Richard
Carlile, the son of a shoemaker
from Ashburton in Devon, was born on 9th December, 1790. Richard's
father abandoned the family in 1794 and it was a struggle for his
mother to look after her three children from the profits of the small
shop that she ran in Ashburton. Richard received six years free education
from the local Church of England school
and learnt to read and write. At the age of twelve Richard left school
and was apprenticed as a tinplateman in Plymouth.
In 1813 Richard married a local woman and soon
afterwards the couple moved to London.
Over the next few years Jane Carlile gave birth to five children,
three of whom survived. Richard found work as a tinsmith but in the
winter of 1816, Carlile had his hours reduced by his employer. Short-time
work created serious economic problems for the Carlile family. For
the first time in his life, Carlile began attending political meetings.
At these meetings Carlile heard speakers like Henry
Hunt complain bitterly about a parliamentary system that only
allowed three men in every hundred to vote.
Carlile found the arguments for reform convincing and began to wonder
why it had taken him so long to realize that the system was unfair.
As a young boy living in Ashburton, Carlile remembered taking part
in ceremonies where an effigy of Tom Paine
was burnt at the stake. Carlile, like the rest of the people
living in his village had believed the local vicar when he told them
that Paine was an evil man for suggesting the need for parliamentary
reform.
Carlile decided to try and earn a living by selling the writings of
parliamentary reformers such as Tom
Paine on the streets of London. Later Carlile was to comment
that he often walked "thirty miles for a profit of eighteen pence".
In 1817 Carlile decided to rent a shop in Fleet Street and become
a publisher. Instead of publishing works such as Paine's The
Rights of Man and the Principles
of Government in book form, Carlile divided them into sections
and then sold them as small pamphlets.
Carlile also began publishing a radical newspaper called The
Republican. As well as reporting political meetings,
The Republican
also included extracts from books and poems by supporters of the reform
movement such as Percy Bysshe
Shelley and Lord
Byron. Carlile's newspaper was very popular and it was
not long before he was making £50 a week profit from his publishing
venture.
On 16th
August 1819, Richard Carlile was asked to join Henry
Hunt as one on the main speakers at a meeting on parliamentary
reform at St. Peter's Fields in Manchester.
The local magistrates ordered the yeomanry (part-time cavalry) to
break up the meeting. Just as Hunt was about to speak, the yeomanry
charged the crowd and in the process killed eleven people. Afterwards,
this event became known as the Peterloo Massacre.
In the next edition of The Republican
Carlile wrote an article on the Peterloo
Massacre. Carlile not only described how the military had charged
the crowd but also criticised the government for its role in the incident.
Under the seditious libel laws, it was
offence to publish material that might encourage people to hate the
government. The authorities also disapproved of Carlile publishing
Tom Paine's Age
of Reason, a book that was extremely critical of the Church
of England.
In October 1819, Carlile was found guilty of
blasphemy and seditious libel and was sentenced to three years in
Dorchester Gaol. Carlile was also fined £1,500 and when he refused
to pay, his Fleet Street offices were raided and his stock was confiscated.
Carlile was determined not to be silenced. While he was in prison
he continued to write material for The
Republican, which was now being published by his wife. Due
to the publicity created by Carlile's trial, the circulation of The
Republican increased dramatically and was now outselling pro-government
newspapers such as The Times.
In December 1819 the government took further action by imposing a
4d. tax on cheap newspapers and stipulating that they could not be
sold for less than 7d. As most working people were earning less than
10 shillings a week, this severely reduced the number of people who
could afford to buy radical newspapers.
The government also continued it policy of prosecuting those involved
in publishing radical newspapers. In 1821 Jane
Carlile was sentenced to two years imprisonment for seditious libel.
Jane was replaced by Richard Carlile's sister, Mary Carlile, but within
six months she was also in prison for the same offence. During the
next few months, over 150 men and women were sent to prison for selling
The Republican.
When Richard Carlile was released from prison
in November 1825 he returned to publishing newspapers. Carlile was
now a strong supporter of women's rights. He argued that "equality
between the sexes" should be the objective of all reformers.
Carlile wrote articles in his newspapers suggesting that women should
have the right to vote and be elected to Parliament. In 1826 he also
published Every Woman's Book,
a book that advocated birth control and the sexual emancipation of
women.
Carlile also became involved in the campaign
against child labour. In 1827 Carlile was
given a copy of manuscript written by John Brown, a radical
journalist from Bolton. Brown's manuscript was based on an interview
with a former parish apprentice called Robert
Blincoe. Carlile published Robert
Blincoe's Memoir in his newspaper,
The Lion. Robert Blincoe's
story appeared in five weekly episodes from 25th January to 22nd February,
1828.
In 1830 Carlile was back in prison for writing an article in support
of agricultural labourers campaigning against wage cuts. When Carlile
left prison two and a half years later, he was deeply in debt. Government
fines had taken its toll and Carlile no longer had the financial resources
to successfully publish newspapers. For the next few years Richard
Carlile lived in extreme poverty but when he died in 1843, a large
number of people attended his funeral in recognition of the important
role he had played in achieving a free press.
Child
Labour Debate Activity (International School of Toulouse)
Child
Labour Simulation (Spartacus Educational)
(1)
Richard Carlile, who was one of the speakers at St. Peter's Field,
wrote an account of what he witnessed in Sherwin's Weekly Political
Register (18th August, 1819)
The meeting was one of the most calm and orderly that I have ever
witnessed. No less than 300,000 people were assembled. Mr. Hunt started
his speech when a cart was moved through the middle of the field to
the great annoyance and danger of the assembled people, who quietly
endeavoured to make way for its procedure. The cart had no sooner
made its way through, when the Yeomanry Cavalry made their appearance
from the same quarter as the cart had gone out. They galloped furiously
round the field, going over every person who could not get out of
their way.
The Yeomanry Cavalry made their charge with a most infuriate frenzy;
they cut down men, women and children, indiscriminately, and appeared
to have commenced a pre-meditated attack with the most insatiable
thirst for blood and destruction. They merit a medallion, on one side
of which should be inscribed 'The Slaughter Men of Manchester', and
a reverse bearing a description of their slaughter of defenceless
men, women and children, unprovoked and unnecessary. As a proof of
meditated murder of the part of the magistrates, every stone was gathered
from the ground on the Friday and Saturday previous to the meeting,
by scavengers sent there by the express command of the magistrates,
that the populace might be rendered more defenceless. The meeting
was one of the most calm and orderly that I have ever witnessed. No
less than 300,000 people were assembled. The Yeomanry Cavalry made
their charge. They cut down men, women and children, and appeared
to attack with a thirst for blood.
(2)
Richard Carlile, The Republican
(27th August, 1819)
The
massacre of the unoffending inhabitants of Manchester, on the 16th
of August, by the Yeomanry Cavalry and Police at the instigation of
the Magistrates, should be the daily theme of the Press until the
murderers are brought to justice.
Captain Nadin and his banditti of Police, are hourly engaged to plunder
and ill-use the peaceable inhabitants; whilst every appeal from those
repeated assaults to the Magistrates for redress, is treated by them
with derision and insult.
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.
(3)
In 1822 Susannah Wright was imprisoned for selling Richard Carlile's
The Republican. During the trial
she made the following comments.
As the blood of the Christian Martyrs become the seed of the Christian
Church, so shall our sufferings become the seed of free discussion,
and in those very sufferings we will triumph over you.
(4)
Richard Carlile wrote an introduction to John Brown's Robert Blicoe's
Memoir when it first appeared in The Lion newspaper on
25th January, 1828.
John Brown is now dead; he fell, about two or three years ago, by
his own hand. He united, with a strong feeling for the injuries and
sufferings of others. Hence his suicide. Had he not possessed a fine
fellow-feeling with the child of misfortune, he would never have taken
such pains to compile the Memoir of Robert Blincoe, and to
collect all the wrongs on paper, on which he could gain information,
about the various sufferers under the cotton-mill systems.
The employment of children is bad for children - first, as their health
- and second, as to their manners. The time should be devoted to a
better education. The employment of infant children on the cotton-mills
furnishes a bad means to dissolute parents, to live in idleness and
all sorts of vice.
(5)
In 1835 Joseph Swann was sentenced to four and a half years for selling
The Poor Man's Guardian. During the
trial he explained his actions.
I
have been unemployed for some time, neither can I obtain work, my
family are starving. And for another reason, the most important of
all, I sell them for the good of my countrymen.
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