William Benbow
William Benbow (1787 – 1864) was a
Early life, religion and family
Benbow was born on 5 February 1787 in Middlewich, Cheshire, son of William Benbow, shoemaker, and his wife Hannah (née Chear).
Publishing and political activism
Benbow attended political meetings in London during 1816 as a delegate of one of the Lancashire Hampden Clubs, and became interested in Spenceanism.[5] He was closely involved with planning the attempted Blanketeers protest march by Lancashire weavers in March 1817 [8] and was one of a number of radicals arrested in the wake of this event and the subsequent severe crackdown by the authorities, amidst rumours that mass uprisings were being plotted in industrial centres like Manchester. His protest petition to Parliament in 1818, presented along with a number of others, describes how he was apprehended in Dublin on 16 May 1817, spent eight months on remand in London, then was released without trial, lacking the resources to travel home to Manchester.[6] He established himself as a political radical in London, where he was an associate of William Cobbett and passed his time "agitating the labouring classes at their trades meetings and club-houses"[8] according to the memoirs of the Manchester radical Samuel Bamford, who also spent several months in the Coldbath Fields Prison in London and petitioned Parliament unsuccessfully for redress.
To support himself and his radical activities, Benbow worked as a printer, publisher and bookseller, and also as a
In 1822 Benbow published an edition of
In 1832 he published Crimes of Clergy, a collection of his own articles highly critical of Church of England ministers. The articles had previously been published individually, and one, dated May 1821, gives its place of composition as
The Grand National Holiday
On 28 January 1832 Benbow published a pamphlet entitled Grand National Holiday and Congress of the Productive Classes. He had joined the
Benbow's popularity waned for a time after the passage of the
See also
References
- ^ a b William Benbow, www.spartacus-schoolnet.co.uk. Access date 27 August 2012.
- ^ a b c Carpenter, Niles. William Benbow and the Origin of the General Strike. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , Vol. 35, No. 3 (May, 1921), pp. 491-499. Oxford University Press
- ^ Kent, Gary, 'Tom Paine's Grave-Robber Ends His Days in Sydney', History, Magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society, March 2015, no 123, pp 11-14
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/47096. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ ISBN 0-521-307554.
- ^ a b Prentice, Archibald (1851). Historical sketches and personal recollections of Manchester. London: C. Gilpin.
- ^ "Chartist Prisoners, January 1841". www.chartists.net. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
- ^ a b Bamford, Samuel (1843). Passages in the Life of a Radical.
- ^ Newspapers (2003) www.georgianindex.net. Accessed 27 August 2012.
- S2CID 163634796.
- .
- ^ Fisher, David R. "HOBHOUSE, John Cam (1786-1869)". www.historyofparliamentonline.org. History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
- ^ "Institution of the Working Classes". UCL Bloomsbury Project. University College London. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
- ^ Linton, W. J. James Watson. Manchester: Abel Heywood & Sons.
- OL 23304301M.
- ^ Kent, Gary, 'Tom Paine's Grave-Robber Ends His Days In Sydney', History, Magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society, March 2015, no 123, pp 11-14;
External links
- Grand National Holiday and Congress of the Productive Classes Full text at www.marxists.org.
Further reading
- McCalman, Iain; Mee, Jon (2001). An Oxford companion to the Romantic Age: British culture, 1776-1832. Oxford Companions Series. Oxford University Press. p. 421. ISBN 0-19-924543-6.
- Prothero, I. (1974). "William Benbow and the concept of the "General Strike"". .