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.
While representing Loughborough and Leicester at the
convention, Smart was profiled by The Charter newspaper. Both the profile and a
portrait sketch which accompanied it now appear on Chartist Ancestors.
Very little appears to have been written about Smart, and in
tracking him down in the 1841 census and through mentions in the Chartist
press to add a little more detail to his life story, I was also pleased to uncover some information about his daughter.
She is named only as “Mrs Cully” in a Northern Star account
of the setting up of a Female Chartist Association in Leicester in 1848. But
BMD records and the census reveal her full name to have been Caroline Augusta
Smart.
Apparently born around 1801 (the 1841 census gives her age as 40, but
frequently rounded ages to the nearest five years), she had married Joseph
Culley in 1837.
The couple also appear to be present in the 1851 census
(Caroline’s age here given as 47 – so, perhaps, unrounded her date of birth was
nearer 1805). However, there appear to be no children from the marriage, and no
sign of either Joseph or Caroline in 1861.
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