John Heriot (journalist)

John Heriot (22 April 1760 – 2 August 1833) was a Scottish journalist and writer.

He was forced to join the Royal Marines due to family hardship, and served as a junior officer during the American Revolutionary War. He was wounded in 1780 at the Battle of Martinique, and retired from the service in 1783; after living in financial difficulties for some years, he published two moderately successful novels in the 1780s, the second of which drew extensively on his experiences as a half-pay officer.

He was recruited as a pro-government journalist and pamphleteer in 1788, and placed on a salary the following year. He became the founder and sole editor of two pro-government daily newspapers, the Sun and the True Briton, which ran for over a decade, and eventually retired from journalistic work in 1806. He was appointed to a number of government posts, most significantly the comptrollership of Chelsea Hospital, the post he held at his death.

He was a distant relative of the philanthropist George Heriot, and the younger brother of the Scots-Canadian artist George Heriot.

Heriot was born at Haddington in 1760, the second son of John Heriot, the sheriff clerk of the town, and his wife Marjory; his older brother was George Heriot, later to become a prominent artist. The Heriots were part of the long-established family of the Heriots of Trabroun, the most well-known member of which was the seventeenth-century goldsmith and philanthropist George Heriot. The family moved to Edinburgh in 1772, where Heriot attended the Edinburgh Royal High School; he had previously been educated at the Coldstream grammar school He studied at the University of Edinburgh after leaving the high school, but the collapse of his father's business in 1777 meant that he had to leave and seek employment.

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