Ritson, Joseph Quick reference
A Dictionary of English Folklore
...he saw as their slapdash and dishonest editorial methods. These attacks were so vehemently worded and so personally abusive that, despite often being right in point of fact, he made few friends and many enemies. Combined with his other personal peculiarities—vegetarianism and atheism included—Ritson's pedantry and obsessive behaviour meant that when he died after a brief spell of ‘madness’ he was not much mourned. In hindsight, there is no doubt that his public strictures on the likes of Pinkerton and Percy forced editors of the time and later to be more...
