Charles Pemberton

Charles Reece Pemberton (23 January 1790 – 3 March 1840) was a British actor, dramatist and lecturer.

Early life Pemberton was born in Pontypool, Monmouthshire, in 1790, the second of three children. His mother was Welsh, and his father was from Warwickshire; his uncle was a brassfounder in Birmingham. (The later theatrical writer Thomas Edgar Pemberton was of the same family ). When Charles was about four years old, his parents moved to Birmingham, and Pemberton was placed at a unitarian charity school.

He was subsequently apprenticed to his uncle; he ran away in 1807 to Liverpool, where he was seized by a press gang and sent to sea. He served for seven years, seeing some active service off Cadiz, Gibraltar, and Madeira. After the Napoleonic Wars he became an actor, and led a wandering life; he is said to have managed several theatres in the West Indies with some success. He made an unhappy marriage with a lady named Fanny Pritchard, and they soon separated. In 1833 he began writing in the Monthly Repository, then edited by William Johnson Fox, The Autobiography of Pel. Verjuice, in which he gave an account of his own experiences.

Failing health and death In 1836 he played Macbeth and Shylock at Birmingham, and at the end of the year visited the Mediterranean on account of his health. He recommenced lecturing in the summer of 1838 at the Sheffield Mechanics' Institute; but his powers were failing, and a subscription was set on foot to enable him to spend the winter in Egypt. This visit brought about no improvement, and he died, not long after his return, on 3 March 1840, at the house of his younger brother, William Dobson Pemberton, on Ludgate Hill, Birmingham.

Pemberton was buried at Key Hill Cemetery, and the Birmingham Mechanics' Institute, of which George Holyoake was secretary, placed a memorial, with an epitaph by William Johnson Fox, over his grave. Ebenezer Elliott, known as the "corn law rhymer", wrote some verses on him entitled "Poor Charles".

Works He directed that all his manuscripts, except three plays, should be destroyed.

The Life and Literary Remains of Charles Reece Pemberton (1843), edited by John Fowler, with a memoir by William Johnson Fox, contains: The Autobiography of Pel. Verjuice The Podesta, a tragedy in five acts The Banner, a tragedy in five acts Two Catherines, a comedy in five acts Other pieces in prose and verse