William John Hammond was a British actor-manager and singer of comic songs of the early 19th-century. He played Sam Weller in Samuel Weller, or, The Pickwickians in 1837.
W. J. Hammond as Sam Weller in Samuel Weller, or, The Pickwickians (1837) - displayed in the Charles Dickens Museum
Hammond on the cover of Actors by Daylight (1838)
Hammond as Othello and Miss Daly as Desdemona in the burlesque Othello by Act of Parliament at the Royal Strand Theatre
Hammond as Sam Weller in Samuel Weller, or, The Pickwickians (1837)
Sam Weller is a fictional character in The Pickwick Papers (1836), the first novel by Charles Dickens, and the character that made Dickens famous. A humorous Cockney bootblack, Sam Weller first appeared in the fourth serialised episode. Previously the monthly parts of the book had been doing badly, selling only about 1,000 copies a month — but the humour of the character transformed the book into a publishing phenomenon, raising the sales by late autumn of 1837 to 40,000 a month.
Sam Weller by 'Kyd'
Mr Pickwick encounters Sam Weller - illustration by Hablot Knight Browne for The Pickwick Papers (July 1836)
Sam Weller woos Mary - in a postcard of 1903
Sam Weller and the Fat Boy - Gilbert Scott Wright (1909)
