Tuesday 27 February 2024

‘The true history of the Chartist movement has yet to be written’

Robert Gammage was a great admirer of the Chartist orator Henry Vincent, describing him in his History of the Chartist Movement (1854) as ‘the young Demosthenes of English Democracy’ It would appear, however, that Vincent was rather less enthusiastic about Gammage. 

I recently bought a first edition of Gammage’s book online to use as a working copy. A former library copy, listed as being ‘in poor condition’ and with the spine attached only by sellotape in one corner, I didn’t expect much from it or from the ‘ink inscription on the front page’. It cost only a few pounds. When it arrived, however, I was delighted to see that the inscription read, ‘Lucy E. Vincent, from her husband Henry Vincent’, and even more excited to discover that two pages of the fly leaf were covered in handwritten notes. Having seen other examples of Vincent’s handwriting and of his signature, I have no doubt that all of this is in his hand.

Henry Vincent had been one of the six working-men entrusted by the London Working Men’s Association with drawing up the People’s Charter. He was a delegate to the General Convention of the Industrious Classes in early 1839. And he published the Western Vindicator, an important Chartist newspaper aimed at radicals in Wales and the West of England. 

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.

Read William Rider’s life story.

Thursday 8 February 2024

Chartism Day 2024 - Call for Papers

Plans for Chartism Day 2024 are coming together, with a date set for 7 September, and a venue agreed at the University of Reading. Make sure it’s in your diary.

All the details can be found over on the Society for the Study of Labour History website. At present it’s too early to reserve a place, but if you are interested in presenting a paper, or just want to see what sort of themes people might be talking about this year, the Call for Papers is already online.

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.
Rightly rejecting the 1815 date given in the Dictionary of National Biography’s ‘short and generally inaccurate’ entry, published soon after the earlier historian’s death, and other similarly unreliable sources, Saville eventually narrowed it down to 1822 or 1823. With such an uncommon name and so many parish records being easily searchable online these days, Gammage really should now be much easier to find.

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.