John Polidori (1795-1821)

Death: 24th August 1821
Location: St Pancras Old Church Churchyard, London, England
Cause of death: Suicide
Photo taken by: John Salmon
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English writer and physician. He is known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. His most successful work was the short story The Vampyre (1819), the first published modern vampire story. His sister, Frances Polidori, married exiled Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti, and thus John was the uncle of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Georgina Rossetti, though they were born after his death. 

In 1816, Polidori entered Lord Byron's service as his personal physician and accompanied him on a trip through Europe. At the Villa Diodati, a house Byron rented by Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the pair met with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and her husband-to-be, Percy Bysshe Shelley. One night in June, Byron suggested they each write a ghost story. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin began a story that would later evolve into Frankenstein and Polidori came up with The Vampyre. 

Polidori died aged 25 weighed down by depression and gambling debts. There was strong evidence that he committed suicide by ingesting cyanide, however the coroner gave a verdict of death by natural causes. He was buried in St Pancras Old Church Churchyard, but his grave was one of several thousand that was disinterred to make room for the railway in the late 1800's.