Author: Whitehead, Charles
Biography:
WHITEHEAD, Charles (1804-62: ODNB)
The eldest child of John and Emma Whitehead, he was born in London on 4 or 8 Sept. 1804 and baptised on 18 Oct. His father was a wine merchant; his mother was most probably Emma Wilby, who married John Whitehead at All Hallows, Barking, in 1798. He was educated at the school of a Dr. Greenlaw at Isleworth (RLF application 1856) and was employed as a clerk before launching himself as a professional writer. His first poem, the Byronically gloomy The Solitary (1831) was dedicated to Lord Francis Leveson Gower (q.v.). In Jan. 1833 he married Mary Ann Loomes in Haggerston, Hackney; there were no children. Whitehead soon established himself as a Victorian man of letters. He submitted several plays for licensing by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, only one of which, The Cavalier, appears to have been staged and it failed. He contributed regularly to magazines and annuals. He served as a publisher’s reader and editor, especially for Bentley. Charles Dickens was a friend. His most popular works were biographies and semi-fictionalized biographies of rogues and adventurers: pirates and highwaymen (1834), Jack Ketch (1838), The Earl of Essex (1843), Richard Savage (1845), and Sir Walter Raleigh (1854). But Whitehead could not make ends meet. He applied successfully to the RLF four times between 1843 and 1854, with Dickens supporting him the first two times as “an Author of remarkable ability.” (His sister Emma Whitehead, a schoolmistress and poet, later also applied to the RLF.) But in 1856 he and his wife emigrated to Australia, where he worked as a freelance writer in Melbourne. His wife was sent to an insane asylum where she died of consumption in 1860. He himself drank and showed signs of mental disturbance. He was turned away from an asylum in 1862, was found in a bad way on the street, and was taken to Melbourne Hospital where he died of hepatitis and bronchitis on 5 July 1862. He was buried in a pauper’s grave. (ODNB 23 May 2024; ADB 23 May 2024; findmypast.com 23 May 2024; RLF #856, #1445) HJ