any one man such vast patronage; and in 1807 Sir James Pulteney, then secretary for war [see Murray, Sir James], established the office of ‘storekeeper-general,’ giving Trotter the first nomination to the post, and retaining the services of all his employés.
In 1815 Trotter established the Soho Bazaar, leading from the west side of Soho Square to Oxford Street. Designed at first to enable the distressed widows and daughters of army officers to dispose economically of their home ‘work’ by renting a few feet of counter, the bazaar eventually proved a source of wealth to its projector. He was a man of many schemes, some of which—as the two already spoken of—led to fortune; others died in their infancy, including one for the establishment of a universal language.
[Information from Coutts Trotter, esq. Daily News, 20 Aug. 1859; ‘The Pirate Slaver,’ in Nautical Magazine, 1851; Allen's Narrative of the Expedition … to the River Niger in 1841, under the command of Captain H. D. Trotter (1848, 2 vols. 8vo); Official Letters in Public Record Office; Gent. Mag. 1859 ii. 314, 1833 ii. 380; Jerdan's Autobiography, vols. ii. and iv.; Dupin's Voyages dans la Grande-Bretagne; Eighth Report of the Military Commission from 1794.]
TROTTER, JOHN BERNARD (1775–1818), author, born in 1775 in co. Down, was the second son of the Rev. Edward Trotter, and younger brother of Edward Southwell Trotter, who assumed the name of Ruthven [q. v.] He was educated at the grammar school at Downpatrick, and entered Trinity College, Dublin, on 1 June 1790, graduating B.A. in the spring of 1795. He visited London in 1798, entering as a student at the Temple, and during his stay he made the acquaintance of Charles James Fox. Having sent Fox a pamphlet entitled ‘An Investigation of the Legality and Validity of a Union’ (Dublin, 1799, 8vo), and some verses, Trotter was told that both Fox and Mrs. Fox liked them very much.
After the conclusion of the peace of Amiens in 1802, Trotter was invited by Fox to accompany him to Paris to assist him in transcribing portions of Barillon's correspondence for his ‘History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II.’ He returned home before Fox, and was called to the Irish bar in Michaelmas term 1802.
Trotter became Fox's private secretary after his appointment as foreign secretary on 7 Feb. 1806 in the administration of ‘All the Talents.’ On Fox's death on 13 Sept. Trotter returned to Ireland. In 1808 he published a ‘Letter to Lord Southwell on the Catholic Question,’ and in 1809 ‘Stories for Calumniators,’ in which the characters were drawn from living models and he himself appeared as Fitzmorice. His ‘Memoirs of the latter Years of Fox’ appeared in 1811, attained a third edition within the year, and disappointed readers without distinction of party. The ‘Quarterly Review’ thought him unjust to Fox, and held that he had misrepresented the relations between him and Sheridan (vi. 541); while James Sharp published ‘Remarks in defence of Pitt against the loose and undigested calumny of an unknown adventurer.’ Landor wrote ‘Observations,’ of which a few copies got into circulation (Forster, Life of Landor, p. 165). According to Allibone (iii. 2458), Buckle wrote in his copy of Trotter's book: ‘An ill work by a weak man.’
Trotter's later life was passed in poverty and privation, and in his last years his misfortunes tended to disturb the balance of his mind. In 1813 he made his last political effort while in the Marshalsea at Wexford, writing a pamphlet on the Irish situation, entitled ‘Five Letters to Sir William Cusack Smith,’ which reached a third edition within the year. He died on 29 Sept. 1818, ‘in a decayed house in Hammond's Marsh in Cork,’ in unspeakable destitution, the out-patient of a neighbouring dispensary. The misery of his last days was lightened by the devotion of an Irish peasant boy whom he had educated to be his companion, and of his wife, a young woman whom he had married in prison about five years before. In 1819 appeared a series of letters by him, entitled ‘Walks through Ireland,’ the record of the wanderings of his later years, with a biographical memoir prefixed.
[Memoir prefixed to Walks through Ireland, 1819; Moore's Diary, iii. 129; Records of Trinity College and King's Inns Dublin; Memoirs of Fox; Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816; Gent. Mag. 1818, p. 472.]
TROTTER, THOMAS (1760–1832), physician to the fleet and author, born in Roxburghshire in or about 1760, studied medicine in Edinburgh, and at the age of sixteen wrote some verses which were published in Ruddiman's ‘Edinburgh Magazine’ in 1777 and 1778 (Seaweeds, p. viii). He was, he says, ‘early introduced to the medical department of the navy’ (ib. p. xiii), and, as surgeon's mate, served in the Berwick in the Channel fleet in 1779 (Observations on the Scurvy, p. 76), and in the battle of the Doggerbank in 1781 (Medica Nautica, i. 312), and apparently, at the relief of Gibraltar in 1782. He was then promoted to be surgeon; but as the reduction of the navy after the
