Radicalism in Hackney 1700-1850

Radicalism in Hackney 1700 - 1850

This article was compiled during my research into the early life of Charles Bradlaugh. Hackney, a village on the outskirts of London in the 18th century, was a haven for dissenters. It may be read in conjunction with the accompanying article about the early life of Charles Bradlaugh. Picture shows Hackney in 1770. 

During the 18th century, the London Mob was a force to be reckoned with. Rebels, loyalists, republicans, petitioners, apprentices, and artisans would regularly take to the streets. From 1715, ‘reading the Riot Act’ was an ineffective tool used to quell riotous assembly. The Act allowed magistrates to call in the local Yeomanry or Militia who might resort to mounted charges with cutlasses to disperse the crowds. The inevitable deaths, such as those at Peterloo in 1819, led to criticism. The introduction of aggressive criminal laws, which at least allowed a trial, threatened transportation or capital punishment as a deterrent.

    The Gordon Riots and the French Revolution terrified the Government and the Church. The educated middle classes, who had benefitted from the new wealth brought by trade, industry, and empire, demanded a voice in Parliament. As pamphleteers, orators, poets, and committees, they argued the case for reform, abolition of slavery and better conditions for the urban poor.

    Hackney had long been a haven for dissenters (1) and freethinkers. The Newington Green Unitarian Church (2) was built in 1708. In 1758, Dr Richard Price became its minister. He was a libertarian and republican who, with his wife Sarah, established the village’s reputation as a centre for radical thinkers and social reformers.

    Politicians, philosophers, and writers visited Newington Green including Adam Smith, prison reformer John Howard, and the founding fathers of the United States. When Joseph Priestley’s support for dissenters led to riots in Birmingham, he found sanctuary at Newington Green. Mary Wollestonecraft moved her school there in 1784 from Islington.

    Dissenting academies were educational institutions for training ministers of religion outside the Church of England. Several academies were set up in Newington Green at various times. In 1768, a large building in Homerton High Street was purchased for Homerton Academy (3), attracting not only religious dissenters but also reformers and abolitionists. 

    A British School was opened on Kingsland Road in 1809, promoting the educational theories of Joseph Lancaster (4), whose supporters were defined as ‘influential Nonconformists, utilitarian liberals, and radicals'. The school offered free elementary education but also provided rooms for organisations including the West Hackney and Stoke Newington Anti-Corn Law League.

    These were local institutions where ideas about democracy, liberalism, and freedom of expression were being discussed. Charles Bradlaugh, at age 15, had already met many of these Chartists, Freethinkers, Dissenters, and others. Expelled from his family home, this was the milieu he would now join when he was expelled from his family home (see accompanying article).

    Bradlaugh was aware of well-known writers such as Jeremy Bentham (philosopher), Robert Buchanan (socialist, Owenite), William Cobbett (writer), Allen Davenport (died 1846, shoemaker, poet, radical writer), Henry Hetherington (editor, Poor Man’s Guardian), John Stuart Mill (philosopher), Francis Place (reformer and writer), Charles Southwell (atheist, contributor to Oracle of Reason), Edward Truelove (publisher, Owenite).

    Bradlaugh’s contemporaries included Richard Burton (born 1821, Arabic scholar), Robert Cooper (born 1819, reformer, came to London 1850), William Linton (born 1812, Chartist), Gerald Massey (born 1828, Christian socialist, arrived in London in 1843) although it is not certain that he met any of these people.

    George Holyoake (born 1817, pamphleteer, socialist, secularist) assisted Bradlaugh with the publication of his first pamphlet A few words on the Christian creed when he was just 17. He would have met his younger brother, Austin Holyoake (born 1826, painter, publisher, freethinker) and Henry Merritt (born 1822, a picture restorer who lived at Holyoake’s house).        

    Within this intellectual milieu were the Freethinkers who Bradlaugh met at Bonner’s Fields. In 1848, they opened Eree’s Coffee House at the end of the street where Bradlaugh lived. This was run by Eliza Sharples, the widowed partner of Richard Carlile. Eliza Sharples was a radical in her own right. Sharples and Carlile never married; they had three children, Hypatia, Theophila and Julian.

   Carlile attracted a wide following. When he was imprisoned for publishing The Republican, his wife, sister and 150 followers continued publication and were also imprisoned, including William Brooksbank, William Campion, John Clarke, Thomas Perry, James Watson. Along with other supporters of Carlile including William Fox (Unitarian, MP for Oldham 1847) and Myles McSweeney (secularist and supporter of The Rotunda) they provided an extensive network, some of whom would work with Bradlaugh in the future.

    Eliza Sharples was not the only woman in this list of otherwise male reformers. Bradlaugh would have been aware of Margaret Chappellsmith (Owenite, bookseller, who emigrated to America in 1856), Emma Martin (Owenite, worked with George Holyoake), Harriet Law (atheist and feminist), and others.

    Bradlaugh attended meetings at Eree’s Coffee House where, at first, he would argue for Christian belief. Those who met at the coffee house and hall were considered dangerous and called ‘infidels’. Nevertheless, Bradlaugh had found an amenable intellectual environment where he would discover a rich source of radical ideas.

Derek Perry

February 2021

Note 1. Dissenters were Protestant Christians who had separated from the Church of England, including Quakers, Levellers, Ranters, Muggletonians and others. During the 18th century, Rational Dissenters, sometimes describes as Nonconformists, opposed the established Church of England.

Note 2. Unitarians rejected the orthodox Protestant belief in the Trinity, denying that Jesus was a deity.

Note 3. Homerton College has been referred to by various names including Hackney College, New College etc. It moved to Cambridge in 1878.

Note 4. Joseph Lancaster was a Quaker and Nonconformist who established British Schools which were avowedly non-denominational. In response, the National Society for Promoting Religious Education set up schools in accordance with the teaching of the Church of England known as National Schools.