Lewis Doxat (1778,

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, India - 4 March 1871,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England) was an English newspaper editor.

Biography

Born in India, Doxat came to England as a young boy. He settled in London, where he found work with the ''

Morning Chronicle ''The Morning Chronicle'' was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London. It was notable for having been the first steady employer of essayist William Hazlitt as a political reporter and the first steady employer of Charles Dickens as a journalist. It ...

''. In 1804 he started an association with ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'', and rose to become its editor three years later. He would serve as the editor of the Sunday weekly for the next fifty years. As editor, Doxat played more of a managerial role than a journalistic one, and proudly claimed that he never penned "an article on any subject under any circumstances whatsoever." During his time, he introduced new typography and pioneered the use of woodcuts to illustrate articles. Such innovations ensured the commercial success of the newspaper, though not without controversy as some felt that the use of woodcuts to illustrate their coverage of the

Radlett murder The Radlett murder, also known as the Elstree murder, was an 1823 murder in Radlett, Hertfordshire, England, in the United Kingdom. The victim, William Weare, was killed in Radlett and the body disposed of in a pond in nearby Elstree. The crime gai ...

as exceeding the bounds of propriety. The paper also got into trouble with the crown when it defied a government ban on reporting proceedings against the Cato Street conspirators who planned to kill off members of parliament. When the owner of ''

'',

William Innell Clement William Innell Clement (15 January 1780 – 24 January 1852) was an English newspaper proprietor. Biography Clement was born in the parish of St Clement Danes and baptised at St Anne's Church, Soho. Starting as a newsagent at a young age, he so ...

, purchased the ''Morning Chronicle'' in 1821, he installed Doxat as the newspaper's manager. Doxat served in both positions simultaneously for the next thirteen years, returning exclusively to his duties with ''The Observer'' when Clement sold the ''Morning Chronicle'' in 1834. Doxat continued to edit ''The Observer'', which developed a reputation during this time for its exclusive information about contemporary politics, until his retirement in 1857.

Biography

References

Further reading