H. S. Woodfall (1739–1805)

[Henry Sampson].  English printer and journalist, born in London on the 21st of June 1739. His father, Henry Woodfall, was the printer of the newspaper the Public Advertiser, and the author of the ballad Darby and Joan, for which his son’s employer, John Darby, and his wife, were the originals. H. S. Woodfall was apprenticed to his father, and at the age of nineteen took over the control of the Public Advertiser. In it appeared the famous letters of “Junius.” Woodfall sold his interest in the Public Advertiser in 1793. He died on the 12th of December 1805. His younger brother, William Woodfall (1746–1803), also a journalist, established in 1789 a daily paper called the Diary, in which, for the first time, reports of parliamentary debates were published on the morning after they had taken place.