Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lovell, Daniel
LOVELL, DANIEL (d. 1818), journalist, was for many years proprietor and editor of the ‘Statesman,’ a newspaper projected in 1806 by John Hunt. His outspoken criticism of the tories subjected him to much government persecution. In 1811 he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for copying the remarks of the Manchester papers on the conduct of the military at Sir Francis Burdett's arrest; while the original promulgators of the libel were only called upon to express regret at their inadvertence. In August 1812 he was again tried and found guilty of a libel on the commissioners of the transport service; and although he pleaded that it was published without his knowledge or sanction while he was in prison, he was sentenced to pay a fine of 500l., to be imprisoned in Newgate for eighteen months, and to find securities for three years, himself in 1,000l., and two sureties in 500l. each. Being unable to pay the fine or find sureties, he remained in gaol. At length, on 23 Nov. 1814, Samuel Whitbread, M.P., presented a petition from him praying for a remission or reduction of his fine, and after some time the government remitted the fine and reduced the amount of security; but he was still unable to procure it, and on 17 March 1815 Whitbread again presented a petition from him, stating his utter inability to obtain the required security, and calling the merciful consideration of the house to his sad plight, he having been confined nearly four years in Newgate. He was ultimately released, broken in health and financially ruined. In 1817 he was again heavily fined for speaking of the ministerial evening journal as ‘the prostituted “Courier,” the venerable apostate of tyranny and oppression, whose full-blown baseness and infamy held him fast to his present connections and prevented him from forming new ones,’ while he further accused the editor, Daniel Stuart [q. v.], of pocketing 600l. or 700l. of the Society of the Friends of the People. Lovell died in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, on 27 Dec. 1818. Shortly before he sold the ‘Statesman’ to Sampson Perry, formerly editor of the ‘Argus.’
[Andrews's British Journalism, ii. 71, 91, 98; Fox Bourne's English Newspapers, i. 368; Gent. Mag. 1818, pt. ii. p. 647.]