Chartist Ancestors Blog
Tuesday 27 February 2024
‘The true history of the Chartist movement has yet to be written’
Monday 19 February 2024
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.
Tuesday 13 February 2024
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.
Thursday 8 February 2024
Chartism Day 2024 - Call for Papers
Monday 5 February 2024
Will the real R.G. Gammage please stand up
When John Saville wrote his introduction to the reissue of Robert Gammage’s History of the Chartist Movement back in 1968, he struggled to pin down the author’s date of birth.
R.G. Gammage, from a photograph in the second, posthumously, published edition of his history of Chartism dated 1894. |
An Ancestry search rapidly reveals that no-one named Robert
George Gammage was baptised in or around Northampton within five years either
way of 1822.
There was, however, a George Robert Gammage baptised at All
Saints Northampton on 13 February 1821. His father George was a ‘horse-keeper’,
his mother’s name was Charlotte, and the family lived in Gregory Street. Case
closed.
Except nearly three years later, a George Robert Gammage was baptised at the same
church on 28 December 1824, apparently to the same parents (George, a
horse-keeper, and Charlotte) – although their address was now given as Gold
Street.
And eighteen months after that a Robert Gammage was baptised at All Saints on 23 May
1826; his parents were George, a horse-keeper, and Charlotte, and the family
lived at Smiths Row.
Was Gammage really baptised three times at the same church? It is, of course, possible that the first George Robert Gammage died, and a second child was given the same name. But a third? And at a date which makes it highly unlikely that he would have been old enough to be nominated as a committee member of the Northampton Working Men’s Association when it was formed in 1837?
In census records throughout his life, Gammage gave an age
consistent with having been born in 1821. And when he died in 1888, his age was
given as 67 in both official records and obituaries, which would strongly suggest
that the first entry, for 1821, is correct.
That is assuming, of course, that one or other (or maybe both) George Robert Gammages flipped their first and middle names and were better
known in later life as Robert George Gammage. Fortunately, that at least can be
established: the National Probate Calendar entry when Gammage’s will was proved includes both names as alternatives.
National Probate Calendar entry. |
I should of course add that all this excludes the possibility that the Robert Gammage baptised at All Saints Northampton on 15 June 1817 and whose parents were John and Sarah Gammage of King’s Head Lane might be our man. Or the George Gammage baptised at Kingsthorpe, Northampton on 3 March 1822 whose parents were John and Hannah Gammage. Perhaps it wasn’t that uncommon a name after all.
At this point, I should try to trace Gammage’s siblings in
the hope of narrowing the search. But for now, I give up!
Short biography of R.G. Gammage and the index of names in his history.