Feargus O’Connor - last of the gentleman radicals

Feargus O’Connor permeates Chartist Ancestors as he permeated Chartism itself. The two can barely be separated. But up to now I haven’t written a biography of the all-important Chartist leader - ‘The great I AM of radicalism’, as a frustrated William Lovett dubbed him.

That has now changed, and I have managed to pull something together that tells his story, beginning with a childhood spent among a most remarkable family in Cork, and ending with his committal to a lunatic asylum in the early 1850s.

The full version of the sketch of O’Connor shown right can be found here. But I was especially pleased to discover that there are surviving portraits of his Irish nationalist uncle Arthur, eccentric father Roger, and adventurous elder brother Frank - or Francisco, as he is better known to history, quite a tale in itself.

O’Connor led a fascinating life. A family inheritance enabled him to live as an independent gentleman radical (perhaps one of the last of the breed), and for a decade he pretty much embodied Chartism, leading it on through good times and bad with unflagging energy.

Yet I must admit there is also much not to admire about him. 

You can read more about the man without whom Chartism might never have been more than a footnote in the history books at:

• Feargus O’Connor, 1794-1855 and
• The tragic death and magnificent funeral of Feargus O’Connor

The rise and fall of the tumultuous John Dover

John Dover was a ‘noisy fellow’, a man accustomed to causing trouble on behalf of Norwich’s dominant Whig faction… if they paid him enough. But when Chartism came along, he found a cause where he could really make himself heard - to the immense annoyance of his former allies.

Dover specialised in making a nuisance of himself at public meetings called by the city’s mayor and high sheriff, highjacking their efforts to showcase the county’s elite at their genteel political best, and using them as a forum in which to argue for the Charter and other radical causes. And as a freeman of the city, there was little the authorities could do to stop him.

But Dover, a silk weaver turned beer-house keeper and other things besides, had a weakness: never good with money, he found himself in front of the magistrates for unpaid debts on a number of occasions. And it was to be his chronic shortage of cash that did for him in the end.

In the 1841 general election he sold out the Chartist cause for a £50 bribe (or, at least, was entrapped into doing so) and nearly paid with his life. And three years’ later, after stolen silk was discovered at his home, he found himself facing a long, unwelcome sea voyage.

The full story of John Dover can be found on the Chartist Ancestors website.

Did Chartists die before their time?

Some years after Chartism had passed into history, the editor of the Miner’s Advocate rejoiced that despite ‘the havoc death has made among the Reformers of our time, especially among those connected with the Chartist movement’, the Leeds radical William Rider was ‘still clear-headed and strong’ (18 February 1865). Rider was all of 60 years old. A decade and a half later, after Henry Vincent’s funeral, the Daily News reported that, ‘mingled with the little groups that lingered after the mourners had departed were some old Chartist friends of the deceased, now grey and bent with years’ (3 January 1879). Vincent had been 65. 

William Rider - one of the ‘physical force men’

‘I never thought your moral force, your rams horns, or your silver trumpets would level the citadel of corruption,’ declared the West Riding Chartist William Rider in looking back on divisions that had split the First Chartist Convention nearly twenty years earlier.

Having come to Chartism through his experiences in the early. 1830s’ agitation for short-time working and opposition to the workhouse system of the New Poor Law, Rider swiftly assumed a leading role in the movement in the North of England, as secretary of the Great Northern Union and a close ally of Feargus O’Connor.

But as one of what he himself called the ‘physical force men’, he went too far even for O’Connor - urging the convention to take up arms, and resigning as a delegate when it rejected his demand.

Despite this, Rider remained an important figure within Chartism into the early 1850s as publisher of the Northern Star, and he continued to argue his anti-Whig, anti-factory owner views in the working-class press until his death -  a physical force man to the last.

I have tracked Rider’s life story and written it up on the Chartist Ancestors website, but have been unable to find a picture of him. He will be somewhere in the engraving below of the First Chartist Convention, but quite where is anybody’s guess.

Read William Rider’s life story.

Whatever happened to Ruffy Ridley?

 Ruffy Ridley is one of those mid-ranking Chartist activists who seem to appear in the movement out of nowhere and to disappear comprehensively as it fades. He led the procession taking the 1842 petition to Parliament, and could always be relied upon when meetings needed a speaker or London Chartists were looking for a convention delegate. But that seemed to be the extent of it.

However, thanks to a chance mention in the Northern Star that he sometimes went under the name Daniel Ruffy (picked up but not probed further by historians with bigger fish to fry), I have been able with the help of a little research on Ancestry and in contemporary newspapers to uncover his origins as the descendent of Huguenot refugees, add more colour to his life story, and trace his final days in Australia. There is even a portrait of him.

None of this will be new to Ruffy’s descendants, who have assiduously researched his life on Ancestry and elsewhere; but I think it is new to those of us with an interest in Chartism.

I must admit I have no idea why Ruffy switched identities. Possibly he hoped to separate Ruffy Ridley, the outspoken advocate not just of Chartism but of socialism, from Daniel Ridley the rising man of business. But if so, he did a pretty poor job of maintaining the dividing line. As often when I begin investigating Chartist lives, Ruffy’s story is far more interesting than I might have anticipated.

Read the full story of Daniel Ruffy Ridley on the Chartist Ancestors website.

The life story of May Paris, Chartist activist

There are around thirty Chartist life stories on the Chartist Ancestors - and over the past few days I have been able to add a few more. 

My favourite among the new additions is a short biographical piece on May Paris, who died at the age of just 42 in the cholera epidemic that swept London in 1849. Though little known outside her immediate circle of family and friends, it is thanks to her and many like her that the Chartist movement was able to sustain itself and make its voice heard. From the limited sources that survive, it is obvious that she must have been a dedicated and active political radical.

It’s especially pleasing to have been able to write about May Paris as it can be next to impossible to resurrect the stories of working-class women from this era. Read more about May Paris.

I have also restored a number of short biographical pieces which were formerly on the site but were lost in various builds, rebuilds and site moves. These include the stories of George Binns from Sunderland, and Anthony Cavalier of Sheffield.

Abel Heywood - the Chartist who built Manchester's town hall

Manchester's Radical Mayor: Abel Heywood, The Man who Built the Town Hall
By Joanna M. Williams (The History Press, 2017)

Abel Heywood’s memory deserves better. Search on Google for the man who almost personified Liberal Manchester in the middle decades of the 19th century and you will find page after page about a boutique hotel bearing his name.

Finally, eventually, an entry in the DNB appears before we go back to more hotel guest reviews. And that is about it.

Fortunately, a new biography by Joanna Williams sets out to recover the life story of this important figure from Manchester’s radical past – from the campaign for a free press in the 1830s, via Chartism and the Liberal Party to the office of mayor.

Lesser known Chartists: six of the best life stories

Chartism attracted some fascinating characters – and even more fairly ordinary people who found themselves caught up in fascinating events.

Over the past couple of years, I have been able to add a number of individual life stories to Chartist Ancestors that have particularly captured my imagination. Typically, these are not among the best known of the Chartist leaders, whose life stories are reasonably well known. Rather, they are ordinary men and women who through willpower or circumstances have found themselves playing leading parts in historic events – occasionally in ways which would strain credibility if they appeared in fiction.

Bartlomiej Beniowski: newly discovered picture of Chartism's "military leader"

Bartlomiej Beniowski is a shadowy presence in the story of Chartism. An emigre who found his way to Britain after a failed Polish-Lithuanian uprising against Russian rule, he joined both the London Working Men's Association and the more radical London Democratic Association.

The truth  about his supposed role as the possible military leader of a planned armed uprising over the winter of 1839-1840 has never been properly established.

More full-text Chartist resources

There has been a very welcome increase in the volume of materials about Chartism available online in recent months.

In part this is thanks to the efforts of people like Richard Brown, whose blog generously shares a career-worth of expertise with the wider world.  In addition to a great deal of biographical material on individual Chartists, and discussion of the many variations on Chartism, his blog also has a particularly useful guide to the different ways historians have understood Chartism down the years.

But those of us interested in Chartism and the Chartists have also benefited from wider projects.

Efforts by NCSE partnership to digitise a number of 19^th century publications, including the complete run of the Northern Star newspaper are especially exciting. Having spent days in the past peering at microfiche readers at the British Library’s newspaper library at Colindale, I look forward to the prospect of being able to search, download and really get a grip on the most important newspaper chronicling the Chartist movement from the comfort of my own home.

More incidentally, but no less valuable, Google Books has set out to digitise as many books as it can lay its hands on in order to make them available online. This is controversial in many respects, but for those of us with an interest in original Chartist material that is long out of copyright, it is a boon.

I have now added a series of links from Chartist Ancestors to the most valuable volumes. Among them are The Trial of John Frost for High Treason, published in 1840, and Feargus O’Connor’s own Practical Work on the Management of Small Farms – a fascinating read for those with an interest in the Chartist Land Company.

I have also added links to many other full-text resources on the ever excellent Minor Victorian Poets website.

The Chartist Ancestors further research page has links to these and many other Chartist resources.

Gerald Massey 100 years on

Gerald Massey lived a fascinating life, as a poet and Shakespeare scholar, developer of evolutionary theory and, of course, Chartist.

Massey died one hundred years ago next month, and to mark his centenary, Ian Petticrew and David Shaw, whose devotion to the cause of Minor Victorian Poets is simply magnificent, have produced a booklet dealing with his life and contributions to the various worlds in which he moved.

I am grateful to both Ian and David, long-time friends of Chartist Ancestors, for allowing me to have a copy of the booklet on the site so that it can be downloaded by anyone who would like to read it. Just click on the title below and the booklet will open in PDF format.

Gerald Massey: Poet, Author and Evolutionist

Life of Thomas Slingsby Duncombe

Thomas Slingsby Duncombe was an unlikely ally of the Chartist cause. With a well-publicised reputation as a lover of the theatre, gaming and women, he became known during his long tenure as MP for Finsbury as "the handsomest and best-dressed man in the house".

Yet the "dandy demagogue" was also the man who presented the second Chartist petition of 1842 to Parliament, sought the release of John Frost and other Chartists imprisoned for their part in the Newport rebellion, and helped underwrite the ill-fated Chartist land plan.

When Disraeli wrote Sybil: or The Two Nations, it was to Duncombe that he turned for information on Chartism. And it was Duncombe who chaired the Labour Parliament of 1845 and continued to support the development of trades unions thereafter for many years.

Duncombe's contribution to the political life of the 19^th century has been rather neglected until now. But the good news is that a biography, to be titled Radical Dandy: The Curiously Forgotten Political Life of Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, may now help to rectify that.

The book is being written Stephen Duncombe, a distant relative and associate professor at the Gallatin School of New York University. It is being published by the University of California Press – though no date is yet given for it to appear.

Stephen Duncombe has set up a website giving more information about the project, including an outline of the eight chapters; there is also a good short biography of Thomas Slingsby Duncombe on Wikipedia.