[1] The impresario Charles Morton described Sharp as "one of the funniest fellows that ever appeared on any stage.
[3] He was chosen to open the new season at Vauxhall Gardens in 1845, and worked closely with Labern for the rest of the decade.
[1] According to Edmund Yates: "No man in my recollection, as a broadly comic vocalist, has been such a favourite as was J. W. Sharp: at Vauxhall and Cremorne in the summer, at public dinners in the winter, and at Evans's always, he was fully employed.
But he fell into bad ways, took to drinking, lost his engagements, and was finally found dead from starvation on a country road.
"[4] According to contemporary reports, he died in 1856 in the Dover Union Workhouse at Buckland in Kent, an area in which he was apparently well known.