chartists.net news

Interview: Richard Brown on Three Rebellions

mark — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:05:00 +0000

Richard Brown is the author of Three Rebellions: Canada 1837-1838, South Wales 1839 and Victoria, Australia 1854, published in January 2010 and available from the Chartist Ancestors history bookstore.

Richard was a series editor for Cambridge Topics in History contributing two books Economic Revolutions in Britain, 1750-1850 and ...

Chartist newspapers go online

mark — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:13:00 +0100

Many of the most significant Chartist newspapers have now become available online to the public thanks to a British Library initiative to digitise and publish more than 2 million pages of material from 19th century newspapers.

Among the papers that can now be viewed are the Charter, Chartist, Chartist Circular, ...

Tracing your Chartist and trade union ancestors - the book

mark — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:08:00 +0100

I have a book coming out in the autumn. Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians is aimed at anyone wanting to look into the trade union and labour aspects of their family history, and also has a big chunk on Chartism.

The book will be out ...

Labour History Review focus on Chartism

mark — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:00:00 +0100

The latest issue of the Labour History Review is given over entirely to a series of articles on Chartism, and is well worth getting hold of if you can.

Some of the best known academics in the field of Chartist studies (some of whom appear elsewhere on Chartist Ancestors) have ...

Edward Truelove's Chartist bookshop

mark — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:04:00 +0000

Edward Truelove's bookshop in John Street must have been a familiar haunt for many London Chartists.

If ever there were Chartist fundraising or social events in the capital, Truelove's shop was sure to be listed in the Northern Star as one of the principal outlets for ticket sales. In addition, ...

Who framed Samuel Holberry?

mark — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:28:00 +0000

Untitled Document

Samuel Holberry died in gaol, a Chartist martyr, his health broken by two years of imprisonment after he was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. But was he really planning an armed uprising that would seize control of Sheffield and spark insurrection across the north of England?

Up to ...

The poetry of Chartism analysed

mark — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:02:00 +0000

More than 1,000 poems appeared in the pages of the Northern Star, the principal Chartist newspaper, from its launch in 1838 to closure in 1852. This body of work, possibly constituting the most widely read collection of poetry in the Victorian era, is now examined in a new book, titled ...

170th anniversary of the Newport Chartist rising

mark — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:01:00 +0000

A series of events to mark the 170th anniversary of the Chartist rising at Newport in South Wales begins on Saturday 18 April with events in Merthyr Tudfel market square.

Events continue through the year and on into January 2010 - the 170th anniversary of the day on which the ...

Chartism: A New History - some views

mark — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:21:00 +0000

If ever I am asked to recommend a single book about Chartism and the Chartists, I suggest Malcolm Chase's Chartism: A New History.

Published in 2007, it is the first significant overview of the Chartist movement to be published in many years, and is in addition both eminently helpful ...

Chartist Circular: the voice of Scottish Chartism

mark — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:23:00 +0000

The Chartist Circular was among the most important and certainly one of the longest-lived of the many newspapers that sprang out of Chartism in Scotland.

Launched in September 1839 by the former handloom weaver and co-operator William Thomson, the paper was published weekly “from the steam press of W & ...

Chartist commemorative events in Newport

mark — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:50:00 +0100

A month of activities to mark the anniversary of the Chartist uprising in Newport, South Wales, begins this week with a lecture at Merthyr Tydfil library followed by a guided walk and coach tour, plays and other events.

Thousands of men from across south Wales marched on Newport on 4 ...

Chartist Ancestors calendar for 2009

mark — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:00:00 +0100

If you would like a Chartist Ancestors calendar for 2009, you can now get one simply by clicking this link. This year's calendar, which shows all 12 months on a single side of A4, includes a picture of a medallion issued to mark Feargus O'Connor's release from prison, and ...

Mark Hovell and The Chartist Movement

mark — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:45:00 +0100

It has been claimed that between 1854 and 1916, “not a single book of permanent value on the history of Chartism had been published in England”.

This is certainly going too far: the autobiographies and memoirs published by Thomas Cooper (1872), George Jacob Holyoake (1892) and W E Adams (1903) ...

Feargus O'Connor: died 30 August 1855

mark — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 17:26:00 +0100

Feargus O’Connor was never happier in life than when at the centre of a controversy. In death, the Chartist movement’s greatest leader remained also its most disputed figure, blamed by earlier generations of historians for his bluster but now at least partially rehabilitated and admired once more.

Today marks the 153rd ...

Chartism and an Ashton under Lyne print business

mark — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:42:00 +0100

The culture of Chartism was inextricably tied up with the development of popular print. Many leading Chartists were long-time opponents of stamp duty taxes on newspapers, and the movement spawned some remarkably successful publishing businesses.

The Manchester Chartist Abel Heywood graduated from running a penny library to printing Chartist tracts ...

A house on the Chartist estate: £2.5 million

mark — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:08:00 +0100

The Chartist land settlement at Heronsgate has come a long way since the 1840s. Then it was a refuge for industrial workers seeking a cottage of their own and two or three acres to farm. Now it is one of the most sought-after of areas for London commuters.

I came ...

William Lovett: autobiography of a Chartist

mark — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:19:00 +0100

William Lovett occupies a pivotal place in the history of Chartism. He drafted the People’s Charter, was secretary to the London Working Men’s Association, and subsequently served as secretary to the first Chartist Convention of 1839.

Importantly, William Lovett also wrote and published an autobiography. The Life and Struggles of ...

Chartist Ancestors visitors top 40,000 in a year

mark — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:44:00 +0100

Nearly 40,000 people have visited Chartist Ancestors over the past 12 months. Each visitor looked on average at just over two pages and spent around 2 minutes 20 seconds on the site before moving on elsewhere.

I know this because last July I signed up to Google’s Analytics service. ...

A British Museum perspective on Chartism

mark — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:39:00 +0100

"We had to shut the main gates on Great Russell Street to prevent more people from coming in. It was the first time we did that since the Chartist riots of 1848 - although on that occasion the staff were actually on the roof, armed with stones."

Neil MacGregor, director ...

The Northern Star: a Chartist newspaper in numbers

mark — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:01:00 +0100

Throughout 1841 and 1842, anyone reading the Northern Star would have come across the name of its proprietor, Feargus O’Connor, an average of 40 times in each weekly issue.

Over the course of the 15 years from 1838 to 1852 during which O’Connor owned and ran the paper, his name ...

Cooper and O'Neill: the Chartist prisoners

mark — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:37:00 +0100

Stephen Roberts’ new book on Thomas Cooper and Arthur O’Neill is being launched at the Birmingham & Midland Institute in Birmingham city centre on Saturday 13 September.

The book, titled The Chartist Prisoners, focuses on the lifelong friendship between Cooper and O’Neill formed when they shared a cell in Stafford ...

Isaac Ickeringill: 'Notorious' Bingley Chartist

mark — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:00:00 +0100

The name of Isaac Ickersgill appears briefly in R G Gammage’s History of the Chartist Movement. Along with a number of other Bingley men, Isaac was charged with having rescued two local Chartists from police custody in the summer of 1848.

Not for the first time, however, Gammage made a ...

James Watson - Chartist and campaigner for free speech

mark — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:22:00 +0100

James Watson was one of the six working men whose names appear (alongside those of six radical MPs) on the People’s Charter, and played a prominent role in establishing free speech in this country.

A veteran of the struggle of the unstamped press in the 1820s and 1830s, he became ...

Chartism Day 2008: rhetoric, song and the Chartist Gothic

mark — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:46:00 +0100

Historians from around the UK and some distance beyond were in Newport, South Wales, at the weekend for the annual Chartism Day conference.

The conference was organised by the Society of Labour History, the Chartist Study Group and – as hosts this year – the South Wales Centre ...

The Charter: the voice of London Chartists

mark — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:11:00 +0100

The Charter had all the necessary elements to become one of the great success stories of the radical press.

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 ...

Profile: John Skevington - Leicestershire Chartist

mark — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:00 +0100

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.

The series ends here because this is the point at which The Charter newspaper drew to ...

Profile: Henry Hetherington – radical publisher

mark — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:00:00 +0100

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.

He would later go on ...

Some history reading for the summer...

mark — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:18:00 +0100

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
• A History of Modern Britain for £3.60;
• Jerry White's London ...

How to search the Northern Star for Chartist ancestors

mark — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:48:00 +0100

Having had a little time to play around with the new online version of the Northern Star, I’m delighted to report that most of my early fears were either unfounded or are already being addressed.

The Northern Star was the most important Chartist newspaper of the period, and remains ...

The Northern Star is now online

mark — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:24:00 +0100

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.

Go straight to the ...