Henry Cockton was an English novelist. Born in London, he is remembered as the author of The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, the Ventriloquist (1840) which was parodied by Timothy Portwine (pseudonym of Thomas Peckett Prest

Thomas Peckett Prest

Thomas Peckett Prest was a British hack writer, journalist and musician. He was a prolific producer of penny dreadfuls. He is now remembered as the co-creator of the fictional Sweeney Todd, the 'demon barber' immortalized in his The String of Pearls...

) as The Adventures of Valentine Vaux; or, the tricks of a Ventriloquist (1840).

Other Cockton novels include Sylvester Sound, the Somnambulist, The Love Match, George St George Julian, The Prince, Lady Felicia: A Novel, Percy Effingham: Or, The Germ of the World's Esteem, The Sisters; or, England and France, Stanley Thorn, and The Steward: A Romance of Real Life.

Cockton's death in Bury St Edmunds on 26 June 1853 was noted in The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

newspaper on Sat 2 July 1853.

His remains were interred in the churchyard of the ruined abbey at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. No stone marks his grave, but in 1884 a few admirers raised a tablet which is still seen today on the wall of the abbey's charnel house

Charnel house

A charnel house is a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves...

.