William Cuffay's poetic gift from the Chartists

By October 1849, the London Chartist William Cuffay was already on board the convict ship the Adelaide, heading for Australia, where he would spend the rest of his life.

Cuffay had been arrested in the wake of the Orange Tree conspiracy of August 1848, found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of “treason felony” and sentenced to 14 years in exile. In fact, he would never return to England. But his comrades in the Chartist movement did not forget him.

William Cuffay - the life and times of a Chartist leader

There can be few working men who died in the Victorian workhouse, thousands of miles from the country of their birth, yet who merited newspaper obituaries. One such was William Cuffay, the descendent of slaves, working tailor, Chartist orator and victim of repressive laws which saw him imprisoned and transported at the age of 60 half way round the world.

More than 20 years passed between Cuffay’s arrest and incarceration in the wake of the Orange Tree conspiracy of 1848, in which he was implicated, and his death in Tasmania. But even in his 80s he had been politically active, and his obituary in the local press recorded the “Death of a Chartist celebrity”. The news was even picked up and reported in the provincial press back in England.

Blue Plaque for Chartist William Cuffay

William Cuffay, among the most iconic figures in Chartism, is to get a one of London’s famous commemorative Blue Plaques.

The plaque will be placed on 409 Strand, on the site of his former central London home; and former TGWU union general secretary Lord Bill Morris has agreed to do the unveiling, which should take place, all being well, some time in the autumn of 2012.

The campaign to get the plaque has been masterminded by author and academic Martin Hoyles, whose book on Cuffay should be out soon. Here is an interview with Hoyles back in 2008, when he was still in the early stages of the project.

I am indebted to Professor Malcolm Chase for news of this event, which first appeared in his email-based Chartism Newsletter. To get on the circulation list, Google Malcolm Chase in the School of History at Leeds University and drop him an email (I’m not publishing his email address here to spare him the inevitable spamming).

On the subject of Cuffay (whose name also appears as Cuffey and Cuffy in contemporary sources), I also came across this excellent William Cuffay website.

Cuffay was  black London radical who was arrested in 1848 and transported to Australia when police foiled the Orange Tree plot to seize the centre of the capital and spark a general revolution.

The missing Ashton Chartists

Ashton under Lyne must have been a pretty wild place in the 1840s. What had been a small weaving hamlet of around 3,000 people at the turn of the century had swollen to more than 40,000 by the 1841 census. Yet there were few effective civic bodies, and in 1840 the town had just three police officers.

In the early Chartist period, the town was also home to two of the most radical Chartist leaders, Joseph Rayner Stephens and Peter Murray M’Douall, and the town was left with a legacy of working class radicalism that endured for decades.

The events of 14 August, 1848, however, overshadow all study of Ashton Chartism, for they resulted in a confrontation between the Chartist “National Guard” and James Bright, a police officer who lived locally, who died that night from a gunshot wound.

The resulting trial saw six Chartists transported to Australia. But they were not alone, for the authorities also resettled a number of those who had given evidence for the prosecution, sending them out in what would have been little greater comfort than if they too had been transported.

Some flavour of their experience can be found in the Chartist Ancestors account of these events thanks to Phil Gregory, a descendent of Thomas Winterbottom, one of those placed in the New South Wales immigration scheme.

Just recently, Neville Bray, a descendent of Joseph Armitage, a special constable and another of those to be resettled, got in touch to pass on details of his ancestor’s part in the trial and to draw attention to the reports of the trial in the Manchester Guardian of 16 and 20 December 1848. It is well worth getting hold of these if you have any connection to these events.

Neville makes the point that

“There must be quite a large number of descendants in Australia who can trace back to this event considering a total of 33 people were sent out on the Mary Bannatyne on the side of those who gave evidence. And also from the 5 convicts that arrived plus any families that the convicts sent for later.”

He is right, and I have had contact with a number of these descendents over the past few years, but there must be many more. Perhaps they should organise some sort of gathering in Australia this summer to mark the 160^th anniversary.

Neville also makes the point that Jonathon Walker and John Sefton, both of whom were sentenced to seven years’ transportation, were not on the Adelaide, the ship that took the others to Australia. So what did happen to them? Can anyone shed any light on their fate?