Author: Whyte, Samuel
Biography:
WHYTE, Samuel (1733-1811: DIB)
Born on board a ship near Liverpool, he was the illegitimate son of Solomon Whyte or, more likely, Richard Whyte, deputy keeper of the Tower of London. His mother’s name is not known and she died soon after his birth. Through his father he was first cousin to Frances Chamberlaine (the mother of Richard Brinsley Sheridan [q.v.]); she and her husband Thomas Sheridan were lifelong friends and supporters of Whyte. His early years were spent in Liverpool before he was sent to Dublin to be educated at Samuel Edward’s school. In the mid 1750s he spent time in Liverpool and London before returning to Dublin in about 1758 when he founded an academy, The English Grammar School, at 75 Grafton Street. He may have married while in London: records show that a Samuel Whyte married Ann Taverner (d 1787) at St. Martin’s in the Fields in London on 28 Sept. 1757; likely this was him. They had a son, Edward Athenry Whyte, who later took over his father’s school and edited his writings, and a daughter, Martha Ann Whyte, who in 1791 married James Magan, an actor who performed in England and Ireland as James Middleton. (He died in 1799 of dissipation and Martha Ann Whyte supported their children by working as a governess.) Whyte’s school—ahead of its time in being co-educational and non-denominational—earned an excellent reputation; both Thomas Moore and R. B. Sheridan (qq.v.) were educated there. Whyte published some pedagogical works including Modern Education (1775) and The Theatre, written to defend his use of dramatic performance as an educational tool. Whyte died at his home on Grafton Street and was buried at St. Ann’s church on Dawson Street. (DIB 27 Dec. 2021; ODNB 27 Dec. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 27 Dec. 2021; Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser 14 Dec. 1831; Dublin Evening Mail 10 Sept. 1866) SR