Author: Thelwall, John
Biography:
THELWALL, John (1764-1834: ODNB)
Pseudonym Sylvanus Theophrastus
Although it took him some time, John Thelwall found his métiers as a political reformer and a pioneer of speech therapy. He was born in London on 27 July 1764 and baptised at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, on 22 Aug., the son of a silk mercer, Joseph Thelwall, and his wife Mary Arnold. After the death of his father in 1775 his mother carried on the business; John left boarding school in Highgate in 1777 to join her. He was thereafter self-educated, in a notably wide-ranging way that stood him in good stead as a debater and lecturer. During the next decade he made several false starts as tailor, painter, actor, and lawyer. In the 1780s he began contributing to periodicals. In 1787 he brought out his first collection of poems and undertook the editing of the Biographical and Imperial Magazine. On 27 July 1791 he married Susannah Vellam at Oakham, Rutland. They had six children, some of them named for Thelwall’s political idols (Algernon Sydney, John Hampden, Benjamin Franklin). Thelwall became a leader in the reform movement of the early 1790s. Along with Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke, he was arrested on a charge of capital treason in 1794, spent six months as a prisoner in the Tower, but in the end was acquitted and hailed as a popular hero. He was in demand as a public speaker and also had an outlet for his ideas in literary works and periodicals. He corresponded with Coleridge and met him and Wordsworth (qq.v.) in the West country in 1797. In 1801 he began touring as a lecturer on elocution and then established himself in London as a Professor of Elocution first in Bloomsbury and later in Brixton. After the death of his wife in 1816 he married a former pupil, Henrietta Cecil Boyle (1800-65), a minor, by licence at St. James, Piccadilly, on 15 May 1817; they had one son together. Thelwall died at Bath, Somerset, on 17 Feb. 1834 after a short illness while touring and was buried on 21 Feb. at St. Swithin Walcot. He was then hailed as “the last of the victims of the Pitt and Tory persecutions of 1793” (News). (ODNB 29 July 2024; ancestry.com 29 July 2024; findmypast.com 29 July 2024; The News [London] 23 Feb. 1834) HJ
Other Names:
- J. Thelwall
- Mr. Thelwall