Kennington 1848: the women in white bonnets, the man in the dustman's hat and the coachman

The daguerreotype images of the famous Chartist Kennington Common meeting on 10 April 1848 have fascinated historians since they first came to light in the Royal Collection in the mid-1970s. Though not the first crowd photographs, as is sometimes claimed, they are the first such pictures of a protest meeting, and they provide a real glimpse into this historic moment in time.

Professor Fabrice Bensimon, historian of the nineteenth century and a noted expert on the Chartist movement at Sorbonne Université, has spent many hours pouring over the two surviving daguerreotypes in an attempt to shed light on the people who made up the crowd. His research appears in a recent article in the Journal of Victorian Culture¹.

• You may notice that the photographs do not appear in this blog post. That is because the Royal Collection guards its copyright fiercely and I am neither willing nor able to pay the substantial fee it charges to reproduce them. They can, however, be seen here and here.

Due to the technical limitations at the time and the fact that these are crowd shots, it is not possible to recognise faces. These are black and white images, and so the green, white and red tricolour rosettes, ribbons and flags that we know were there from written reports are reduced to muddy sepia along with the green banner of the Irish ‘Emmet Brigade’. And, of course, the images are silent, so we do not hear the speeches, the cheers, boos, laughter and applause of the crowd.

Professor Bensimon notes that a large number of men in the crowd are wearing top hats and long coats. But this does not mean that the crowd was not overwhelmingly working class, as newspapers at the time reported. Rather, he points, out, 10 April was ‘Saint Monday’ – the day of the week on which working men rested from their labours and wore their best clothes.

Actor Stanley Holloway wears a 
‘dustman’s hat’ in a still from the 
1964 film My Fair Lady.

But there were also plenty there wearing work clothes and the cloth caps which by the end of the century would come to symbolise working-class dress. A few wore the distinctive caps with flaps covering their shoulders – often worn by coal whippers and dustmen to protect themselves and their clothes from the dust and dirt of the sacks they carried on their backs.

Professor Bensimon counts 583 top hats and 253 caps in the images (with the cap count likely higher as they are harder to spot). ‘The mixture of different types of headwear on 10 April is not indicative of a mixture of social classes, but of a declining craft world and rising working class accompanying the rise of industry and the development of the city.’

Professor Bensimon also comments on the women seen in the picture. Though it was common for women to appear on Chartist platforms in the early years of the movement, there are fewer reports mentioning their presence by 1848, and one newspaper, The Standard, commented at the time that there were not 100 women at Kennington Common that day.

Isolating and expanding the image of the central car from which many of the main speakers addressed the meeting, however, Professor Bensimon identifies at least six women in large white bonnets and dresses. ‘There is no indication that they spoke, and they were probably the wives or daughters of speakers,’ he writes.

‘Who is this woman wearing a checked dress, patterned shawl, and white bonnet, with her back to us on the central coach, leaning against her railing? What about this other, very young-looking woman, we see in profile at the front of the coach, likewise wearing a white bonnet?’ It would be fascinating to know who they were.

Most of those photographed that day will always remain nameless and anonymous. But Professor Bensimon has compiled compelling evidence that identifies one individual. He is the man in white at the front of the main coach, above the crowd and beneath the members of the Convention.

The man is in all probability the coachman. And thanks to diligent research, Professor Bensimon is able to identify him as Henry Cullingham and tell his life story, including his role in overseeing the building work at the Chartist land settlements on behalf of Feargus O’Connor. It is a fantastic piece of detective work, and one which helps highlight the many and diverse practical issues involved in making Chartism happen.

Notes and sources
1. Fabrice Bensimon, Kennington Common, 10 April 1848: The Photographs, the Chartist Crowd and the Coachman, in Journal of Victorian Culture (2024) vol. XX, no. XX. Accessed on the JVC website, 11 Jyly 2024 (subscription required)

See also
Report of the Monster Meeting on Kennington Common, 10 April 1848. On Chartist Ancestors.