Thomas Evans (conspirator)

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Thomas Evans (1763 – by 1831) was a British revolutionary conspirator. Active in the 1790s and the period 1816–1820, he is otherwise a shadowy character, known mainly as a hardline follower of Thomas Spence.[1][2]

Early life

By 1794 Evans was living in London, married to Janet Galloway, also a radical. At this point they were in Soho, supporting themselves by colouring engravings, which included "bawdy prints".[3][4] They were in Frith Street, and provided there a mailing address to some reformers.[5]

In 1796 the couple moved to

James O'Coigly.[7]

In 1798 Evans was secretary of the London Corresponding Society (LCS), with which he had been involved for some years.[6]

First time in prison

London Corresponding Society, Alarm'd (1798), satirical print by James Gillray, with the right-hand figure reading a list of "State Arrests", (O'Connor, Binns, Evans, O'Coigley)

In April 1798 Evans was arrested, in a roundup of the United Englishmen. He was not put on trial, but was in detention for three years.[1] It followed the re-arrest in February of Arthur O'Connor at Margate, seeking passage to France.[8] Questioned after his arrest, Evans admitted removing a box of LCS papers from his house after O'Connor was picked up with John Binns; and his role as a signatory, with Robert Thomas Crossfield of the LCS, of an address by Binns for the LCS to the "Irish Nation", which the government had discovered in Dublin.[9][10]

Evans was held under the

Charles Augustus Bennet.[11] Robert Cutlar Fergusson, a barrister involved in the defense of Binns, O'Coigly and O'Connor in May 1798, in 1799 tried unsuccessfully to argue that a house of correction was unsuitable as a place of custody for Evans, accused of high treason. Evans was being held in the House of Correction for Middlesex, Coldbath Fields Prison, where the governor was Thomas Aris.[12][13]

Sir Francis Burdett met Evans in Coldbath Fields Prison in 1798. Burdett subsequently ran a campaign in parliament against governor Aris, for maltreatment of prisoners, with information provided by Evans, John Bone and a United Irishman, Patrick William Duffin, confined in the prison.[14] Burdett was then barred from the prison, which also housed Edward Despard, in January 1799. By the end of 1800 he had substantially justified his case.[15] There was also an out-of-doors publicity campaign by a radical group including Peter Finnerty, J. S. Jordan, John Horne Tooke and Robert Waithman.[14]

Sir Francis Burdett arriving at Coldbath Fields Prison

1801–1817

Evans was released in March 1801. He was set up in business as a manufacturer by his wife Janet, making steel springs and the leather braces that went with them. She used a legacy she had received after the death of her father in 1799.[3][16]

In the 1802 United Kingdom general election, Burdett made a successful move of seats, standing for Middlesex. Evans associated with his campaign, which was against William Mainwaring.[17] Mainwaring, leader of Middlesex magistracy, had been heavily involved in Tory efforts to blunt his criticism of Aris. Burdett had the backing of the "Wimbledon circle" of radical lawyers around Horne Tooke. [18] Evans made himself useful as a go-between for them and the more extreme radicals, on behalf of Burdett.[17]

In 1803, not long after the execution of Edward Despard, police arrested Arthur Seale, a printer in

Newgate Gaol.[19] From this period, Evans kept a low profile for a decade, meeting the like-minded in taverns.[20]

In 1814 the radical Thomas Spence died, and Evans assumed his mantle, including his championing of

Thomas Malthus and Robert Southey.[1]

Second time in prison

Evans was arrested, suspected of involvement in the planning of the Spa Fields riots of November and December 1816. After habeas corpus was suspended in March 1817, he was held without trial until 1818.[24] He was kept once more Coldbath Fields Prison,[25] and his son was in Horsemonger Lane Gaol.[26]

Later life

Robert Cruikshank, with Henry Hunt shown addressing Spencean admirers (British Museum identification of, left to right, Arthur Thistlewood, John Gale Jones standing, (unknown), presumed Thomas Preston as cobbler, Hunt standing, James Watson, Thomas Jonathan Wooler as an African, a butcher)[27]

On his release, Evans in partnership with

Peterloo meeting at the Crown and Anchor, Strand of September 1819 for the "Westminster Committee of 200" with his son, Richard Carlile also being there.[30]

In the aftermath of the failed

Cato Street conspiracy of 1820, led by Thistlewood and other Spenceans, Evans raised funds for the families of the arrested plotters. Shortly afterwards he moved to Manchester, living with his son.[1]

Relationship with Francis Place

Francis Place was a prominent LCS member of the 1790s, and in the 1820s an effective leader of the artisan radicals. Towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars he became a target for the group around Evans and Thistlewood. Since his accounts of those years came to have high standing, Place's severe criticisms of these opponents have affected the historiography of London radicalism. In relation to a London power struggle in 1816–1817, E. P. Thompson commented in The Making of the English Working Class that "Place is not a disinterested witness"; and that the Spenceans prepared the ground for Robert Owen and his New View of Society.[31]

Place was the jury foreman for the inquest into the Sellis incident involving the Duke of Cumberland. The jury concluded that Joseph Sellis, valet to the Duke, had committed suicide. The verdict was unpopular with the Burdettite radicals.[32] Evans, with John King (Jacob Rey) the moneylender and Duffin, were in a group who attempted blackmail of Place over his part in the outcome.[1][33] Duffin used the pages of the Independent Whig, of which he was co-founder in 1806, to make allegations that Place was in the pay of the government.[33][34]

Burdett's influence prevailed when Place, with Joseph Hume and James Mill, was interested in the educational project of a West London Lancasterian Association, founded on the ideas of Joseph Lancaster, was floated in 1813.[35][36] In 1814, Francis Burdett intervened and imposed on it his associates Evans and Arthur Thistlewood. The sidelined Place then abandoned politics for four years.[37]

Works

  • Christian Policy, the Salvation of the Empire (1816),[38] published by Arthur Seale.[39]
  • Christian Policy In Full Practice (1818), which makes reference to the
    Harmonists of Pennsylvania.[40] These works combined agrarianism with the invocation of the biblical jubilee.[41]

Family

Evans and his wife Janet had a son, Thomas John Evans, born shortly before his father was imprisoned for the first time. He travelled to Paris in 1814, and in February 1820 took over as editor of the Manchester Observer from James Wroe, with backing from Francis Place and his uncle Alexander Galloway.[42][43]

Notes

  1. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/47140. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  2. ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0
    .
  3. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/69661. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-1-84354-322-0
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0
    .
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-7618-1484-1
    .
  7. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/95956. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  8. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20509. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  9. ISBN 0-7618-1484-1
    .
  10. ^ Gunnis, Rupert (1968). Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851 (Revised ed.). pp. 845–846.
  11. ^ "Petition Of Thomas Evans Volume 35: debated on Thursday 27 February 1817". hansard.parliament.uk.
  12. JSTOR 4285072
    .
  13. ^ Bench, Great Britain Court of King's (1802). Term Reports in the Court of King's Bench ... A. Strahan and W. Woodfall. p. 172.
  14. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0
    .
  15. ^ "Burdett, Francis (1770-1844), of Foremark, nr. Repton, Derbys. and Ramsbury, Wilts., History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
  16. ^ Ryder, Thomas (1 April 1978). The Carriage Journal: Vol 15 No 4 Spring 1978. Carriage Assoc. of America. p. 367.
  17. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0
    .
  18. ^ "Middlesex 1790-1820, History of Parliament Online". www.historyofparliamentonline.org.
  19. JSTOR 25601675
    .
  20. ISBN 978-0-7190-4803-6
    .
  21. ISBN 978-1-136-16386-9
    .
  22. ISBN 978-1-317-88547-4
    .
  23. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/63601. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  24. ISBN 978-1-108-47565-5
    .
  25. ISBN 978-1-5267-0256-2
    .
  26. ISBN 978-1-5267-0256-2
    .
  27. ^ "print; satirical print, British Museum". The British Museum.
  28. ISBN 978-1-108-47565-5
    .
  29. ISBN 978-0-7190-4803-6
    .
  30. ISBN 978-1-921862-01-4
    .
  31. ISBN 978-0-14-013603-6
    .
  32. ISBN 978-0-521-08399-7
    .
  33. ^
    ISBN 978-1-80034-533-1
    .
  34. ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0
    .
  35. ISBN 978-0-520-01847-1
    .
  36. ^ Bain, Alexander (1882). James Mill: A Biography. Longmans, Green, and Company. p. 86.
  37. ISBN 978-1-136-16386-9
    .
  38. ^ Evans, Thomas (1816). Christian Policy, the Salvation of the Emprire.
  39. ISBN 978-0-8143-2568-1
    .
  40. ISBN 978-1-135-19139-9
    .
  41. ISBN 978-0-19-924543-7
    .
  42. ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0
    .
  43. ISBN 978-0-8143-2568-1
    .
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