Derwent Moultrie Coleridge, the eldest child of author and educator the Rev’d Derwent Coleridge and Mary Coleridge (née Pridham), and a grandson of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born in Cornwall and undertook his early education there. When the family moved to London, Coleridge continued his studies at King’s College, Wimbledon, and Charterhouse in Clerkenwell.
Coleridge’s university education, at both Oxford and Cambridge, was truncated due to his poor behaviour and he was exiled by his family to South Australia. He arrived at Port Adelaide on board the Thomas Chadwick on 8 March 1851 with an introduction to explorer and South Australian Colonial Secretary Charles Sturt.
Coleridge struggled to find steady work and eventually travelled to Victoria. During 1859, he was employed at the newly established Geelong Grammar School as a Resident Assistant Master. After the school closed temporarily (due to financial difficulties), Coleridge moved to the colony of New South Wales where he again worked as a schoolmaster and tutor.
During the latter 1860s and the early 1870s, Coleridge’s poetry appeared in several New South Wales newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald and the Empire. He worked for a time on the staff of Punch and some of his poems were published in Punch Staff Papers: A Collection of Tales, Sketches, Etc., in Prose and Verse in 1872.
In the final decade or so of his life, Coleridge again found himself in difficulty over his behaviour. He was arrested on a number of occasions for drunkenness and also had charges of ‘riotous behaviour’ brought against him.
Coleridge died at his residence, 33 Cleveland St, Redfern, on 5 December 1880. His death certificate states that cause of death was a ‘diseased liver’ and the medically vague ‘effusion on the brain’.
Source: Wooldridge, Tessa. ‘On Being Ruined by a Fondness for Beer’, Part I, Part II and Part III.
Sighted: 16 July 2016.
