JERDAN

William (son of John Jerdan, farmer d. 1796). b. Kelso, Roxburghshire 16 April 1782; clerk to C. Elliott writer to the signet, Edinb. 1802–5; editor of the Aurora, the hotel keepers’ paper, London 1806 and of other papers 1806–13; while a reporter witne ed murder of Spencer Percival and was the first to seize Belling ham 11 May 1812; editor of the Sun 11 May 1813 to May 1817; editor of the Literary Gazette from No. 26 July 1817 to 28 Dec. 1850; chief founder of Royal Soc. of literature 1823; F.S.A. 1826; lost his money on failure of Whitehead’s bank 1808 and in the panic of 1826; granted civil list pension of £100, 23 March 1853; author of Six weeks in Paris or a cure for the Gall oman i a by a late Visitant 3 vols. 1817, 2 ed. 1818; National portrait gallery of illustrations and eminent personages of the nineteenth century 5 vols. 1830–4; The Autobiography of W. Jerdan 4 vols. 1852–3; Men I have known 1866; a contributor to Notes and Queries under name of Bushey Heath. d. Bushey Heath, Herts. 11 July 1869. Fraser’s Mag. i 605–6 (1830), portrait ; Reg. and Mag. of Biog. ii 94–5 (1869); Maclise Portrait gallery (1883) 1–4, portrait ; Lord W. P. Lennox’s Celebrities 2 Ser. ii 35–52 (1876).