Walter Coulsen 

Walter Coulsen (1795-1860) was a journalist and barrister originally associated with the Morice Square Baptist Church, Devonport. His father, Thomas Coulson (1767-1845) was a master painter in the Royal Dockyard, Devonport. He was tutored by Jeremy Bentham for about five years, beginning c. 1810. Bentham helped him get his first reporting job with the Morning Chronicle in 1813. In 1820 he became editor of The Traveller (founded 1800), a London evening paper, a voice of liberal policies and political reforms. He resigned in 1834, when the paper’s politics moved more toward the Tory position and away from the liberal politics he had espoused.  He became a solicitor in 1828.  Coulsen was a friend of Francis Place and James Mill, the philosopher, Leigh Hunt, as well as Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt (he was godfather to Hazlitt’s first child). Like Crabb Robinson, he never married.