Barnard Gregory and All the News That's Fit to Blackmail

"Brighton Gazette," April 7, 1831, via British Newspaper Archive

It’s often said that the duty of journalists is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  However, one newspaper man gave his own fun twist to this motto.  While he did indeed “afflict the comfortable” to a marked degree, the only “comfort” his efforts provided was to...himself.

On April 10, 1831, a London-based former schoolmaster, druggist, and itinerant preacher named Barnard Gregory expanded his resume by launching a weekly publication called “The Satirist, or, The Censor of the Times.”  And a whole lot of important people would soon be very sorry he had.

“The Satirist” billed itself as “For King, law, and people.”  In some respects, it was a standard newspaper--it carried reports from Parliament, and the occasional straightforward news story.  It’s true purpose, however, was to mock and defame people, institutions, and public issues Gregory had a beef with.

This proved to be an impressive list.  Gregory despised lawyers (“the black sheep of the law,”) gaming houses, the church (“a mass of corruption,”) the death penalty, and--unsurprisingly--the stamp duty on newspapers.  On a more personal level, “The Satirist” hurled abuse on both political reactionaries such as the Duke of Wellington, and radicals Henry “Orator” Hunt and the Chartists.  Queen Victoria was treated comparatively respectfully (although the newspaper disapproved of her disinterest in English theater,) but the Prince Consort was a favorite target, largely because he was a foreigner.  (Among the most unpleasant things about “The Satirist” were its extreme xenophobia and crude anti-Semitism.)

Politics, however, played a minor role in the pages of “The Satirist.”  It’s true mission was to print scandalous gossip about the lascivious, and even criminal, doings of society’s highest classes.  The publication loved nothing better than to expose the hypocrisy of the aristocracy and gentry, who set themselves up as a superior class, while indulging freely in behavior that would make less-favored mortals publicly disgraced or jailed.  Gregory didn’t hesitate to name names and specify their acts of alleged wickedness, often neatly evading the libel laws by making his claims through clearly fictitious “letters to the editor.”  Gregory would publish responses to these “correspondents” in terms such as “We cannot really reply to ‘Looker-On’ as to what the Countess of Beauchamp and William Burton are doing at Worthing.  Perhaps our correspondent can inform us?”

“The Satirist” finally went too far when it suggested that the recent birth of a child to a Mr. and Mrs. Neeld came as an unpleasant surprise to the husband, who had only recently married his wife, and that this new little Neeld was directly linked to Mrs. Neeld’s “close intimacy with an officer in the Guards.”  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Neeld immediately went screaming for the lawyers, bringing a suit over what the Attorney-General called “one of the most wicked and malignant libels” he had ever seen.

This opened the floodgates.  Suing “The Satirist” became a popular London pastime.  It was a very good time to be a lawyer specializing in defamation laws.  Many members of the legal profession became fat, rich, and happy, thanks to Mr. Gregory.  In 1832, he was convicted of libeling a lawyer named Deas.  The following year, he was nailed for accusing a Brighton man of cheating at cards.  In 1839, defaming and attempting to blackmail the wife of Tory MP Sir James Hogg earned him three months in jail.  Then Gregory made the mistake of attacking Renton Nicholson, the editor of a rival publication named “The Town.”

It is never a good idea to insult a man with ready access to a printing press.  Nicholson gave better than he got, publishing a long expose of Gregory which confirmed what most had suspected: “The Satirist” was merely a vehicle for blackmail.  Gregory would publish defamatory stories about his victims, then hit them up for money to get him to stop.  For Gregory, it was a win-win: either his target gave in and paid handsomely, or they held firm and refused, thus allowing him to continue publishing all that lovely circulation-boosting dirt.  Gregory’s efforts to sue Nicholson over these articles were derailed when he was imprisoned for the Hogg affair.

Gregory was also hauled into court by the Marquess of Blandford, son and heir of the Duke of Marlborough.  Blandford was, if possible, an even sleazier character than Gregory.  “The Satirist” noted that the Marquess, in order to seduce a seventeen year old named Susan Lawson, had tricked her into thinking they were married.  It was only when Blandford decided to marry an heiress, Lady Jane Stewart, that he bluntly informed Lawson that their “marriage” had been a hoax: the clergyman who had conducted the ceremony was merely an army officer paid off to do a bit of playacting.

Mr. Justice Denman, who was given the unappetizing role of presiding over the suit, made it clear he was equally disgusted with both defendant and plaintiff.  If there was a judicial way to make both sides lose, he would have found it.  When giving his judgment, he commented that if Blandford alone had been injured by “The Satirist,” he would have found against him, because, well, the creep deserved it.  However, these published revelations also wounded Blandford’s innocent wife and children, not to mention the teenage girl who had been so cruelly deceived.  By way of warning “those who are disposed to traffick in character in this way that they cannot be allowed to do so with impunity,” the judge found against Gregory.

Even this debacle was topped by Gregory’s protracted legal battle with Charles, Duke of Brunswick, known, not without reason, as the "Mad Duke."  At least, he had been Duke of Brunswick until 1830, when his subjects, fed up with his eccentric and heavy-handed rule, launched a successful insurrection against him.  Although the ex-duke made spasmodic efforts to reclaim his position, no one in Europe was inclined to help him, so he contented himself with a life of making a public spectacle of himself.  He became notorious for his foppish dress, his squalid romantic affairs, and his obsession with chess.  Many strange stories were told about this strange man.  After his death in 1873, “Appleton’s Journal” reported that he “lived in a great, gloomy house at the North End, and inspired a sort of dread whenever he appeared...There was a prevailing notion that he had some time done something horrible, but no two gossipers agreed on what it was.  Men, almost as dark and strange as himself, were said to be seen going in and out of his house after nightfall; but no result that a curious public could ever discover ever came out of these secret conclaves.”   Brunswick was just as addicted to litigation as Gregory: he was known to have sued a washerwoman over seven francs.

In short, he and the publisher of “The Satirist” were just made for each other.  In almost no time, the ex-duke took pride of place in the newspaper’s shooting gallery.  Gregory gleefully detailed Brunswick’s “unkindly and undignified” habits, his dissolute activities, and his predilection for welshing on debts.  By 1843, matters had reached the point where the pair had no less than three simultaneous lawsuits against each other.  Originally, Brunswick was merely charging Gregory with libel.  Then, “The Satirist” implicated the duke in the then-notorious murder of a prostitute named Eliza Grinwood.

Rather unwisely, Gregory took this precise moment to launch a career as a Shakespearean actor.  (You may not be surprised to learn that “The Satirist” gave him rave reviews.)  In February 1843, he appeared as Hamlet at Covent Garden.  To no one’s surprise, his vast number of enemies saw their splendid chance for revenge.  On opening night, the minute Gregory appeared on stage, the audience began to riot.  The demonstration was so noisy and violent the producers had no choice but to abort the performance.

Gregory was convinced that Brunswick was responsible.  “The Satirist” accused the duke of hiring “the filth of St. Giles” to attack “a man whose great weight of offence is SPEAKING THE TRUTH, AND EXPOSING THE VICES AND CRIMES OF SOCIETY.”  However, the editorial declared, Gregory would rise above “the petty machinations of a ‘super-annuated’ twaddler, who appeared to derive gratification from his own intemperance of folly, and the spleen of vindictive feeling.”  And, naturally, he sued Brunswick for that opening-night debacle.

The judge overseeing that suit agreed that the theater audience behaved disgracefully.  On the other hand, in order to prevail, Gregory had to prove that Brunswick had orchestrated the riot, which was a whole other issue.  Brunswick produced many witnesses who testified that he was far from the only Londoner who hated Barnard Gregory, and none of them needed any inducement to teach him a lesson.  Public sentiment about the theater demonstration was echoed by Charles Dickens, who commented to John Forster that “I begin to have hopes of the regeneration of mankind after the reception of Gregory last night.”  It was later claimed that the judge himself praised those who had disrupted Gregory’s performance as showing “public spirit.”  Whether this story is apocryphal or not, the jury shared in that sentiment.  Brunswick was acquitted.

Round Two in the Gregory/Brunswick legal fight was the duke’s libel suit regarding “The Satirist’s” allegations regarding the Grimwood murder.  This could hardly be called a battle at all.  On day one, Gregory’s lawyers told the court he had withdrawn his “not guilty” plea.  While Gregory denied naming the duke as the murderer, he acknowledged that what he had printed was meant to damage Brunswick’s reputation.

For this indiscretion, Gregory received a year in Newgate.  (“The Satirist” responded to the verdict by printing a curious editorial arguing that while Gregory’s allegations against Brunswick may have been, according to “the late odious and detestable Law of Libel,” legally libelous, that did not necessarily make them untruthful.)

At the time of his imprisonment, Gregory had no less than eleven other libel suits pending against him.  After his release, the publisher, pleading ill-health, managed to get them deferred for several years.  “Whom,” his newspaper thundered, “do they hope to crush?  A man once of great talent and indomitable energy, but now enfeebled, borne down, emaciated by prison fare, prison discipline, prison constraints, and prison cruelties!”  In the meantime, yet another Brunswick-related lawsuit bubbled up, over “The Satirist” hinting that the duke and convicted murderer Thomas Hocker had indulged in “certain practices which cannot be named.”  The jury--perhaps unconvinced of the falsity of these allegations--gave the verdict to the duke, but awarded him damages of just one farthing.

In 1845, Gregory tried reviving his Shakespearean career, only to meet heckling and howling audiences wherever he went.  (This was arguably an injustice, as the few impartial observers felt he had genuine acting ability.)  Gregory responded with a pamphlet arguing that he was being punished for sins of the past: he claimed his publishing days ended when he was imprisoned in 1843, so denying him the chance to follow a career on the stage was nothing less than persecution by “the moral refuse of the metropolis.”  Whatever else he may have been, Gregory was a fighter.  Despite these setbacks, he made a well-received appearance as Richard III at the Strand Theatre (the audience may have seen it as typecasting,) and wrote two successful plays.

In December 1849, “The Satirist” finally met its ignominious end when its new publisher, Martin Hansill, was convicted for helping a woman extort money from a rich businessman from Twickenham.  It was said the Duke of Brunswick had persuaded the government to finally suppress the newspaper, but by this point, the publication probably needed little help to go under.

Gregory continued on his true career: litigation.  He sued one Margaret Thompson over the terms of her uncle’s will.  This lawsuit was happily resolved when, in March 1847, he and Thompson married.  Gregory had managed to save a good deal of his ill-gotten gains, and as Thompson had money in her own right, the pair lived very comfortably.  In contrast to his sordid professional career, in his personal life, Gregory had many friends, who described him as friendly, well-mannered, and highly amusing.  His dinner parties were particularly popular.  He seems to have lived a quiet and contented existence until his death from lung disease in 1852.