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Friday, May 30
The Charter: the voice of London Chartists
by
mark
on Fri 30 May 2008 14:11 BST
A short history of The Charter and those involved with it, including a list of the members of its management committee, now appears on Chartist Ancestors. The paper’s editor was a ... more » Friday, May 23
Profile: John Skevington - Leicestershire Chartist
by
mark
on Fri 23 May 2008 15:00 BST
The series ends here because this is the point at which The Charter newspaper drew to ... more » Wednesday, May 21
Profile: Henry Hetherington – radical publisher
by
mark
on Wed 21 May 2008 10:00 BST
He would later go on ... more » Sunday, May 18
Some history reading for the summer...
by
mark
on Sun 18 May 2008 15:18 BST
Amazon is currently having a sale, so if you're looking for something to read now – or to put aside for your summer holidays, it's worth checking out their cut-price history books. When I last looked, they had Friday, May 16
How to search the Northern Star for Chartist ancestors
by
mark
on Fri 16 May 2008 14:48 BST
The Northern Star was the most important Chartist newspaper of the period, and remains ... more » Tuesday, May 13
The Northern Star is now online
by
mark
on Tue 13 May 2008 14:24 BST
Go straight to the ... more »
Profile: Peter Bussey - exiled revolutionary
by
mark
on Tue 13 May 2008 11:00 BST
While the careful and politically astute artisans of the London Working Men’s Association were natural behind-the-scenes influencers of politicians and government, Bussey, a Bradford ... more » Thursday, May 8
William Lovett, born 8 May 1800
by
mark
on Thu 08 May 2008 05:00 BST
 Chartist anniversaries fall thick and fast in May. On 7 May 1839, the first Chartist petition was presented to Parliament, and today
is the birthday of William Lovett, the man who wrote the text of the People’s
Charter and served as secretary to the First Chartist Convention of 1839.
Lovett ... more » Tuesday, May 6
Profile: Robert Lowery - Newcastle Chartist
by
mark
on Tue 06 May 2008 16:00 BST
Born in 1809, he first became active in radical politics as secretary to the Newcastle Political Union during the Great Reform Act agitation of 1831 and 1832. By the time of ... more » Friday, May 2
Chartism's high tide: 2 May 1842
by
mark
on Fri 02 May 2008 15:29 BST
As I have pointed out before, there were in fact six petitions in all, but those of 1839, 1842 and 1848 were the three that Chartism is remembered ... more » Thursday, May 1
Profile: Thomas Rayner Smart - veteran Chartist patriot
by
mark
on Thu 01 May 2008 13:00 BST
While representing Loughborough and Leicester at the convention, Smart was profiled by The Charter newspaper. Both the profile and ... more » Tuesday, April 29
Profile: William Villiers Sankey, Chartist aristocrat
by
mark
on Tue 29 Apr 2008 13:16 BST
While representing Edinburgh at the convention, Sankey was profiled by The Charter newspaper... more » Thursday, April 24
Northern Star: Chartist newspaper online
by
mark
on Thu 24 Apr 2008 19:00 BST
The three-year Nineteenth Century Serials Edition project will culminate on that day ... more » Tuesday, April 22
Chartism and the Labour Parliament of 1854
by
mark
on Tue 22 Apr 2008 12:14 BST
There is no clear date at which Chartism came to an end. For many, the disappointments ... more » Sunday, April 20
Chartists.net: beware of spoof emails
by
mark
on Sun 20 Apr 2008 17:53 BST
Please note that the chartists.net domain name is never used to send outgoing email. If, over the past few days, you have received email apparently from “buttress@chartists.net”, then I can assure you that it did not originate from this website. In short, you have been the subject of an email ... more » Friday, April 18
John James Bezer and a minor Victorian scandal
by
mark
on Fri 18 Apr 2008 10:00 BST
His story apparently ends some time in 1852, when former comrades inquiring about unpaid ... more » Tuesday, April 15
200 more contributors to the Frost Defence Fund
by
mark
on Tue 15 Apr 2008 15:00 BST
The failed Chartist uprising at Newport in December 1839
came as a huge shock to many Chartists. Those who had prepared for similar
rebellions across the North of England but had been dissuaded from acting must
have been particularly affected by the bloody end to the Welsh rising.
With Frost ... more » Saturday, April 12
In search of GWM Reynolds...
by
mark
on Sat 12 Apr 2008 14:09 BST
GWM Reynolds (as he was more usually known) first achieved notoriety in the Chartist movement after taking the ... more » Sunday, April 6
Profile: Peter McDouall - Chartist hero
by
mark
on Sun 06 Apr 2008 11:59 BST
Gaoled twice, losing a daughter during one period of imprisonment due to the terrible conditions suffered by his family, and dying at ... more » Thursday, April 3
Henry Vincent and the 'Welsh republic'
by
mark
on Thu 03 Apr 2008 09:49 BST
The move has, predictably, angered local Labour politicians, who ... more » Wednesday, April 2
Chartism and the Chartists in university archives
by
mark
on Wed 02 Apr 2008 10:39 BST
So it is good to see that Archives Hub, put together ... more » Sunday, March 30
Profile: Dr Matthew Fletcher - convention delegate
by
mark
on Sun 30 Mar 2008 14:43 BST
While serving as a delegate, he was profiled by The Charter newspaper. Both the profile and the sketch portrait ... more » Friday, March 28
Profile: Robert Knox - convention delegate
by
mark
on Fri 28 Mar 2008 11:00 GMT
That profile, and the sketch portrait of Knox that appeared in the same paper, now appears on Chartist Ancestors ... more » Thursday, March 27
More Chartist histories and autobiographies
by
mark
on Thu 27 Mar 2008 15:00 GMT
Google Books and other services are increasingly providing free access to the full text of important but now out-of-copyright books written by and ... more » Tuesday, March 25
A new look at Thomas Clutton Salt
by
mark
on Tue 25 Mar 2008 11:27 GMT
As part of a small-scale project to republish biographical sketches on 12 of the delegates which ... more » Sunday, March 23
Profile: William Lovett - author of the People's Charter
by
mark
on Sun 23 Mar 2008 13:00 GMT
The third in our series of profiles and portraits of delegates ... more » Thursday, March 20
Profile: John Frost - Newport Chartist
by
mark
on Thu 20 Mar 2008 16:00 GMT
The second in our series of profiles and sketch portraits taken ... more » Tuesday, March 18
Profile: Birmingham Chartist Thomas Clutton Salt
by
mark
on Tue 18 Mar 2008 12:05 GMT
The Charter newspaper, published by William Lovett, secretary to the Convention and ... more » Friday, March 14
300 children named Charter
by
mark
on Fri 14 Mar 2008 19:15 GMT
Their names join the hundreds already listed who were ... more » Thursday, March 13
1,000 backers for John Frost
by
mark
on Thu 13 Mar 2008 01:00 GMT
Most Chartists were taken wholly by surprise by the Monday, March 10
A boy named Charter
by
mark
on Mon 10 Mar 2008 15:45 GMT
After reading about the Chartist practice of naming children after political heroes in the current issue of Who Do You Think You Are? magazine, one reader got in touch today to say she now understood how her husband's great grandfather came to be called Samuel Feargus Brontere Vincent Charter Debbage.... more » |
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The Charter had all the necessary elements to become one of
the great success stories of the radical press.
Our current series of Chartist portraits finishes with John
Skevington, the working class radical leader from Leicestershire who
represented both Derby and his home town of Loughborough in the First Chartist
Convention of 1839.
Henry Hetherington was the hero of the campaign for an
unstamped press – the radical protest movement which defied the law to publish
news and political opinion while refusing to pay a newspaper tax which put most
publications out of the reach of working people.
for £3.60;
Having had a little time to play around with the new online
version of the 
A free and fully searchable edition of the Northern Star is
now available online. Although still officially in a beta (test) version, you
can find this important Chartist newspaper on the Nineteenth Century Serials Edition website along with a
number of other papers from the period.
Peter Bussey was everything the originators of the People’s
Charter disliked and feared about the mass of disgruntled and distressed
working people who flooded into Chartism.
Robert Lowery lived an extraordinarily full political life
for a man who died at just 54 years of age. 
On 2 May 1842, the second of the three great national
Chartist petitions demanding the Six Points was presented to Parliament.
Thomas Rayner Smart was a largely self-taught working man
whose scruffy greatcoat and battered hat marked him out from the generality of
middle-class delegates to the First Chartist Convention of 1839.
William Villiers Sankey came from aristocratic stock. The son of an Irish volunteer and Member of Parliament, he moved among the political elite of his day. Yet he also served as a delegate to the First Chartist Convention of 1839.
The Labour Parliament of 1854 was one of the last
significant Chartist gatherings. A page on the Labour Parliament which also
lists the 40 delegates who attended has now been added to Chartist Ancestors.
John James Bezer (1816-1888) was a relatively minor Chartist
figure, remembered primarily because of his incomplete 
I am delighted to report that the last resting place of the
Chartist journalist George William MacArthur Reynolds has now been added to the
Peter Murray McDouall, a Scottish-born doctors radicalised
by his exposure to factory conditions in industrial Lancashire, was one of the
most significant figures in Chartism for a decade. 
Chartism appears to have become something of a hot political issue in 
Dr Matthew Fletcher came to the First Chartist Convention of
1839 with a record of opposition to the New Poor Law then being imposed on the
country by the Whig government.
Robert Knox must have been one of the youngest delegates to
the First Chartist Convention of 1839. He was just 24 years old when his
profile appeared in The Charter newspaper.
A quite remarkable and unexpected new image has come to light of
Thomas Clutton Salt, one of the leaders of the Birmingham Political Union and a
delegate from Birmingham to the first Chartist Convention.
John Frost is one of the best known figures in Chartism. His fame comes from
his ill-fated leadership of the Newport rebellion in December 1839, his
subsequent transportation to Australia, and the campaign that led eventually to
his return.
The General Convention of the Industrious Classes in 1839 set
an unprecedented challenge to the undemocratic House of Commons, and there was enormous
interest in the delegates elected to it by mass meetings held all over the
country.
In the years following publication of the People’s Charter,
nearly 300 parents gave their children the first or middle name Charter. The
children’s names, the registration districts and quarter-years in which they
were born have now been added to Chartist Ancestors.
Around 1,000 