Wolcot

Wolcot, DR JOHN, better known under the pseudonym of 'Peter Pindar,' was born at Dodbrooke, near Kingsbridge, Devonshire, in May 1738. He was educated at Kingsbridge, at Bodmin, and in Normandy at the charge of an uncle, a surgeon of the little Cornish seaport of Fowey; and then, having studied medicine for seven years under him, walked the London hospitals, and taken his M.D. at Aberdeen (1767), he went to Jamaica as medical attendant to the governor, Sir William Trelawny. He made Wolcot physician-general of the island, and, to be able also to give him a good living, sent him home to England to procure ordination from the Bishop of London (1769). Three years later, however, he died, whereupon Wolcot forsook both Jamaica and the church, and started a practice at Truro. Here he discovered the talents of young Opie (q.v.), and with him in 1780 he removed to London, thenceforth to devote himself to writing audacious squibs and satires in verse on all sorts of persons, from George III. down to the city liverymen and even lower. His sixty or seventy poetical pamphlets (1778-1818) include The Lousiad, The Apple-dumplings and a King, Whitbread's Brewery visited by their Majesties, Bozzy and Piozzi, and Lyrical Odes on the Royal Academy exhibitions (Wolcot himself was no mean draughtsman). Witty and fluent, but coarse and ephemeral, they have long since outlived their vogue, which was great, for in 1795 he obtained from the booksellers an annuity of £250 for the copyrights. More than this, the ministry are said by Wolcot himself to have endeavoured vainly to bribe him into silence. Blind for some years, he died at Somers Town, 14th January 1819. See Blackwood's Magazine for July 1868.