|
|
||||
|
Recent Articles
Month Archive
Login
|
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 » |
MEET THE EDITOR Search
Favourite sites
|
||
|
|
||||
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.
William Lovett was without doubt the Father of the People’s
Charter. He had been a founder member of the London Working Men’s Association,
and of radical bodies before that, and was a natural choice to draft its
political platform.
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.