Walter M. Gallichan

Walter Matthew Gallichan (1861 – 27 November 1946) was a British writer and journalist.

Personal life

Walter Matthew Gallichan was born in St. Helier, Jersey, the son of John Gallichan, an antiques dealer, and his wife, Elizabeth, a music teacher. After his family moved to Reading, Berkshire, he was educated there privately.

Gallichan married multiple times. He was married firstly in 1889 to Ada Elizabeth White, daughter of Henry White the librarian of the Royal Society until her death in 1895. In March 1901 he was recorded in the Welsh census as being married to a "Mary Gallichan", but six weeks later he is recorded as marrying the author and art historian Catherine Gasquoine Hartley at Chelsea Registry Office in London. Hartley and Gallichan divorced in 1915. In February 1916 he married for the final time, again in London, to divorcee Norah Kathleen Finberg (née Mutch). After his divorce Gallichan's marriage to Hartley was glossed over in his Who's Who entry, which only listed his marriages to White and Mutch, and this version of his marital situation was also followed later by The Times in his obituary.

In 1934 Gallichan was awarded a Civil List pension.

He died on 27 November 1946 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Career

Gallichan made his name as a journalist, being one of the earliest members of the staff of the Daily Mail, and was later a pioneer in sex education in Britain.

Gallichan's earliest works were released under the pseudonym Geoffrey Mortimer, including a number of novels and some essays on sex and morality. Several of his early non-fiction works were published by the so-called University Press of Watford. This controversial publisher was known for publishing contentious material, and had been prosecuted for obscenity after its 1897 publication of Havelock Ellis's Sexual Inversion.