Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cox, Walter
COX, WALTER (1770–1837), Irish journalist, was the son of a Westmeath blacksmith, who apprenticed him to a gunsmith in Dublin. For some time he carried on business as a gunsmith, and in 1797 started a newspaper called ‘The Union Star’ in the interest of the United Irishmen, in which a policy of assassination was advocated. In 1804 he went to America, but returned to Ireland, and founded in 1807 the ‘Irish Magazine and Monthly Asylum for Neglected Biography.’ The tone of this periodical being regarded as seditious by the government, he was frequently prosecuted, and spent much of his time in gaol. Nevertheless it continued to appear with regularity until 1815, when he accepted a pension of 100l. per annum and a bonus of 400l., on condition that he should surrender all copies of it in his possession and emigrate to America. In 1816 he landed at New York, where he started a journal called ‘The Exile,’ of a somewhat similar character to the ‘Irish Magazine.’ This enterprise not succeeding, he crossed to France in 1820, and subsequently returned to Ireland, where his presence being discovered in 1835 his pension was forfeited. He died on 17 Jan. 1837 in poverty. Before leaving America he had given expression to his dissatisfaction with the institutions of the United States in a pamphlet entitled ‘The Snuff Box.’ During his residence in that country he is said to have been successively pawnbroker, chandler, dairyman, and whisky dealer. He stated in 1810 that his hostility to the English government arose in part from ‘atrocious indignities’ to which his father had been subjected by Lord Carhampton, and that on a reward being offered for the apprehension of the editor of the ‘Union Star’ (published anonymously) he discovered himself to the authorities at Dublin Castle, and made terms with them. He was accused by a rival editor of receiving government pay, and of having betrayed Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
[Madden's United Irishmen; Webb's Compendium of Irish Biography; Froude's English in Ireland, iii. 269; Irish Magazine and Monthly Asylum for Neglected Biography.]