Richard Carlile
Encyclopedia
Richard Carlile was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage
and freedom of the press
in the United Kingdom.
, the son of a shoemaker who abandoned the family in 1794 leaving Richard's mother struggling to support her three children on the income from running a small shop. At the age of six he went for free education to the local Church of England
school, then at the age of twelve he left school for a seven year apprenticeship to a tinsmith in Plymouth
. In 1813 he got married, and shortly afterwards the couple moved to Holborn
Hill in London where he found work as a tinsmith. Jane Carlile gave birth to five children, three of whom survived.
complained that only three men in a hundred had the vote, and was also influenced by the publications of William Cobbett
.
As a way of making a living he sold the writings of parliamentary reformers such as Tom Paine on the streets of London, often walking "thirty miles for a profit of eighteen pence". In April 1817 he formed a publishing business with the printer William Sherwin and rented a shop in Fleet Street
. To make political texts such as Paine's books The Rights of Man and the Principles of Government available to the poor he split them into sections which he sold as small pamphlets, similarly publishing The Age of Reason
and Principles of Nature
. He issued pirated copies of Southey's Wat Tyler
and after the radical William Hone
's arrest in May, he reissued the parody of parts of the Book of Common Prayer
for which Hone was to be tried, then was himself arrested in August and held without charge until Hone was acquitted in December.
He took on distributing the banned Radical
weekly The Black Dwarf
at a time when the government was prosecuting publishers: "The Habeas Corpus Act being suspended ... all was terror and alarm, but I take credit to myself in defeating the effect of these two Acts upon the Press... Of imprisonment I made sure, but I felt inclined to court it than to shrink from it".
Carlile then brought out a radical journal, Sherwin's Political Register, which reported political meetings and included extracts from books and poems by supporters of the reform movement such as Percy Bysshe Shelley
and Lord Byron. The popularity of this helped to soon bring his profit from his publishing venture to £50 a week.
Carlile was one of the scheduled main speakers at the reform meeting on 16 August 1819 at St. Peter's Fields in Manchester
. Just as Henry Hunt
was about to speak, the crowd was attacked by the yeomanry in what became known as the Peterloo massacre
. Carlile escaped and was hidden by radical friends before he caught the mail coach to London and published his eyewitness account, giving the first full report of what had happened, in Sherwin's Weekly Political Register of 18 August 1819. His placards proclaimed "Horrid Massacres at Manchester".
The government responded by closing Sherwin's Political Register, confiscating the stock of newspapers and pamphlets. Carlile changed the name to The Republican and in its issue of 27 August 1819 demanded that "The massacre... should be the daily theme of the Press until the murderers are brought to justice.... Every man in Manchester who avows his opinions on the necessity of reform, should never go unarmed – retaliation has become a duty, and revenge an act of justice."
Carlile was prosecuted for blasphemy
, blasphemous libel
and sedition
for publishing material that might encourage people to hate the government in his newspaper, and for publishing Tom Paine's Common Sense, The Rights of Man and the Age of Reason (which criticised the Church of England
). In October 1819 he was found guilty of blasphemy
and seditious libel
and sentenced to three years in Dorchester Gaol with a fine of £1,500. When he refused to pay the fine, his premises in Fleet Street
were raided and his stock was confiscated. While he was in jail he continued to write articles for The Republican which was now published by Carlile's wife Jane, and thanks to the publicity it now outsold pro-government newspapers such as The Times
.
To curb newspapers the government had raised the ½d tax on newspapers first imposed in 1712 to 3½d in 1797 then 4d in 1815. From December 1819 it set a minimum price of 7d and further restrictions. At a time when workers earned less than 10 shillings (120d.) a week this made it hard for them to afford radical newspapers, and publishers tried various strategies to evade the tax. Groups would pool their resources in reading societies and subscription societies to purchase a book or journal in common, and frequently read it aloud to one another as was the case with James Wilson
.
By 1821, Carlile was a declared atheist (having previously been a Deist) and published his Address to Men of Science, in favour of materialism and education. In the same year Jane Carlile was in turn sentenced to two years imprisonment for seditious libel, and her place as publisher was taken by Richard Carlile's sister, Mary. Within six months she was imprisoned for the same offence. The process was repeated with eight of his shop workers, and over 150 men and women were sent to prison for selling The Republican. Carlile's sentence ended in 1823 but he was immediately arrested and returned to prison for not paying his £1,500 fine, so the process continued until he was eventually released on 25 November 1825. In the next edition of The Republican he expressed the hope that his long confinement would result in the freedom to publish radical political ideas.
He then published further journals, The Lion which campaigned against child labour and The Promptor. He argued that "equality between the sexes" should be the objective of all reformers, and in 1826 published Every Woman's Book advocating birth control and the sexual emancipation of women.
and set out on an "infidel home missionary tour" which reached Cambridge
on Thursday 21 May 1829 and caused a considerable upset to the University of Cambridge where a young Charles Darwin
was a second year student.
Carlile then opened a ramshackle building on the south bank of the River Thames
known as The Rotunda, and in widespread public unrest in July 1830 this became a gathering place for republican
s and atheists. Taylor staged infidel melodramas, preaching outrageous sermons which got him dubbed "The Devil's Chaplain". Thousands of copies of these sermons were circulated in a seditious publication, The Devil's Pulpit.
After living for some years in extreme poverty in Enfield
, Carlile returned to Fleet Street in 1842, dying there the following year. He donated his body for medical research. Large numbers of people attended his funeral, recognising the importance of his work for a free press.
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
and freedom of the press
Freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
in the United Kingdom.
Early life
He was born in Ashburton, DevonAshburton, Devon
Ashburton is a small town on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon, adjacent to the A38 Devon Expressway.It was formerly important as a stannary town , and remains the largest town within the National Park, with a population of around 3,500...
, the son of a shoemaker who abandoned the family in 1794 leaving Richard's mother struggling to support her three children on the income from running a small shop. At the age of six he went for free education to the local Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
school, then at the age of twelve he left school for a seven year apprenticeship to a tinsmith in Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
. In 1813 he got married, and shortly afterwards the couple moved to Holborn
Holborn
Holborn is an area of Central London. Holborn is also the name of the area's principal east-west street, running as High Holborn from St Giles's High Street to Gray's Inn Road and then on to Holborn Viaduct...
Hill in London where he found work as a tinsmith. Jane Carlile gave birth to five children, three of whom survived.
Politics and publishing
His interest in politics was kindled first by economic conditions in the winter of 1816 when Carlile was put on short-time work by his employer creating serious problems for the family: "I shared the general distress of 1816 and it was this that opened my eyes." He began attending political meetings where speakers like Henry HuntHenry Hunt (politician)
Henry "Orator" Hunt was a British radical speaker and agitator remembered as a pioneer of working-class radicalism and an important influence on the later Chartist movement. He advocated parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws.Hunt was born in Upavon, Wiltshire and became a prosperous...
complained that only three men in a hundred had the vote, and was also influenced by the publications of William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...
.
As a way of making a living he sold the writings of parliamentary reformers such as Tom Paine on the streets of London, often walking "thirty miles for a profit of eighteen pence". In April 1817 he formed a publishing business with the printer William Sherwin and rented a shop in Fleet Street
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
. To make political texts such as Paine's books The Rights of Man and the Principles of Government available to the poor he split them into sections which he sold as small pamphlets, similarly publishing The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a deistic pamphlet, written by eighteenth-century British radical and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that criticizes institutionalized religion and challenges the legitimacy of the Bible, the central sacred text of...
and Principles of Nature
Principles of Nature
Principles of Nature, also known as The Principles of Nature, or A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species, was a work written in 1801 by Elihu Palmer. The work was similar to Thomas Paine's writings, and focused on "God, Deism, "revealed" religions, etc." It...
. He issued pirated copies of Southey's Wat Tyler
Wat Tyler
Walter "Wat" Tyler was a leader of the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381.-Early life:Knowledge of Tyler's early life is very limited, and derives mostly through the records of his enemies. Historians believe he was born in Essex, but are not sure why he crossed the Thames Estuary to Kent...
and after the radical William Hone
William Hone
William Hone was an English writer, satirist and bookseller. His victorious court battle against government censorship in 1817 marked a turning point in the fight for British press freedom.-Biography:...
's arrest in May, he reissued the parody of parts of the Book of Common Prayer
Book of Common Prayer
The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
for which Hone was to be tried, then was himself arrested in August and held without charge until Hone was acquitted in December.
He took on distributing the banned Radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
weekly The Black Dwarf
The Black Dwarf
The Black Dwarf was a satirical radical journal of early 19th century Britain. It was published by Thomas Jonathan Wooler, starting in January 1817 as an eight page newspaper, then later becoming a 32 page pamphlet. It was priced at 4d a week until the Six Acts brought in by the Government in 1819...
at a time when the government was prosecuting publishers: "The Habeas Corpus Act being suspended ... all was terror and alarm, but I take credit to myself in defeating the effect of these two Acts upon the Press... Of imprisonment I made sure, but I felt inclined to court it than to shrink from it".
Carlile then brought out a radical journal, Sherwin's Political Register, which reported political meetings and included extracts from books and poems by supporters of the reform movement such as Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
and Lord Byron. The popularity of this helped to soon bring his profit from his publishing venture to £50 a week.
Peterloo and The Republican
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
. Just as Henry Hunt
Henry Hunt (politician)
Henry "Orator" Hunt was a British radical speaker and agitator remembered as a pioneer of working-class radicalism and an important influence on the later Chartist movement. He advocated parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws.Hunt was born in Upavon, Wiltshire and became a prosperous...
was about to speak, the crowd was attacked by the yeomanry in what became known as the Peterloo massacre
Peterloo Massacre
The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 that had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation....
. Carlile escaped and was hidden by radical friends before he caught the mail coach to London and published his eyewitness account, giving the first full report of what had happened, in Sherwin's Weekly Political Register of 18 August 1819. His placards proclaimed "Horrid Massacres at Manchester".
The government responded by closing Sherwin's Political Register, confiscating the stock of newspapers and pamphlets. Carlile changed the name to The Republican and in its issue of 27 August 1819 demanded that "The massacre... should be the daily theme of the Press until the murderers are brought to justice.... Every man in Manchester who avows his opinions on the necessity of reform, should never go unarmed – retaliation has become a duty, and revenge an act of justice."
Carlile was prosecuted for blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
, blasphemous libel
Blasphemous libel
Blasphemous libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. It is an offence under the common law of Northern Ireland. It is a statutory offence in Canada and New Zealand...
and sedition
Sedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
for publishing material that might encourage people to hate the government in his newspaper, and for publishing Tom Paine's Common Sense, The Rights of Man and the Age of Reason (which criticised the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
). In October 1819 he was found guilty of blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
and seditious libel
Seditious libel
Seditious libel was a criminal offence under English common law. Sedition is the offence of speaking seditious words with seditious intent: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel...
and sentenced to three years in Dorchester Gaol with a fine of £1,500. When he refused to pay the fine, his premises in Fleet Street
Fleet Street
Fleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
were raided and his stock was confiscated. While he was in jail he continued to write articles for The Republican which was now published by Carlile's wife Jane, and thanks to the publicity it now outsold pro-government newspapers such as The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
.
To curb newspapers the government had raised the ½d tax on newspapers first imposed in 1712 to 3½d in 1797 then 4d in 1815. From December 1819 it set a minimum price of 7d and further restrictions. At a time when workers earned less than 10 shillings (120d.) a week this made it hard for them to afford radical newspapers, and publishers tried various strategies to evade the tax. Groups would pool their resources in reading societies and subscription societies to purchase a book or journal in common, and frequently read it aloud to one another as was the case with James Wilson
James Wilson (revolutionary)
James Wilson was born on September 3, 1760, in the parish of Avondale in Scotland. He was a weaver from the town of Strathaven in Lanarkshire, but as the Industrial Revolution affected the weaving trade he had to find alternative work....
.
By 1821, Carlile was a declared atheist (having previously been a Deist) and published his Address to Men of Science, in favour of materialism and education. In the same year Jane Carlile was in turn sentenced to two years imprisonment for seditious libel, and her place as publisher was taken by Richard Carlile's sister, Mary. Within six months she was imprisoned for the same offence. The process was repeated with eight of his shop workers, and over 150 men and women were sent to prison for selling The Republican. Carlile's sentence ended in 1823 but he was immediately arrested and returned to prison for not paying his £1,500 fine, so the process continued until he was eventually released on 25 November 1825. In the next edition of The Republican he expressed the hope that his long confinement would result in the freedom to publish radical political ideas.
He then published further journals, The Lion which campaigned against child labour and The Promptor. He argued that "equality between the sexes" should be the objective of all reformers, and in 1826 published Every Woman's Book advocating birth control and the sexual emancipation of women.
The Devil's Chaplain
He joined up with the Revd. Robert TaylorRobert Taylor (Radical)
Reverend Robert Taylor , was an early 19th century Radical, a clergyman turned freethinker whose "Infidel home missionary tour" was a dramatic incident in Charles Darwin's education, subsequently leaving Charles Darwin with a horrifying memory of "the Devil's Chaplain" as a warning of the dangers...
and set out on an "infidel home missionary tour" which reached Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
on Thursday 21 May 1829 and caused a considerable upset to the University of Cambridge where a young Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
was a second year student.
Carlile then opened a ramshackle building on the south bank of the River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
known as The Rotunda, and in widespread public unrest in July 1830 this became a gathering place for republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
s and atheists. Taylor staged infidel melodramas, preaching outrageous sermons which got him dubbed "The Devil's Chaplain". Thousands of copies of these sermons were circulated in a seditious publication, The Devil's Pulpit.
Jailed again
In 1830 he was jailed again for seditious libel, given two and a half years for writing an article in support of agricultural labourers campaigning against wage cuts and advising the strikers to regard themselves as being at war with the government. He left prison deeply in debt, and government fines had taken from him the finances needed to publish newspapers.After living for some years in extreme poverty in Enfield
Enfield Town
Enfield Town is the historic town centre of Enfield, formerly in the county of Middlesex and now in the London Borough of Enfield. It is north north-east of Charing Cross...
, Carlile returned to Fleet Street in 1842, dying there the following year. He donated his body for medical research. Large numbers of people attended his funeral, recognising the importance of his work for a free press.