years thereafter, but his performances were restricted by his worsening physical disabilities. In his last years, Grimaldi lived in relative obscurity and became a depressed, impoverished alcoholic. He outlived both his wife and his actor son, Joseph Samuel, dying at home in Islington in 1837, aged 58. Biography Family background and early years Grimaldi was born in Clare Market, in Westminster, London, into a family of dancers and comic performers. His great-grandfather, John Baptist Grimaldi, was a dentist by trade and an amateur performer, who in the 1730s moved from Italy to England. There he performed the role of Pantaloon opposite John Rich's Harlequin. John Baptist's son, Grimaldi's paternal grandfather, Giovanni Battista Grimaldi, began performing at an early age and spent much of his career in Italy and France. According to Grimaldi's biographer Andrew McConnell Stott, Giovanni was held in the Paris Bastille as the result of a scandalous performance. After his release, Giovanni moved to London in 1742, where John Baptist introduced him to John Rich; Giovanni then defrauded Rich and fled to the continent, where he later died. Grimaldi's father, Joseph Giuseppe Grimaldi (c. 1713–1788), an actor and dancer (known professionally as Giuseppe or "the Signor"), also made his way to London in around 1760. His first London appearance was at the King's Theatre. He was later engaged by David Garrick to play Pantaloon in pantomimes at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, earning high praise, and eventually became the ballet master there. Grimaldi's mother, Rebecca Brooker, was born in Holborn in 1764. She was apprenticed to Giuseppe Grimaldi in 1773 as a dancer and public speaker, and she became his mistress shortly afterwards, even though she was under 14 and he was about 60. Grimaldi's father was a serial philanderer who had at least ten children with three different women. In 1778, he divided his time between two London addresses occupied by his mistresses, Brooker and Anne Perry. Both women gave birth that year, Perry to a daughter named Henrietta and Brooker to Joseph. Although jubilant at the birth of his first son, Giuseppe Grimaldi spent little time with Brooker, living mostly with Perry, and probably maintaining other mistresses as well. Brooker raised her son alone for the first few years in Clare Market, a slum area of west London. In about 1780, Brooker gave birth to a second son, John Baptiste. Keen to set up an acting