Doubleday[1] was a politician and author, born in Newcastle upon Tyne in February 1790, the son of George Doubleday, a manufacturer of soap, tallow, and sulphuric acid, and his wife, Mary, née Fawcett. His political activities during the 1830s are his greatest claim to fame: although a poor orator, he was a competent organiser of political agitation with a considerable gift for propaganda.
Under the early influence of William Cobbett, Doubleday became a leading figure in the Northern Political Union throughout the struggle for parliamentary reform in the early 1830s. After the enactment of parliamentary reform in 1832, he believed that the Whigs betrayed the people. He thought the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act to be ‘a scheme, the most atrocious, probably, ever entertained by any legislators calling themselves civilised’[2]. After the Municipal Reform Act of 1835 he entered the reformed Newcastle council, but opposed the creation of an ‘Austrian-like’ borough police[3] in a town ‘remarkable for its good behaviour’[4]. Newcastle police had recorded 1327 cases of ‘disorderly conduct’ in 1835.
Doubleday was an enthusiastic Chartist in the early Victorian years, taking a leading part in the Northern Liberator during that sprightly Chartist newspaper’s short life. As an elected councillor from 1835 to 1840, he defended Chartists from criticism in the reformed Newcastle town council. Although by 1856 he claimed to have lost ‘the feelings of a partisan of any line of policy’[5], his hostility to the Whigs persisted. In 1864, he appealed to fellow radicals to vote Conservative, noting that ‘If ruled by Tories, we should at all events be ruled by gentlemen’[6]. He supported the Northern Reform Union and the Reform League, but like Cobbett, his liberalism had its limits; in 1847 he denounced ‘the Jew or moneyed interest’[7], and when The Times supported Whig foreign policy in 1861 he castigated it in a pamphlet as ‘that Jew-organ’ (The French Alliance: its Origins and Authors)
Doubleday’s political activities were complemented by varied intellectual interests. His first published work (1818) comprised sixty-five sonnets, and was followed by the undistinguished verse dramas The Italian Wife (1823), Babington (1825), Diocletian (1829), and Caius Marius (1836). Such lines as ‘How poor a stay has she who leans upon thy bosom for support’ (from The Italian Wife) might well fail to achieve the desired effect on contemporary audiences. Like the sculptor John Graham Lough, Doubleday’s creative talents aroused an enthusiasm in his own region that was not shared by a wider public, although his novel The Eve of St Mark: a Romance of Venice (1857) shows some merit. A keen angler, he co-operated with his friend Robert Roxby in writing, collecting, and publishing fishing songs (for example, The Coquetdale Fishing Songs, 1852). He wrote widely on political economy and similar subjects, and published a philosophical treatise On Mundane and Moral Government (1852). He was also much concerned with the nature and proper administration of the money supply, notably in A Financial, Monetary and Statistical History of England from the Revolution of 1688 to the Present Time (1847). His Political Life of Sir Robert Peel (2 volumes, 1856) is a substantial work in which W. L. Burn rightly discerned in 1956 ‘considerable judgment and discernment’[8]. He wrote extensively on diverse topics for both local and national newspapers and reviews.
The collapse of the family business in the early 1840s was largely caused by Doubleday’s absorption in political and literary activities. Other factors included a disastrous fire in 1841, speculation in lead-mining shares, and extravagant expenditure by his business partner Anthony Easterby. Doubleday’s personal popularity was never in doubt, and after this catastrophe even political enemies helped to ensure that he retained enough income to live in modest comfort. He was given the post of registrar of births, marriages, and deaths for St Andrew’s parish, Newcastle, and subsequently served as salaried secretary of the Tyneside coal owners’ organisation. In late 1870, his health failed, and he died at his home, Gosforth Villas, Bulman village, Gosforth, on 18th December. Although the evidence is incomplete, it appears probable that Doubleday had married twice; his second wife, Mary, survived him for only a few months, dying on 4th March 1871. He had three sons, all probably from his first marriage and probably three daughters by his second marriage. He was buried at Gosforth parish churchyard. His funeral attracted much public attention and there were laudatory obituaries[9].
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[1] W. L. Burn ‘Newcastle upon Tyne in the early nineteenth century’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, volume 34 (1956), pages 1–13, Lawson’s Tyneside celebrities, 1873, page 279, Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 19th December 1870, Newcastle Daily Journal, 19th December 1870, T. Nossiter Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the north east, 1832–1874, 1975, R. S. Watson The history of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1793–1896, 1897, R. Welford Men of mark ‘twixt Tyne and Tweed, volume 2, 1895, pages 109–19. Archives: Newcastle Central Library; National Library of Scotland: letters to Blackwoods
[2] A Financial, Monetary and Statistical History of England from the Revolution of 1688 to the Present Time, 1847, page 313.
[3] Newcastle watch committee minutes, 5th May 1836.
[4] Newcastle watch committee minutes, 4th March 1837.
[5] T. Doubleday The Political Life of Sir Robert Peel, volume 1, 1856, page iii
[6] Crimes of the Whigs, or, A Radical’s Reasons for Supporting the Tory Party at the Next General Election, 1864.
[7] A Financial, Monetary and Statistical History of England, 1847, page 305.
[8] W. L. Burn ‘Newcastle upon Tyne in the early nineteenth century’, Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series, volume 34, (1956), page 7n.
[9] Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 19th December 1870, Newcastle Daily Journal, 19th December 1870.
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Chartist Lives: Allen Davenport
Davenport[1] was born on 1st May 1775 in Ewen, Gloucestershire. One of a hand-loom weaver’s ten children, he was entirely self-educated. At nineteen, he enlisted in the Windsor foresters, a light cavalry regiment, with which he served mainly in Scotland. After being discharged in 1801, he spent four years working in Cirencester as a shoemaker (a trade he had learned in the army) before moving to London. Here he spent the remainder of his life, married his wife, Mary, a shoebinder, in 1806, and around the same time fell under the influence of the radical land reformer Thomas Spence.
Davenport was a women’s shoemaker and a member of the union executive of the ‘women’s men’. In 1813, the union was ruined by a strike, which Davenport opposed, and from this stemmed his lasting scepticism about trade unionism. He concentrated instead upon politics and journalism, mainly for Richard Carlile’s The Republican but also independently. His first two publications in his own right were poems: Kings, or, Legitimacy Unmasked (1819), a spirited republican drama, and Claremont (1820?), a contribution to the Queen Caroline affair. Like many Spenceans, he was actively prepared for revolution, and in 1819 followed Wedderburn in forming a Spencean splinter group in Soho. Not surprisingly, he later chose to obscure his activities at this time.
From 1822 to 1828, Davenport left shoemaking to become a watchman at Tollington Park (Holloway), Middlesex. Here he concentrated upon his poetry (a collection, The Muse’s Wreath, appeared in 1827) and, more notably, political journalism. His return to shoemaking coincided with the rise of Owen’s influence among the London trades, and Davenport became an enthusiastic socialist and lecturer to Owenite and adult education groups throughout the capital. More than anyone he was responsible for the revival of interest in Spence (of whom he published a biography in 1836), and he extended the case for public ownership to include not only land but machinery as well. He also advocated birth control and women’s rights.
Davenport’s wife died in 1816, and Mary Ann, their only known child, around 1824. Dogged by ill health and deteriorating eyesight, he none the less threw himself into the Chartist movement. He was the founding president of the East London Democratic Association, mentor of the young George Julian Harney, and a supporter of the Chartist land plan. During Chartism’s doldrum years after 1842 Davenport concentrated on secularism, educational causes, and writing, sustained by public subscriptions organised by Harney and G. J. Holyoake. His poem English Institutions (1842) extolled adult education, which was also the main theme of his 1845 autobiography. The Origin of Man and the Progress of Society (1846) drew together his popular lecture series tracing the development of private property. Davenport died at Goswell Road, Finsbury, London on 30th November 1846, and was buried in an unconsecrated common grave in Kensal Green cemetery. The graveside oration was delivered by the freethinker W. D. Saull. ‘Had he been less poor he would have been more famous’ wrote Holyoake in an obituary[2]. However, it was as an educator and agrarian polemicist, rather than as a political leader, that Davenport influenced English radicalism.
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[1] Sources: The life and literary pursuits of Allen Davenport…written by himself, ed. M. Chase, 1994, M. Chase The people’s farm: English radical agrarianism, 1775–1840, OUP, 1988, A. Janowitz Lyric and labour in the Romantic tradition, 1998, I. J. Prothero Artisans and politics in early nineteenth-century London: John Gast and his times, 1979, Northern Star, 5th December 1846 and Utilitarian Record, January 1847.
[2] G. J. Holyoake The Reasoner, 29th January 1847, page 18.
Davenport was a women’s shoemaker and a member of the union executive of the ‘women’s men’. In 1813, the union was ruined by a strike, which Davenport opposed, and from this stemmed his lasting scepticism about trade unionism. He concentrated instead upon politics and journalism, mainly for Richard Carlile’s The Republican but also independently. His first two publications in his own right were poems: Kings, or, Legitimacy Unmasked (1819), a spirited republican drama, and Claremont (1820?), a contribution to the Queen Caroline affair. Like many Spenceans, he was actively prepared for revolution, and in 1819 followed Wedderburn in forming a Spencean splinter group in Soho. Not surprisingly, he later chose to obscure his activities at this time.
From 1822 to 1828, Davenport left shoemaking to become a watchman at Tollington Park (Holloway), Middlesex. Here he concentrated upon his poetry (a collection, The Muse’s Wreath, appeared in 1827) and, more notably, political journalism. His return to shoemaking coincided with the rise of Owen’s influence among the London trades, and Davenport became an enthusiastic socialist and lecturer to Owenite and adult education groups throughout the capital. More than anyone he was responsible for the revival of interest in Spence (of whom he published a biography in 1836), and he extended the case for public ownership to include not only land but machinery as well. He also advocated birth control and women’s rights.
Davenport’s wife died in 1816, and Mary Ann, their only known child, around 1824. Dogged by ill health and deteriorating eyesight, he none the less threw himself into the Chartist movement. He was the founding president of the East London Democratic Association, mentor of the young George Julian Harney, and a supporter of the Chartist land plan. During Chartism’s doldrum years after 1842 Davenport concentrated on secularism, educational causes, and writing, sustained by public subscriptions organised by Harney and G. J. Holyoake. His poem English Institutions (1842) extolled adult education, which was also the main theme of his 1845 autobiography. The Origin of Man and the Progress of Society (1846) drew together his popular lecture series tracing the development of private property. Davenport died at Goswell Road, Finsbury, London on 30th November 1846, and was buried in an unconsecrated common grave in Kensal Green cemetery. The graveside oration was delivered by the freethinker W. D. Saull. ‘Had he been less poor he would have been more famous’ wrote Holyoake in an obituary[2]. However, it was as an educator and agrarian polemicist, rather than as a political leader, that Davenport influenced English radicalism.
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[1] Sources: The life and literary pursuits of Allen Davenport…written by himself, ed. M. Chase, 1994, M. Chase The people’s farm: English radical agrarianism, 1775–1840, OUP, 1988, A. Janowitz Lyric and labour in the Romantic tradition, 1998, I. J. Prothero Artisans and politics in early nineteenth-century London: John Gast and his times, 1979, Northern Star, 5th December 1846 and Utilitarian Record, January 1847.
[2] G. J. Holyoake The Reasoner, 29th January 1847, page 18.
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