Francis William Blagdon

Francis William Blagdon (bapt. 19 January 1777 – 24 December 1818) was an English journalist and author.

Life

Blagdon began his career as a newsboy for The Sun newspaper. He then became amanuensis to Dr. Anthony Florian Madinger Willich, a medical writer, who taught him French and German; he also learned Spanish and Italian.

Blagdon became associated with the Morning Post, which he helped to edit for some years. The paper was then Tory in its views, and Blagdon took a polemical line. He was imprisoned for six months in 1805, for libeling John Jervis, Earl St. Vincent as a naval administrator.

In 1809, Blagdon came into conflict with William Cobbett, and in October of that year he published a prospectus, perhaps not intended seriously, of "Blagdon's Weekly Political Register", which was to commence The History of the Political Life and Writings of Cobbett, who was compared to Catiline. As a Sunday anti-Cobbett paper, Blagdon's Register was subsidised by the government, as was a similar effort of Lewis Goldsmith. Financial speculation ruined him. The Phœnix, another of his ventures, soon came to an end. He died of consumption in Smith Square, Westminster, on Christmas Eve 1818, and was buried on 2 January 1819 at St Margaret's, Westminster. A subscription was raised for his destitute widow and children.