Henry Joseph Steele Bradfield

Henry Joseph Bradfield Watercolour painting by E. D. Smith, 1845.

Henry Joseph Steele Bradfield (1805–1852) was a colonial official and writer.

Bradfield was born on 18 May 1805 in Derby Street, Westminster, where his father, Thomas Bradfield, was a coal merchant. Whilst still under age he published in 1825 Waterloo, or the British Minstrel, a poem. He was bred to the art of surgery, and on 26 April 1826 left England in the schooner Unicorn in Lord Cochrane's expedition to Greece, during which he was present in several engagements by land and sea. After his return he published The Athenaid, or Modern Grecians, a poem, 1830; Tales of the Cyclades, poems, 1830; and in 1839 edited a work entitled A Russian's Reply to the Marquis de Custine's "Russia".

From that period he lived very precariously. He turned his moderate literary talents to account, and among some communications he made to the Gentleman's Magazine were articles on "The Last of the Paleologi" in January 1843, and a "Memoir of Major-general Thomas Dundas and the Expedition to Gaudaloupe" in August, September, and October in the same year. Latterly he practised all the arts of the professional mendicant.

Bradfield killed himself by drinking a bottle of prussic acid at the St. Alban's Hotel, 12 Charles Street, St James's Square, Westminster, on 11 October 1852.