Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Purton, William
PURTON, WILLIAM (1784–1825), stenographer, born in 1784, was the earliest known teacher, and in all probability the inventor, of one of the seven systems of stenography now practised by professional shorthand writers in the houses of parliament and the supreme court of judicature. He kept a school at Pleasant Row, Pentonville, and only taught shorthand to some favourite pupils. The earliest professional exponent of the system was Thomas Oxford, who learnt it from Purton in 1819, and it was subsequently improved by him and Mr. Hodges. Purton died in London about Christmas 1825, and was buried at Elim (baptist) Chapel, Fetter Lane, Holborn.
Purton did not print his system, but it was used by some of the most expert practitioners of the stenographic art. It is sometimes called Richardson's system; sometimes Counsell's. It was not till 1887, when Mr. Alexander Tremaine Wright printed a pamphlet on the subject, that the origin of this angular, ‘roughhewn, and unfinished’ system was traced to Purton. The alphabet, with the ‘arbitraries,’ was not published till the following year, when Mr. John George Hodges appended it to his work entitled ‘Some Irish Notes, 1843–1848, and other Work with the Purton System of Shorthand, as practised since 1825,’ London, 1888, 8vo.
[Wright's Purton System of Shorthand, London, 1887; Shorthand and Typewriting, November 1895.]