Author: WHITEHEAD, William
Biography:
WHITEHEAD, William (fl 1815-20)
Library catalogues sometimes confuse the author of A Poem on the Battle of Waterloo (1820) with the earlier Poet Laureate William Whitehead (1715-85) but that is an obvious error. The Waterloo poem displays a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the events and principal actors of the battle both in the poem and in the extensive notes attached to it. Dedicated to the Duke of York and Albany, Commander-in-Chief of British forces and “my commander,” there are strong suggestions that the author was a combatant himself and an eye-witness at Waterloo. The subscription list is particularly impressive because it includes many subscribers on the Continent as well as in Britain: it is headed by several royal dukes, the Emperor or Russia, and the kings of the Netherlands and Prussia. There is a tribute on the title-page to the abolitionist William Wilberforce, who subscribed for ten copies, as did a James Whitehead Esq. There does not appear to have been a William Whitehead of the officer class at Waterloo, but five men of that name, privates and foot-soldiers, were awarded Waterloo medals for their service; one was wounded in the battle. That said, the title “my commander” might be used by members of other services or by militia volunteers as well as by regular army recruits. Public records offer too many possibilities to identify the writer with any certainty but one appealing candidate is William Whitehead of Kent, born in 1798, who was wounded at Waterloo and discharged with a pension from the army in 1830 on account of physical symptoms related to his injuries—a “diseased Breastbone, Scrofulous”—and yet lived until 1881, when he died at Crockenhill in Kent, leaving a widow in distressed circumstances but attended to his grave by the First Royal Kentish Volunteers. (ancestry.com 25 May 2024; findmypast.com 25 May 2024; The Star [Guernsey] 29 Oct. 1881) HJ