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It is Thursday 26th April, 1770.

It seems Chatterton arrived in time

To visit four magazine editors

He mentions them all

In a letter to his Mother

​

Mr Edmunds, Middlesex Journal

Mr Fell, Freeholder's Magazine

Mr Hamilton, Town & Country Magazine

Mr Dodsley, Annual Register

​

Chatterton is on a Mission

It is clear he intends to do all he can

To make a success of this new start.

​

It has been claimed

That Hogarth Sketched Chatterton

(The Distrest Poet)

Impossible,

Hogarth was dead by 1764

​

Nevertheless, the

Hogarth Image is intriguing:

A young man holding a book

Heads for the door of a coffee house

Feels like it could be Chatterton

Also Impossible as it dates to the 1730s.

​

It does give a sense of what

Chatterton had to look forward to

Visiting the coffee shops of London

Chatterton Lodged in Shoreditch

With Mrs Ballance, a Relative

She herself was a Lodger

Of the main tenant, Mr Walmsley

Who lived in the house

With his wife, nephew and niece.

Chatterton Needed Space and Privacy

Instead he Shared the Nephew's Bed.

No Wonder he sat up Writing

Into the early hours

Writing, writing, forever writing.

​

It can't have been much of a surprise

When, 37 Days later and

Desperate for Privacy

He moved to his own, 

Private, Attic Room, in Brooke Street

​

The landlord of the Shoreditch house

Was Herbert Croft

Author of Love and Madness

And so, the plot thickens!

​

In a letter Croft wrote to Stevens in 1782

He states he got much of his knowledge

About Chatterton from his Tenants.

He mentions Walmsley specifically. 

Croft used the knowledge he gained

Along with Chatterton's Personal letters

 To Thicken his Plot of Love and Madness.

The book became Irresistible

To 18th century readers.

Croft was not always a man to be trusted

He convinced Chatterton's sister

To lend him Chatterton's letters & Promised to return them Forthwith

​

Instead, he left town with the letters

And without Permission - the Devil,

He wove them into the plot of his book.

His methods were Devious it's True!

But we know so much more of Chatterton

Thanks to Herbert Croft

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