Spy story: what a police informant claimed to have overheard in a Drury Lane pub on 10 April 1848

It is not every day that you find an account in the official record of an ancestor threatening to crush soldiers opposing a Chartist monster meeting “like toads” – even if, as seems likely, the evidence was a fiction concocted by a paid police spy.

So I am immensely grateful to Dave Steele, who came across a document in the National Archives making precisely this accusation and kindly sent me a copy.

The document, filed with similar reports on Chartists in Home Office records (TNA HO45/2410/531-532), claims to recount “A conversation between two Chartists which was overheard in a public house near Drury Lane Theatre on the evening of Monday April 10”. If it actually happened, the two speakers, named as Mr Stokes and Mr Anderson, had spent that Monday at the Kennington Common rally before the 1848 Chartist petition was taken to Parliament and were reflecting on the day's events.

Talking Chartism: the video is here

I recently spent a very enjoyable hour and a half chatting about all things Chartism with professional genealogist Natalie at Genealogy Stories. You can watch the first hour of our conversation below.

This was a completely unscripted and unplanned talk (at least on my part), so please excuse the ums and ahhs, and any stories I launched into before getting sidetracked.

In part two, which you can access through Natalie's website, we talked a little about what happened to Chartism after 1848, and rather more about some interesting Chartists, including William Cuffay and Susanna Inge.

On the whole, I am really pleased with how it came out - although there are so many things I didn't get round to talking about, and of course if I'd prepared an answer to every question I might well have looked at alternative interpretations of some events. 

Natalie herself did a great job, and was very easy to talk to. Do check out Genealogy Stories where she has a growing collection of interviews along with some other great family history resources.

Chartism's high tide - 2 May 1842

On 2 May 1842, the second of the three great national Chartist petitions demanding the Six Points was presented to Parliament.

As I have pointed out before, there were in fact six petitions in all, but those of 1839, 1842 and 1848 were the three that Chartism is remembered for, and there is good reason to draw a veil over the final post-1848 attempts to mobilise popular opinion.

In May 1842, however, Chartism was at its peak. The second petition ran to 3,315,752 names, was six miles long and weighed in at a massive six hundredweight (or 305kg).

The petition was carried to the Houses of Parliament on the shoulders of 16 trade union delegates, and was so large that the doors to the House of Commons had to be dismantled for it to enter the chamber.

Thomas SlingsbyDuncombe, the great radical MP and friend of the Chartist movement presented the petition. But his motion for the petitioners to be heard at the bar of the House was defeated by 287 votes to just 49.

You can read more about all six Chartist petitions here.

Who signed the Chartist petitions

How many names were there on each of the Chartist petitions, and which towns contributed the most signatories? For that matter, how many Chartist petitions to Parliament were there?

A petitions page now added to Chartist Ancestors provides some of the basic information that can be hard to track down, and allows you to see the rise and fall of Chartism as a mass movement through the size of the petitions.

To take the last of these questions first, however, there were in fact not three but six Chartist petitions, one of which came within a single vote of a House of Commons majority while another failed to find even a single MP prepared to put a motion in its support.

Using the information on this page, it is also possible to see how support for Chartism waxed and waned in certain towns between 1839 and 1842, and to track the support of women for the Charter.

Although none of the petitions called for women to be given the vote, as many as one in five of those signing in some towns in 1839 were women, while in 1848 Parliament was told that 8,500 out of every 100,000 names (or8.5%) were those of women.

See more about the Chartist petitions.

Chartism's forgotten petition

Did you know that there were not three but four great Chartist petitions, and that the one that has been largely forgotten came within a single vote of being accepted by the House of Commons?

An eyewitness account of the march from the Old Bailey to Westminster and the Chartists' encounter with MPs is now available on Chartist Ancestors.

Read more about the petition, and the drama that surrounded its delivery to Parliament, borne into the Chamber of the House of Commons on the shoulders of eight Chartist stonemasons.