Author: Westmacott, Charles
Biography:
WESTMACOTT, Charles (1785-1868: ancestry.com)
He was born on 24 Dec. 1785 (not 1787/8) and baptised as the son of Richard and Sarah (Vardy) Westmacott at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London, on 18 Jan. 1786. The sculptor Richard Westmacott (1747-1808) was indeed his father but his birth mother was a widow and innkeeper, Susan or Susannah Molloy, and Charles was illegitimate. As an adult, he often went by the name of Charles Molloy Westmacott. The Westmacotts had thirteen children of their own but were able to send Charles to St. Paul’s school in 1800, his father’s name being recorded as Richard Molloy, merchant. After the death of his father in 1808 he had to make his own way, drawing on his education and his knowledge of the art world—which is evident in his Descriptive and Critical Catalogue of the RA exhibition galleries (1823) and his British Galleries of Painting (1824). He became a journalist, writing for various periodicals and specializing in scandal. By 1822 he was the editor of the Gazette of Fashion. When his Points of Misery was given bad reviews in 1823 he lashed out at William Jerdan (q.v.), whom he held responsible, by sarcastically dedicating Cockney Critics to him with an extended, exceptionally vicious attack in a preface (“slaughterman of reputation,” etc.). In 1827 he acquired The Age and attracted large numbers of readers, as well as a few libel suits, with its scurrilous content. He sold The Age in 1838 and acquired The Argus. Westmacott used the threat of publication to extort money from potential targets of his “satire.” Anne Durham (b c. 1806), the nominal owner of The Age, was his mistress and the mother of his son Charles (b c. 1829); the three of them appear in the 1841 Census as Westmacotts (“Westenacotty”) living comfortably in Kingston upon Thames. She was still with him when he died in Paris, aged 82, on 25 June 1868, but her later movements are not known. Westmacott does not appear to have written other poetical works than those listed here, but he was the author of a comedy, Nettlewig Hall (1829), and several works written under a pseudonym have been attributed to him. (ODNB 6 May 2024; ancestry.com 6 May 2024; findmypast.com 6 May 2024; Morning Herald 2 Feb. 1827; Leicester Chronicle 8 Aug. 1829; Star [London] 6 May 1830) HJ