Joseph Merceron

Joseph Merceron (29 January 1764 – 14 July 1839) was a British businessman, property developer, parochial politician and magistrate notorious for his corrupt practices.

Early life and family Joseph Merceron was born and raised in Brick Lane, Bethnal Green in the East End of London. His family were of prominent Huguenot stock; his grandfather was a refugee who migrated to London following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His father James Merceron (1723–1780) was a former silk-weaver turned pawnbroker and slum landlord who held various offices in the then-new parish of St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green. Bethnal Green was run by an ‘open' (i.e. elected) vestry, which offered opportunities for political manipulation. Merceron was educated at Merchant Taylors' School in the City of London, following which he spent time working in his father's pawnshop and in a local lottery office. During this period he committed a series of frauds against the parish, including the misappropriation of a government grant awarded to relieve the parish poor, and against private individuals including a vulnerable orphan heiress and his own half-sister, whom he had detained in an insane asylum. The scandal was exposed in Parliament by the young radical MP Sir Francis Burdett, who used it as the basis of his campaign against the Mainwaring family in the 1802 and 1804 Middlesex parliamentary elections.

Merceron's position was briefly threatened in 1804, when the Bethnal Green vestry instigated an audit of the parish accounts. Merceron promptly resigned as treasurer; but was re-elected in 1805. Bethnal Green continued to suffer violent disorder, with Merceron's regime encouraging bull-baiting and dog fighting, even while church services were taking place. Merceron's wealth and influence continued to grow, as he became a director of a number of important businesses including the East London Water Works Company and the Hand-in-Hand Fire Office. and then instigated a prosecution for the appropriation of £925 of parish funds and partiality in the renewal of public house licences. At the Easter vestry in 1818 Merceron was voted out of all parish offices, and shortly afterwards, amid great scandal, he was convicted of the charges against him. Despite further attempts to bribe his prosecutors, he was imprisoned in the King's Bench Prison for eighteen months. In a long and corrupt career Merceron had amassed more than £300,000, by some calculations enough to make him a billionaire in today's money, "though he always appeared to be in poor circumstances". His funeral at St Matthew's, Bethnal Green was as well orchestrated as his political meetings had been, attracting 20,000 people and establishing a template for East End gangster funerals at St. Matthew's that would be followed by the Kray twins more than 150 years later.

In 2019, a partly fictitious version of Merceron, played by Tim Dutton and drawing on a number of incidents described in Woodford's biography, was written into Series 5 of Poldark by Debbie Horsfield.