Author: Thomas, William Thomas
Biography:
THOMAS, William Thomas later William Gibbs Thomas Moncrieff (1794? d 1857: ODNB)
His parentage is unknown and the year of his birth is uncertain. No documentary evidence supports the assertion in ODNB and elsewhere that he was born in London on 24 Aug. 1794 the son of “a respectable tradesman of Newcastle Street, Strand,” information that originated in an obituary in The Era, 13 Dec. 1857. Contemporary London trade directories list several men named Thomas in business in the Strand, but none in Newcastle Street. His education, though limited, was evidently sufficient. At the age of ten he was working in a solicitor’s office; soon thereafter he was a clerk at the firm of Moses Hooper in Great Marlborough Street; and in about 1815 he was a law stationer. A play, Moscow, or the Cossack’s Daughter, staged at the Regency in 1810, is said to be his. He later habitually used the surname Moncrieff. Having obtained the patronage of Robert William Elliston of the Olympic theatre, his musical farces The Diamond Arrow and All at Coventry were staged there in 1816 and 1817. By the time of his death, in London on 3 Dec. 1857, he is said to have written more than 200 dramas. Many of his plays were performed, but relatively few of them were published. His most successful play, Life in London as Tom and Jerry (1821), ran for 300 nights. His most famous play was a spectacle, The Cataract of the Ganges (1823). Charles Dickens was annoyed that Thomas adapted his novels for the stage, in some cases before publication of the books’ final installment. Thomas is believed to have been the inspiration for “the literary gentleman” in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. Arrested twice for debt in 1829 and called before the insolvent debtor’s court in 1830, the RLF granted him £25 in 1840, £10 in 1842, and £30 in 1851. At an unspecified period, the king of Hanover apparently gave him a weekly subvention of about 10 guineas. Poor and totally blind by 1842, he spent his final years, from 1844, at the Charterhouse, Aldersgate Street. There he felt so isolated and endured conditions so austere that, he complained, he was nearly driven to madness. Besides plays, Thomas published guidebooks and several books of poetry. His wife, whose name is unrecorded, predeceased him. (ODNB 18 July 2023; RLF 1008) JC
Other Names:
- William T. Thomas
- Moncrieff