s Bench for a year following criticisms of the arrest of Sir Francis Burdett. In 1813 he joined the Morning Post and soon became one of its editors. In 1827, he became editor and one of the proprietors of the New Times. He was also sometime editor of the Courier, the National Register, and the Morning Chronicle. In constant financial difficulty, asthmatic and probably consumptive, he died on 9 Nov. 1829 at his residence in Hart Street, Bloomsbury, and was buried on 14 Nov. 1829, aged 43, at St. Pancras. In Jan. 1830 Thomas Crofton Croker and William Jerdan (qq.v.) secured £30 from the RLF for his destitute widow and nine children. They also probably organised the posthumous publication of London in a Thousand Years for her benefit. He married first Mary Jane Oliver (1786-1827) on 15 Apr. 1810 at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch. They had eight children. She died on 7 Jan. 1827, aged 40. He then married Charlotte Roche, probably a distant cousin, on 6 Apr. 1828 at Whitchurch, Somerset. (ODNB 14 July 2023; DNB; ancestry.co.uk 14 July 2023; findmypast.co.uk 14 July 2023; RLF #672; Sun 17 Apr. 1810; London Packet 8 Jan. 1827, New Times 10 Nov. 1829; GM Jan. 1827, 92, and Dec. Supplement 1829, 640-1) AA