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 ... more »
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Tuesday, June 24
Cooper and O'Neill: the Chartist prisoners
by
mark
on Tue 24 Jun 2008 13:37 BST
Thursday, June 19
Isaac Ickeringill: 'Notorious' Bingley Chartist
by
mark
on Thu 19 Jun 2008 12:00 BST
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 ... more » Tuesday, June 17
James Watson - Chartist and campaigner for free speech
by
mark
on Tue 17 Jun 2008 09:22 BST
A veteran of the struggle of the unstamped press in the 1820s and 1830s, he became ... 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 » Tuesday, May 13
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 » 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 » 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 » Saturday, March 8
A souvenir of Chartism
by
mark
on Sat 08 Mar 2008 14:55 GMT
So I was delighted to come across a picture of WJ Linton’s membership card for the People’s Charter Union on the ... more » Friday, March 7
Chartism's great class divide
by
mark
on Fri 07 Mar 2008 01:00 GMT
This page has been on the site for some years, but lacked around 100 names. Happily, I have now been able ... more » Thursday, February 28
Interview: Paul Pickering on Feargus O'Connor
by
mark
on Thu 28 Feb 2008 13:59 GMT
 A new biography of Feargus O'Connor, written by Dr Paul Pickering (left), is due for publication later this spring. O'Connor was probably the single most significant figure in Chartism for more than a decade, and was the only person ever elected to Parliament specifically on a Chartist ticket.A Chartist ... more » Friday, February 22
A radical cause after Chartism
by
mark
on Fri 22 Feb 2008 16:26 GMT
I have now added a page to Chartist ... more » |
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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.
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.
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. 
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.
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 
Membership cards must have been issued in their thousands by
the National Charter Association and smaller Chartist organisations. But almost
none appears to have survived the past 150 years.
There is now a page on Chartist Ancestors listing some 400 delegates
to a joint conference of the National Charter Association and Complete Suffrage
Union, held in December 1842.
The disappearance of Chartism as a mass movement and bitter
internal battles over the future of the movement dispersed Chartists in all
sorts of directions. But the continuing interest of some in international
politics provided several opportunities for ad hoc radical activities.