Charles Bradlaugh

The English freethinker and political agitator Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891) successfully struggled to secure the right of nonbelievers to take seats in the House of Commons.

The son of a poor clerk, Charles Bradlaugh was born in London on Sept. 26, 1833. At 15 he abandoned Christianity for atheism. From 1850 to 1853 he was a private in the army in Ireland. Through these years he taught himself languages and law. By the end of the 1850s he had become the most powerful British propagandist for atheism, and in his public lectures he faced with courage and skill hostility and even physical abuse.

Bradlaugh became president of the London Secular Society in 1858. In 1860 he founded the periodical National Reformer, which continued as his vehicle until his death. In 1866 he organized the National Secular Society, which became the largest of such organizations in Britain. Through the 1860s he developed a large and devoted following among London workingmen. He was an early supporter of woman's suffrage, birth control, and republicanism. In 1874 Bradlaugh was joined by Mrs. Annie Besant, who became a vice president of the Secular Society.

Bradlaugh sought election to the House of Commons from Northampton; twice unsuccessful, he finally won in 1880. There then ensued a long controversy over his right to be seated. This dispute centered on the oath of office invoking God that all members were required to take. Bradlaugh offered to take this oath or to substitute an affirmation of allegiance for it. But the House refused him either option.

Over the next five years Bradlaugh was reelected four times but was not allowed to take his seat. Eight separate legal actions proceeded from the controversy. The constitutional issues raised were finally resolved by passage of Bradlaugh's Affirmation Bill in 1888. The House removed the records of his expulsions from its journals just before Bradlaugh's death on Jan. 30, 1891.

Bradlaugh was in no sense a true radical. His atheism and his political convictions were based on 18th-century individualism. He was suspicious of socialism and of government intervention even in hours of work. But he was a dedicated and honorable figure. G. J. Holyoake, his rival for Secularist leadership, called him "the greatest agitator, within the limits of the law, who appeared in my time among the working people."

Further Reading

Bradlaugh published The Autobiography of Mr. Bradlaugh: A Page of His Life in 1873. Anthologies of selections from Bradlaugh's voluminous writings are Humanity's Gain from Unbelief, and Other Selections (1929) and a centennial volume, Champion of Liberty: Charles Bradlaugh (1933). The standard biography is by his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, Charles Bradlaugh (2 vols., 1894). A briefer, lively account is in Warren S. Smith, The London Heretics, 1870-1914 (1967).

Additional Sources

Arnstein, Walter L., The Bradlaugh case: atheism, sex, and politics among the late Victorians, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983, 1965.

Royle, Edward., The Bradlaugh papers: letters, papers and printed items relating to the life of Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891), arranged from the collection assembled by his daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner (1858-1935), and now in the possession of the National Secular Society … : a descriptive index, Wakefield: EP Microform, 1975.

Bradlaugh, Charles (1833-91). Radical, atheist, and republican journalist. Born in London, he rose from solicitor's clerk and part-time secularist lecturer to become one of the most formidable public speakers in Victorian Britain. He owned the National Reformer from 1862, formed the National Secular Society in 1866, and launched theNational Republican League in 1873. Notoriety was achieved with the republication of the ‘Knowlton Pamphlet’ with Annie Besant in 1877. In 1880 he was elected to Parliament for Northampton, but as an avowed atheist was not allowed to take the oath. His attempt to secure entry to the Commons, not successful until 1886, made him the leader of democratic opinion in Britain.

Bradlaugh was an English Spiritualist, freethinker, and political agitator. Bradlaugh was born to a poor clerk in London on September 26, 1833. From 1850 to 1853 he served as an army private in Ireland. At the same time he taught himself languages and law. Becoming a prominent member of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, he was appointed in 1869 to investigate the alleged phenomena of Spiritualism. He served on subcommittee No. 5, which held séances with the celebrated medium Daniel D. Home at which the phenomena were not all satisfactory. Bradlaugh therefore signed a minority report, containing a careful and critical treatment of the evidence. The Report on Spiritualism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, first published in London in 1871 and reissued in 1873, is something of a landmark in the development of enlightened interest in Spiritualism and psychical phenomena, and in standards of evidence.

Bradlaugh's association with the investigation of Spiritualist phenomena is noteworthy because of his reputation as a freethinker and atheist. His atheism and his political convictions were based on eighteenth century individualism. His associate in the cause of Freethought and birth control was Annie Besant, who later became the president of the Theosophical Society.

Born September 26, 1833, Bradlaugh early on became a disciple of Richard Carlile. By 1853 Bradlaugh was a lawyer's clerk and began to lecture and write in the cause of freethought under the name "Iconoclast." From 1860 onward he published the National Reformer, which the government prosecuted for alleged sedition and blasphemy. In 1874 Besant became coeditor of the paper. The Bristol publisher of Bradlaugh's Fruits of Philosophy (concerned with birth control) was prosecuted in 1876 for indecency, and the pamphlet was suppressed. However, Bradlaugh and Besant boldly republished it in the cause of liberty of thought and were both convicted and sentenced, although the indictment was ultimately quashed on a technicality.

From 1885 onward Besant moved away from Bradlaugh and his ideas into socialism and labor agitation and, as a pupil of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, into Theosophy.

Bradlaugh was elected to Parliament as an advanced radical in 1880 but was unseated after refusing to take the Parliamentary oath, because it invoked God. He was successively unseated and reelected, until he eventually took his seat in 1886 because of the passage of Bradlaugh's Affirmation Bill of 1888. Arrogant, dogmatic, but courageous in the cause of freedom of thought and speech, he was a great natural leader in the radical causes of his time. He died January 30, 1891.

Sources:

Autobiography of Mr. Bradlaugh: A Page of His Life. London: Watts, 1873.

Besant, Annie. Charles Bradlaugh: A Character Sketch. Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1941.

Bonner, Hypatia Bradlaugh, and J. M. Robertson. Charles Bradlaugh: His Life and Work. London, 1898.

Chandrasekhar, Sripati. "A Dirty Filthy Book." Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Manvell, Roger. The Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. London: Elek/Pemberton, 1976.

Charles Bradlaugh MP
Member of Parliament for Northampton
In office 1880 – 1891
Preceded by	Charles George Merewether
Succeeded by	Sir Moses Philip Manfield
Born	26 September 1833(1833-09-26) Hoxton
Died	30 January 1891 (aged 57)
Nationality	British
Religion	None

Charles Bradlaugh (26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was a political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the 19th century. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866.^[1]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Activism and journalism 3 Politics 4 Parliament 5 Death 6 Bibliography 7 Citations 8 References 9 External links

Early life

Born in Hoxton (an area in the East End of London), Bradlaugh was the son of a solicitor's clerk. He left school at the age of eleven and then worked as an office errand-boy and later as a clerk to a coal merchant. After a brief spell as a Sunday school teacher, he became disturbed by discrepancies between the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church and the Bible. When he expressed his concerns, the local vicar, John Graham Packer, accused him of atheism and suspended him from teaching. He was thrown out of the family home and was taken in by Elizabeth Sharples Carlile, the widow of Richard Carlile, who had been imprisoned for printing Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. Soon Bradlaugh was introduced to George Holyoake, who organized Bradlaugh's first public lecture as an atheist. At the age of 17, he published his first pamphlet, A Few Words on the Christian Creed. However, refusing financial support from fellow freethinkers, he enlisted as a soldier with the Seventh Dragoon Guards hoping to serve in India and make his fortune. Instead he was stationed in Dublin. He resigned from the army in 1853.

Activism and journalism

By this time a convinced freethinker, Bradlaugh returned to London in 1853, and became a pamphleteer and writer about "secularist" ideas under the pseudonym "Iconoclast". He gradually attained prominence in a number of liberal or radical political groups or societies, including the Reform League, Land Law Reformers, and Secularists. He was President of the London Secular Society from 1858. In 1860 he became editor of the secularist newspaper, the National Reformer, and in 1866 co-founded the National Secular Society, in which Annie Besant became his close associate. In 1868, the Reformer was prosecuted by the British Government for blasphemy and sedition. Bradlaugh was eventually acquitted on all charges, but fierce controversy continued both in the courts and in the press. A decade later (1876), Bradlaugh and Besant decided to republish the American Charles Knowlton's pamphlet advocating birth control, The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People, whose previous British publisher had already been successfully prosecuted for obscenity. The two activists were both tried in 1877, and Charles Darwin refused to give evidence in their defence. They were sentenced to heavy fines and six months' imprisonment, but their conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal on a legal technicality.

Politics

Bradlaugh was an advocate of trade unionism, republicanism, and women's suffrage, and he opposed socialism. His anti-socialism was divisive, and many secularists who became socialists left the secularist movement because of its identification with Bradlaugh's liberal individualism. He was a supporter of Irish Home Rule, and backed France during the Franco-Prussian War. He took a strong interest in India.

Parliament

Caricature from Punch, 1881 -- "Mr. Bradlaugh, M.P., The Northampton Cherub"

In 1880 Bradlaugh was elected Member of Parliament for Northampton, and claimed the right to affirm (instead of taking the religious Oath of Allegiance), but this was denied. Lord Randolph Churchill roused the Conservatives by leading resistance to Bradlaugh.

Bradlaugh subsequently offered to take the oath "as a matter of form". This offer, too, was rejected by the House. Because a Member must take the oath before being allowed to take their seat, he effectively forfeited his seat in Parliament. He attempted to take his seat regardless and was arrested and briefly imprisoned in the Clock Tower of the Houses of Parliament. His seat fell vacant and a by-election was declared. Bradlaugh was re-elected by Northampton four times in succession as the dispute continued. Supporting Bradlaugh were William Gladstone, T.P. O'Connor and George Bernard Shaw as well as hundreds of thousands of people who signed a public petition. Opposing his right to sit were the Conservative Party, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other leading figures in the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church.

On at least one occasion, Bradlaugh was escorted from the House by police officers. In 1883 he took his seat and voted three times before being fined £1,500 for voting illegally. A bill allowing him to affirm was defeated in Parliament.

In 1886 Bradlaugh was finally allowed to take the oath, and did so at the risk of prosecution under the Parliamentary Oaths Act. Two years later, in 1888, he secured passage of a new Oaths Act, which enshrined into law the right of affirmation for members of both Houses, as well as extending and clarifying the law as it related to witnesses in civil and criminal trials (the Evidence Amendment Acts of 1869 and 1870 had proved unsatisfactory, though they had given relief to many who would otherwise have been disadvantaged).

Death

Bradlaugh's statue, Abington Square, Northampton UK, on his birthday 2004

Bradlaugh's funeral was attended by 3,000 mourners, including Mohandas Gandhi. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery. ^[2] A statue to Bradlaugh is located on a traffic island at Abington Square, Northampton. Remembered annually on his birthday, for the rest of the year the statue points west towards the centre of Northampton, the accusing finger periodically missing. Various local landmarks are named after Bradlaugh, including Bradlaugh Fields ^[3] nature reserves, The Charles Bradlaugh pub, and Charles Bradlaugh Hall at the University of Northampton.

Bibliography

• Who Was Jesus Christ, and What Did He Teach? (1860)
• A Plea for Atheism (1864)
• A Few Words About the Devil (1864)
• Humanity's Gain from Unbelief (1889)
• The credibility and morality of the four Gospels (1860)
• The impeachment of the House of Brunswick (1875)
• The Freethinker's Text-Book (1876)
• Man, Whence and How?
• Religion, What and Why?
• Debates
• The Roberts-Bradlaugh Debate
• Labor and law (London : R. Forder, 1891)
• Political essays (London : Freethought Pub. Co., 1891)
• Biographies of ancient and modern celebrated freethinkers. Gutenberg Project text version (1877)

Citations

1. ^ "Charles Bradlaugh (1833 - 1891): Founder". National Secular Society. http://www.secularism.org.uk/charlesbradlaugh.html. Retrieved 2008-03-22. 
2. ^ "Charles Bradlaugh". Necropolis Notables. The Brookwood Cemetery Society. http://www.tbcs.org.uk/charles_bradlaugh.htm. Retrieved 2007-02-23. 
3. ^ http://www.bradlaughfields.org.uk/

References

• Arnstein, Walter L. (1965) The Bradlaugh Case: a study in late Victorian opinion and politics. Oxford University Press. (2nd ed. with new postscript chapter published as The Bradlaugh Case: Atheism, Sex and Politics Among the Late Victorians, University of Missouri Press, 1983. ISBN 0-8262-0425-2)
• Bradlaugh Bonner, Hypatia (1908). Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work by his daughter. London, T. Fisher Unwin.
• Champion of Liberty: Charles Bradlaugh (Centenary Volume) (1933). London, Watts & Co and Pioneer Press.
• Diamond, M. (2003) Victorian Sensation, London, Anthem Press. ISBN 1-84331-150-X, pp.101–110.
• Manvell, Roger (1976). Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh. London: Elek/Pemberton.
• Robertson, J.M. (1920). Charles Bradlaugh. London, Watts & Co.
• Tribe, David (1971) President Charles Bradlaugh MP. London, Elek. ISBN 0-236-17726-5

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charles Bradlaugh

• NSS Founder, Charles Bradlaugh
• Charles Bradlaugh writings (Bank of Wisdom)
• Detailed account in page on police in Parliament by Robin Fell
• Browse and search the catalogue of the Charles Bradlaugh Collection and Bradlaugh Papers archive, held at the Bishopsgate Institute, London.
• Charles Bradlaugh Collection, Northamptonshire Central Library, Northampton
• Hackney Plaques and Social History: birthplace of Charles Bradlaugh

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Pickering Phipps Charles George Merewether	Member of Parliament for Northampton 1880 – 1891 With: Henry Labouchère	Succeeded by Henry Labouchère Moses Manfield

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