Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 1 (of 2)

A demonstration was held in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon, September 28th, 1862, for the purpose of expressing sympathy with Garibaldi, and protesting against the occupation of Rome by the French troops. The hour announced for the meeting was three o'clock, and by that time the Morning Advertiser estimated that there were between 12,000 and 15,000 persons present. The proceedings were, however, very badly managed; no steps whatever were taken for keeping order, and, indeed, by three o'clock none of the conveners of the meeting had put in an appearance, nor had any arrangements whatever been made for a platform for the speakers. Mr Bradlaugh had been asked to speak, and was, as a matter of course, punctually upon the scene. He found a ready-made platform in a great heap about fourteen yards by nine, and rising three feet from the ground. About this heap, upon which he and a few others had posted themselves, the crowd gathered, and at length Mr Bradlaugh, seeing no signs of the conveners, commenced to speak. He was soon stopped by interruptions of every kind, and to make things a little more regular, a chairman was appointed; but the chairman had hardly begun to address the people when he "was hurled with his friends from their seat of eminence by a movement which a few Irish roughs had organised in the rear of them, down amongst the crowd beneath. By remarkable dexterity, however, the chairman regained his place upon the mount."82 His efforts to be heard were again unavailing, and the proceedings rapidly developed into a free fight.

"During one of the lulls in the fighting position of the affair," says the Morning Advertiser, "Mr Bradlaugh proposed a resolution to the effect that the meeting was of opinion that Garibaldi was faithfully doing his duty when he fell at Aspromonte, and desired to express its admiration of the heroic fortitude he displayed in his hour of trial."

The resolution was seconded and supported amid general uproar,

"while it was confidently stated that in the course of the discussion of it, and during one of the encounters for the possession of the platform, an attempt was made to stab Mr Bradlaugh."83

Thus an assemblage which should have done honour to Garibaldi as well as to England, for, as the Advertiser says, "it was composed of the élite of the working classes and a large portion of the middle class," was turned by the Irish Catholics into a fight and a panic calling for the interference of the police. It is little to be wondered at that when Mr Bradlaugh was invited by the Working Men's Committee to attend and speak he hesitated to accept the invitation, feeling as he did that the conveners were not able to control the antagonism of the Irish Catholics which had already manifested itself at other meetings. "I have no wish," he afterwards said, "for immediate martyrdom, and considerably abbreviated my speech when I found that knives were used as arguments."

In the winter of 1862 Mr Bradlaugh made a public appeal to the Freethinkers of Great Britain to raise money on behalf of the distressed Lancashire operatives. He begged them to "waste no time, but at once in your large workshops and in your social meetings levy a rate for the reduction of the Lancashire distress." Those who were Freethinkers amongst the destitute in Lancashire were of course relieved by the General Relief Committee, but naturally they were excluded from the various charitable undertakings carried out by committees belonging to different denominations. As the relief afforded by the General Committee and the Board of Guardians only averaged 1s. 8½d. per head weekly, it will be seen how greatly dependent the distressed were upon the extra help of these other committees. A touching little story of Christian charity versus principle in rags was taken by Mr T. S. Oates, then Secretary to the Lancashire Secular Union Special Distress Fund, from the Rochdale Observer of Dec. 13th, and was, he said, a fair sample of what frequently happened. A benevolent lady belonging to Middleton, on making her usual charitable round, entered one day a house in Parkfield, where she found "poverty in its worst shape." The father of the family was in rags, and the lady told the man that if he would come to her house that evening she would give him other clothes. The man, of course, was overjoyed, but when he was told that after he had the clothes he would be expected to attend church, and if he did not do so the clothes were to be returned, his joy was considerably cooled down. Then it was said that

"after making her statement, the lady left to make further inquiries into the cases of distress, leaving the man of poverty to reflect on the offer made to him. After a short consideration he commenced looking at his unsightly apparel, and then muttered to himself: 'Yo mun poo me through a bit longer, owd friends; it'll do noan to pop mi conscience for a shute of cloas!'"

My father did not preach without practising, although to me it is marvellous how, with his own struggle for existence, he always found a way to help others in their struggles. But this winter it was especially hard: several times he was called away to the Continent, and several times his health broke down, until he was so ill that he had to give up editing his paper, and for some months was also obliged to give up lecturing. Nevertheless, he contrived to keep an engagement he had made to lecture for the Relief Fund in Manchester on Feb. 1, 1863, in which he paid the whole of his own expenses, and so was able to hand £10 over to the Treasurer. Later on in the year he was lecturing again on behalf of the same object.

Almost concurrently with his efforts to raise money for Lancashire, he was making eloquent appeals for funds to aid Poland against her oppressors, and when he had somewhat recovered his health he addressed meetings on behalf of the struggling Poles. He spoke at Plumstead, Deptford, and Cleveland Hall, at Birmingham and Sheffield, where the fire and passion of his speeches evoked the utmost enthusiasm; at Halifax, where people walked eight and ten miles in the drenching rain to hear him, and at other places the details of which are not recorded. "Viva la Polonia" was a cry which, twenty years ago, found "a sympathising echo from every freeman in Europe, from every honest heart in the civilised world;" and my father was behind none in the warmth of his sympathy, or in the activity he displayed to give it practical effect.

Neither, with all this public work, was he unmindful or ungrateful for kindnesses shown himself personally; and so he never forgot the debt he owed his early friend, Mr Jones, who now in consequence of old age and infirmities was reduced to extreme poverty. In the November of this same year he gave the last of his annual lectures for the benefit of his staunch old friend. On this occasion, too, Mr Bendall, the lessee of the Hall of Science, gave the use of the hall – as indeed he frequently did, often at considerable inconvenience to himself – and the proceeds of the lecture and subscriptions amounted to upwards of £8, of which the greater part served to pay the funeral expenses of the brave old man, who, contemporary with Thomas Paine, had played his part in the struggles for a free press, particularly in those which we associate with the names of men like Richard Carlile, Wooler, and Hone.

In March 1864 occurred the great inundation at Sheffield; along the valleys of the Loxley and the Don all was ruin and desolation. Whole rows of houses, mills, and bridges were carried away, and huge trees were torn up by the force of the rushing water. Many lives were lost, and those who escaped with life lost every atom they possessed save the garments in which they escaped. Many funds were started for the relief of those so suddenly made destitute, and Mr Bradlaugh was not slow in offering his help. A Sheffield man, writing at the time, said that the quality of practical sympathy was one possessed by Mr Bradlaugh "in a pre-eminent degree, and it is a trait in his character which will add lustre to his name, and form a rich gem in the wreath which shall adorn his memory long after he shall have laid his honoured head in the silent tomb… His large, generous heart is never insensible to the sounds of human distress; and accordingly no sooner did he hear of the Sheffield catastrophe than he at once volunteered his services towards the relief of the sufferers."84

I have mentioned these cases with the idea of showing how wide and how ready were my father's sympathies. To give money help was no easy matter to him: he could not write a cheque and say, "Put my name down for this sum or for that;" he could not even give by denying himself some little luxury: every penny he gave had to be specially earned for that purpose, but notwithstanding this, real distress rarely appealed to him in vain.85

Unable to do so much provincial lecturing in consequence of the demands made upon his time by his business, Mr Bradlaugh was yet often to be found during the latter part of 1865 at the Hall of Science, City Road; but in the early part of 1866 he was away in Italy so much, sometimes for weeks together, that he could do very little lecturing. The proceeds of these winter lectures at the old Hall of Science were to go to the Hall of Science Company, which he was then actively projecting. The lease of the City Road Hall expired early in 1866, and the renewal had been refused. It was proposed to lease or purchase a suitable building, or a site of land on which to build a lecture-hall and rooms for classes for secular instruction, etc. To aid in providing funds for this purpose, it was Mr Bradlaugh's desire to purchase one hundred shares out of the proceeds of his lectures, and to that end he devoted the whole of his profits on each occasion that he lectured at the Hall of Science.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE REFORM LEAGUE, 1866-1868

In 1866 the National Reform League was proving itself an extremely active organisation. Mr Edmund Beales was its honoured President, and Mr George Howell the Secretary. Mr Bradlaugh was one of its Vice-Presidents, and he had, oddly enough, amongst his colleagues the Rev. W. H. Bonner, the father of his future son-in-law. Mr Bonner had been, and was until his death in 1869, a Lecturer for the Peace Society, and was then a Vice-President and Lecturer of the Reform League. They worked together with the greatest cordiality, and Mr Bradlaugh on one occasion wrote that he wished there were more clergymen like the Rev. Mr Bonner. My father took part in most of the meetings of the League which were held in London and in many of those held in the provinces, and his value as an advocate was appreciated by men opposed to the Reform Bill – then before Parliament – as well as by those on his own side who were not blinded by bigotry.

On May 21st a great demonstration in support of the Bill was held upon Primrose Hill, and was addressed by Mr Beales, Mr Cremer, Colonel Dickson, Mr Lucraft, and others. Mr Bradlaugh moved the second resolution, and his eloquence so impressed the reporter to the Standard that that gentleman, who had assuredly come "to scoff," remained, if not "to pray," yet to give and record a reluctant admiration. The leader which appeared in the Standard for the following day was intended to be humorously descriptive of the proceedings without too fine a regard for facts; and in it we find the following notice of Mr Bradlaugh and his speech, which the writer said was frequently and enthusiastically applauded:

"At length, however, a young gentleman – by the name, we believe, of Bradlaugh – sprang into the chair, and for the moment awakened in the wind-chilled throng a faint thrill of something like enthusiasm. At first, judging from the cast of his countenance and from a certain twinkle in his eye as he adjusted himself to his task, we anticipated a decidedly comic address. But the event soon showed that we were mistaken, and the speaker, admirably as his face was adapted for purposes of comedy, was himself terribly in earnest; so earnest, indeed, and so thoroughly d'accord with his audience, that he soon woke them up from the lethargy in which they had remained ever since the first old gentleman had begun to read to them the unpublished proofs of next morning's Star, and set them crying 'Hear, hear,' 'That's so,' 'Hurray,' 'Down with the Peers,' 'Shame, shame,' and so on. Bearing in mind the blood-red banner and the bonnet rouge, it is needless to say that the speech of this energetic gentleman – who, be it observed, spoke really extremely well – consisted simply of a furious onslaught upon English institutions in general, and upon Government and the House of Lords in particular. He would like to see that wretched institution that battened upon the life-blood of the English people swept away for ever; and here the Reformers cried 'Hear, hear,' and applauded with voice and hand. And that was what things were tending to; that was what this Bill really meant; and he differed from their worthy president – who had apparently been endeavouring to persuade the meeting to adopt that convenient little Liberal fib that the present Bill had really nothing democratic about it – in being ready and willing to take his stand as a supporter of the Government measure upon the ground that it was democratic, and that its real effect would be to sweep away the whole expensive machinery of the constitution, Government itself included. All this, of course, everybody knew before, but it is not every Liberal Reformer who is bold enough to say it… The speaker concluded with a significant reminder that on this occasion they were allowed to meet undisturbed, because they met in support of a Government measure, but that their normal condition – he did not say normal, but that was the meaning of it – was one of opposition to all Government, and that he might have to call upon them to meet here or elsewhere, or even under the walls of the sham Parliament at Westminster, when the whole strength of Government would be put forth to prevent the meeting, and when the English people would rise in their might," etc.

The sarcasm and humour of the foregoing make it no easy matter to pick out the scattered grains of truth: nevertheless, we may gather from it that the boldness, earnestness, and eloquence of the "young gentleman by the name, we believe, of Bradlaugh," did this much – it made an unusual impression upon his Tory listener.

At a great gathering86 held in Trafalgar Square on the 2nd of July, my father was one of the speakers. Lord Russell and Mr Gladstone had resigned from the Ministry, and Lord Derby had been "sent for." Parliament stood adjourned until July 5th, and the Reform League held this meeting prior to the reassembling of the House to protest against the proposed Derby administration, and to deplore the retirement of Mr Gladstone and Lord Russell. There was unusual excitement about this meeting, for Sir Richard Mayne had first of all intimated that it would not be allowed to take place. He, however, met with such a strenuous outburst of condemnation that for the moment he was checked, and withdrew his prohibition. By this time Mr Bradlaugh's popularity in London was becoming very great, and in the Times' notice of the meeting it is remarked that he was the chief favourite, and that "the mass soon commenced clamouring" for him.

The Derby Cabinet, as every one is aware, was formed with Disraeli87 in Gladstone's place as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and with the formation of the new Cabinet all immediate hopes of the passing of any real measure of Reform were abandoned, although the League continued its work with untiring energy. An utterance of Mr Bradlaugh's on the chief point in the programme of Reform then advocated, viz. extension of the Suffrage, is worth repeating here, as it indicates a line of conduct which Mr Bradlaugh himself pursued and enjoined upon others in regard to other matters of Reform than the Suffrage. He would always seek and work for a thorough and complete measure; but if he could not get all that he asked for, rather than have nothing, and thus leave matters in the bad state in which he found them, he would take what ameliorations he could get without ceasing to aim at ultimately winning the whole. He had, at the time of which I am writing, occasion to allude to a little pamphlet published in 1838. He remarked: —

"The author says well when he tells you, 'Demand universal Suffrage;' but I am not quite sure that he is right in saying, 'Take no less than your full demand.' He is right in declaring the Suffrage a natural right, and therefore undoubtedly all our agitation should be based on this principle; but I am not of opinion that the extension of the Suffrage to a portion of the working or middle classes necessarily makes them enemies to their unenfranchised brethren. Each step in the Reform movement, whether theological, social, or political, is educational in its effects even beyond the circle in which the step is taken. My advice would be: Seek justice; but refuse no point which may be conceded, for each concession gives you additional means and strength to enforce your claim. The people are growing stronger and more worthy every day; but there are, alas! even yet in this country hundreds of thousands who are intellectually too weak for, and apparently hardly worthy of, enfranchisement. Our mission is to educate them to strength and worthiness, to strip off the badge of servitude they wear, to teach them that labour's rights and duties are as honourable and onerous as the rights and duties of the wealthiest employer of labour, and that the labourer – if honest and true to his manhood – has a higher patent of nobility than was ever given by yellow parchment or crumbling seal."

The Tories had declared that the people themselves did not want any extension of the suffrage, and spoke sneeringly of the apathy and indifference of the working classes towards any measure of enfranchisement. Determined to show they were not apathetic, working men in London and the provinces held meeting after meeting. The one in Trafalgar Square was followed three weeks later by that famous gathering in Hyde Park, when the railings "came down." This meeting was announced for Monday, July 22nd, but a few days before the time arrived Sir Richard Mayne posted a notification on the park gates forbidding the meeting to take place; and this time Sir Richard Mayne held to his prohibition. The Council of the National Reform League met on the 20th specially to consider this police order; Mr Beales, the president, stated the case as impartially as possible, and put the legal difficulties before the Council. Mr Bradlaugh moved that notwithstanding the police notice of prohibition the meeting be persisted in. Mr Cremer and others opposed the resolution, but when it was put it was carried by a large majority. Mr Bradlaugh put himself entirely under the direction of Mr Beales, and it was arranged that at the given time the leaders of the demonstration should appear at the Marble Arch and demand admission into the park; if this was refused, having made their protest, they should separate into divisions and proceed quietly by different routes to Trafalgar Square.

When the time came, procession after procession marched in orderly fashion to the park gates, and the meeting became a truly magnificent one, composed as it was mainly of respectable working men, thoroughly earnest in their desire for Reform. They were not all Londoners either; there were representative men from the provinces, from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Plymouth, and other parts, men who had travelled many miles and undergone much fatigue to take part in the forbidden demonstration. From a brief notice of the meeting which Mr Bradlaugh wrote for the National Reformer, it appears that Mr Beales and the committee reached the Marble Arch Gates shortly after seven o'clock, and leaving their vehicles they went together to the police at the gate to demand admission. "The police, however, meant mischief; one mounted man, 'V. 32,' backed his horse right on to Mr Beales and myself, and the example being followed by another mounted policeman, some confusion was created, and this was evidently the result desired by the police. The truncheons were all out, and some rough intimations given to those in front that mischief was meant." On his demand being made and refused, Mr Beales and his colleagues turned, as had been arranged, to lead the meeting by different routes to Trafalgar Square. Mr Bradlaugh's division turned down Park Lane, but some of those on the outside, being irritated by the behaviour of the police, made an attack upon the railings of the Park. Having read numerous accounts of this episode, I should judge that the first railings fell partly accidentally through the enormous pressure of the moving crowd, and were partly torn up in anger. When a few rails had given way, the idea of gaining ingress to the park in that manner spread through the crowd like a flash of light, and in a few minutes many yards of railings were upon the ground and the people leaping excitedly over them. Mr Bradlaugh, strenuously adhering to the programme of his leader to carry the meeting to Trafalgar Square, set himself to the difficult task of restraining the wild tumult and preventing the mass from destroying the railings and forcing an entry. After a little, although not before he himself had been knocked down, he was successful, and his column resumed its orderly and peaceful march to Trafalgar Square, "whence, after much speechifying, we all went home." The Times remarked that in his efforts to prevent a breach of the peace "Mr Bradlaugh got considerably hustled … falling under the suspicion of being a government spy." It is little to be wondered at that the people hardly knew friend from foe, for the confusion and excitement were so great that they were for a moment bewildered. The police, said the Morning Star,

"hit out with their truncheons like savages who, having been under temporary control, were now at full liberty to break heads and cut open faces to their hearts' content. It mattered not to them whether the interloper had actively exerted himself to force an entrance, or whether he had been merely hurled in the irresistible crush of those who pressed behind. Wherever there was a skull to fracture, they did their best to fracture it; everybody was in their eyes an enemy to whom no mercy was to be shown. The mob was at first stunned by the vigour of the assault, but presently turned upon the aggressors and repaid blows with their kind – in the end inflicting as much punishment as they received."

In any case the police attempt to prevent the people entering the park was futile, for although the more orderly passed on to the appointed meeting-place, in the course of half-an-hour many thousands gained admission through the openings made in the railings. At length, the police confessing themselves powerless, the military were called out and marched through the park. Lord Derby, in the House of Lords, asserted that altogether not less than 1400 yards of railings were pulled down, and complained loudly of the injury done to the flower-beds and other "property of the Crown;" but on this head a rather remarkable statement was made by Mr Cowper, M.P., formerly First Commissioner of the Works, who expressed himself against holding public meetings in the Park. Mr Cowper said that when the crowd (composed, according to the Times, of "London roughs") had

"forced down the railings and made good their entrance to the Park, they abstained from injuring the flowers, and even in the heat and hurry of the disturbance, they frequently went round along the grass so as not to tread upon the flower-beds and borders."

After all their prohibitions and precautions to prevent the people from holding orderly meeting and giving public expression to their opinion, backed too as they were by police and soldiers, the Government could only feebly say in the House that the measures they had taken had prevented "some part of the contemplated proceedings from taking place." They might also have truthfully added that these same measures had also brought about the destruction of the Park railings, and numerous broken heads, "proceedings" which were not "contemplated," at least, by the conveners of the meeting.

A week later, before the excitement had time to cool down, another great meeting was held in the Agricultural Hall, and I have often heard my father say he had never seen gathered together in any building so many men as found their way into the Agricultural Hall on that occasion. He reckoned there must have been upwards of 25,000 persons present, without counting those who came and went away in despair at not being able to see or hear on the outskirts of so large a crowd. The great difficulty seems to have been to hear the speakers, and with such a vast assembly it is not surprising to find that many of them could only be heard by those nearest to the platform. Mr Bradlaugh himself felt how impossible it was to make every one hear. He moved the second resolution, praying the House of Commons to institute an inquiry into the conduct of Sir Richard Mayne and his subordinates at Hyde Park on the previous Monday, and wound up what the Times describes as a "telling speech," with his favourite quotation from Shelley's "Masque of Anarchy."