John Cartwright, the son of a large landowner from Marnham, Nottingham,
was born on 28th September 1740. His brother, Edmund
Cartwright, was the inventor of the steam
loom. After education in a private school, Cartwright joined the
navy. It was while in the navy that Cartwright developed his radical
political opinions. After supporting the American colonists against
the British government, Cartwright was forced to abandon his promising
career as a naval officer.
After leaving the navy Cartwright wrote and published Take
Your Choice (1776). The book argued the case for parliamentary
reform including: manhood suffrage, the secret ballot, annual elections
and equal electoral districts. The book created a great deal of interest
and as a result Cartwright formed the Society for Constitutional Information.
In 1805 John Cartwright left his large estate in Lincolnshire and
moved to London. Cartwright made friends with other leading radicals
living in London including Sir Francis Burdett,
William Cobbett and Francis
Place. In 1812 Cartwright decided to form the first Hampden
Club. He then toured the country encouraging other parliamentary
reformers to follow his example. Cartwright main objective was to
unite middle class moderates with radical members of the working class.
This worried the authorities and this led to Cartwright's arrest in
Huddersfield in 1813.
One of the men Cartwright recruited was John
Knight, who founded the first Hampden
Club in Lancashire. In 1818 John Knight became co-ordinator of
Lancashire's Hampden Clubs and was afterwards known as the 'Cartwright
of the North'. It was Knight's idea to ask Major John Cartwright to
speak at the St. Peter's Field meeting on
16th August, 1819. Cartwright, who was seventy-nine at the time, was
unable to attend and missed the Peterloo
Massacre. However, as a result of speaking at a parliamentary
reform meeting in Birmingham, Cartwright was arrested, convicted and
fined £100.
Cartwright spent the last few years of his life writing a 446 page
book called The English Constitution.
The book outlined his ideas on the English constitution. This included
government by the people and legal equality. Cartwright argued that
this could only be achieved by universal suffrage, the secret ballot
and equal electoral districts. Major John Cartwright died on 23rd
September 1824.
(1) Samuel
Bamford met Major Cartwright in 1815. He described the meeting
in his book Passages in the Life of a Radical.
Major Cartwright
was I suppose about seventy; rather above the common stature, straight
for his age; thin, pale, and with an expression of countenance in
which firmness and benignity were most predominant. I saw him walking
up the room, in his long brown surtout and plain brown wig,
and seating himself placidly in the head seat. A mild smile played
on his features, as a simultaneous cheer burst from the meeting.
(2)
In his book Personal Recollections of Manchester, Archibald
Prentice described how some of the leaders of the Hampden Clubs
were arrested by Joseph Nadin and sent to be tried in London.
Among the persons taken into custody, under the suspension of the
habeas corpus act, was the weaver poet, Samuel Bamford, who was apprehended
and handcuffed at Middleton, by Nadin, the deputy-constable of Manchester,
and six or eight police officers, all of whom were well armed with
staves, pistols and blunderbusses.
On Sunday, the 30th of March, 1817, Samuel Bamford, along with Dr.
Healey, Joseph Sellers, Nathan Hulton, John Roberts, Edward Ridings
and Edward O'Connor were sent off to London, heavily ironed by the
legs. Nadin wished to add body and neck collars, and armlets with
chains, but the king's messengers objected to their use.
On Tuesday they were conveyed to the secretary of state's office,
at Whitehall, where they were received by Sir Samuel Shepherd, the
attorney general, Lord Sidmouth and Lord Castlereagh - the secret
tribunal, which, under the suspension of the habeas corpus act, superseded
judge and jury.
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