Chatterton moved from the lack of privacy of Shoreditch, to his own attic room in the house of Mrs Angel, a saque or mantua maker. Mrs Angel's house was in Brooke Street, but there has been confusion over the actual house number; so, which house did he actually live in? 

 

The British Museum has a drawing by John Wykeham Archer, which dates to around 1825/30. Archer states the house to be No.4, and that Chatterton died in the garret (attic room) top left of Archer's picture. The curator at the BM corrects this, stating that No. 39, on the opposite side of the road, is where Chatterton lived for a short while before his death.

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The 1842 edition of Chatterton's Life and Works, also has it as number 4, which Meyerstein states to be the route of the confusion and, in his own book, A Life of Thomas Chatterton, 1930, he uses the researches of Moy Thomas (see below), to show that it was actually number 39. 

 

Masson's 1856 essay, 'Chatterton: A story of the Year 1770,' also has it as number 4.  Masson must have been doubly shocked when Moy Thomas, writing in the Athenaeum for 1857, corrected his errors. And then, in 1858,  J. Hollingshead, writing in the magazine, 'The Train, demolishes (with rudeness) some of his claims and states, using Moy Thomas's work, that the house was actually number 39.  It took Masson until 1874 to publish his 'Chatterton: A Story of the Year 1770,' as a stand alone book, where he corrects his errors.

 

​So, Moy Thomas, with some clever detective work, finally resolved the tricky question of the location and number of the house.  He also clearly shows that the coroners report created by Dix is a forgery.  See his detailed letter covering both subjects, in the:  Athenaeum, December 1857.

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Nothing remains of the house in Brooke Street, so it hardly matters which house it was, apart from helping to determine which sources a particular editor has used in the production of his/her work.

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The exact date Chatterton moved to Holborn is not known, but I have settled on June 1st as  his first day, based on the following: his letter to his mother dated the 14th May, states 'Direct for me, at Mr. Walmsley's, at Shoreditch - only, so at that point in time he had no plans to be anywhere else; The Death of Nicou, was dated Brooke-Street, 12th June, so a date in-between the two dates seems reasonable enough.

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Chatterton, now in number 39 Brooke Street, can control what his family in Bristol might be told about his situation, nobody can belie him now - however, he now has just 12 weeks and 1 day to live.

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It is said that Brooke Street was a somewhat sleazy and run-down area, but at least Chatterton had the privacy he craved; the privacy he needed to put pen to paper and bring to light the works that were filling his head.