Charles Molloy Westmacott

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Charles Molloy Westmacott (c. 1788 - 1868) was a British journalist and author, editor of The Age, the leading Sunday newspaper of the early 1830s. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Bernard Blackmantle.

Life

Born in 1787 or 1788, Westmacott claimed to be the illegitimate son of the sculptor Richard Westmacott the Elder, although his political enemies claimed he was the son of a chimney sweep from Drury Lane. He was educated at St Paul's School and the Royal Academy. In 1827 he became editor of The Age, a Sunday newspaper which had started in 1825 and which specialized in scurrilous and satirical gossip about celebrities of the day.^[1]

Westmacott was savagely portrayed as the unprincipled gossip-monger 'Sneak' in Edward Bulwer's England and the English, and has been dubbed "the principal blackmailing editor of his day".^[2] While he did accept money to suppress publication of stories, this was legal until the 1843 Libel Act, and a recent treatment has argued that these practices were "incidental rather than central to the Age."^[1]

In the 1840s Westmacott moved to Paris, where he died in 1868.

Works

(as Bernard Blackmantle) Fitzalleyne of Berkeley a romance of the present times, 1825
(as Bernard Blackmantle) The English spy, an original work, characteristic, satirical, and humorous, comprising scenes and sketches in every rank of society... drawn from the life by Bernard Blackmantle, 1825/26. Illustrated by Robert Cruickshank. Republished in 2 vols., 1907.
The stamp duties: serious considerations on the proposed alteration of the stamp duty on newspapers, 1836

References

↑ 1.0 1.1 David E. Latané, 'Charles Molloy Westmacott and the Spirit of the Age, Victorian Periodicals Review, 40: 1 (2007), pp. 44-71
↑ Michael Sadleir, The Strange Life of Lady Blessington, 1933, p.124.

External links

Works by or about Charles Molloy Westmacott in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Persondata
Name	Westmacott, Charles Molloy
Alternative names
Short description	British journalist
Date of birth	1788
Place of birth
Date of death	1868
Place of death

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