Joseph Drew

Joseph Drew (21 May 1814 – 3 December 1883) was an English newspaper editor, steamboat proprietor, art collector, writer and lecturer.

Joseph Drew was born in Deptford, son of Joseph Drew (c. 1779 – 1847) of the Royal Navy dockyard service and Martha Gale (1781 – 1854). The family probably came to London from Dorset shortly before Joseph was born, as his elder siblings Sarah and Henry had been baptised in Wyke Regis. Following the shutting down of Deptford Dockyard in 1830, his family moved to Melcombe Regis where he worked in his father's confectionery business. He later started a grocery business (with a partner Joseph Maunders) which went bankrupt. In about 1838 he moved to Guernsey with his wife and their four young children and set up his own confectioners in St. Peter Port, but returned to Weymouth a few years later.

Drew founded the newspaper The Southern Times, published in Weymouth in 1850, which he edited until 1862. For most of his life he was active in local affairs, becoming a JP and town councillor.

In 1852, by reason of his wealth and influence as a newspaper proprietor, Joseph Drew became a partner in the company Cosens & Co. which operated paddle steamers from Weymouth. He became chairman of Cosens in 1874.

Drew was, from 1854, proprietor of the Victoria Hotel (at Augusta Place on Weymouth Esplanade), where in 1857 he opened a refreshment room and art gallery (the Great Western Picture Saloon) displaying his valuable collection of works 'by the great Masters and modern artists'. Drew's collection included 'the equestrian Vandyke' (sic); and there were pencil sketches by Turner, Rembrandt, Rubens, Paolo Veronese, Andrea del Sarto and Titian. Mentioned is 'Danaë and her golden shower'. There were also paintings by Sir David Wilkie, Danby, Niemann, Webster and Wilson. Joseph Drew sold, from his collection, Nicholas Poussin's The Testament of Eudamidas to the Rev. Thomas Mawkes for £2000. In 1859 it was reported that he had purchased a portrait of Shakespeare by 'Zucchero'. Drew's wide knowledge of art and his concern for it is shown in his 1871 address to the British Archaeological Association, Art Treasures and their Preservation, published fully in his Synopsis of Fourteen Popular Lectures.

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