Chartist Ancestors
What did your family to in the revolution?

Millions signed the three great Chartist petitions of 1839 to 1848. Thousands were active in those years in the campaign to win the vote, secret ballots, and other democratic rights that we now take for granted.

Chartist Ancestors lists many of those who risked their freedom, and sometimes their lives, because of their participation in the Chartist cause. The names included on the site are drawn from newspapers, court records and books of the time, from later histories and other sources.

I would like to thank the many historians, researchers and the descendents of those associated with Chartism who have helped with this site since it was launched in 2003.

Mark Crail, Editor

How to...
Make the most of your visit to an archive or records office

Research your trade union ancestors

Find Chartist records in the National Archives

© Mark Crail

Chartist insurrection
London conspirators and the Orange Tree plot of 1848

If, after the reverses of the Kennington Common rally and the off-hand rejection of the third great petition by the House of Commons, Chartism stood defeated in the summer of 1848, then the Chartists were yet to find out about it. Rallies and riots throughout the country continued to demand the Charter – and nowhere more so this time round than in the capital – where troops were once more brought out in June to defend the Bank of England and other public buildings against possible attack.

But behind the scenes, some Chartists now tried to move beyond random acts of protest to develop plans for an insurrection. On 12 June, Peter M'Douall, who had been a delegate at the first Chartist convention and had fled abroad with a price on his head after the general strike of 1842, took the chair at a meeting in the Albion beershop on the Bethnal Green Road where preparations were set in motion for an uprising.

In his book London Chartism 1838-1848, (available from the Chartist Ancestors Bookshop) Dr David Goodway records that even at this early stage the police were kept well informed of developments, by George Davis of Greenwich, who attended meetings throughout the summer as a delegate, and by Thomas Riordain Reading, the Northern Star 's London Irish correspondent. The conspirators never stood a chance, but this they were yet to discover.

Four members of a secret committee – Henshaw, for East London; Pitt, for the West; Honeybold, North London; and Percy, south London – drew up a plan of attack. In his report to the police, Davis claimed that a map of London was produced and a series of possible plans of attack formulated. In one, barricades would have been constructed on the Strand, Ludgate Hill, Cheapside and other City streets from Clerkenwell to the Barbican and Hatton Garden. Theatres and other buildings were to be fired, and pawnbrokers' and gunsmiths' shops ransacked for arms. Across Waterloo Bridge at Kent Road, the police station was to be attached and the artillery's march on London halted and their weapons seized.

Goodway argues that “definite arrangements” were being made for an uprising, probably on the weekend of 16-18 June 1848. But on 14 June the Chartist Executive moved to disband the general committee of 24 individuals overseeing preparations. The Executive, it appears, was well aware of the plans, and had panicked apparently because it became aware of police spies in the midst of the conspiracy. M'Douall himself named Mander, May and Plume.

Though the conspiracy then folded, violent public speeches remained the norm, with M'Douall and his co-conspirator John McCrae (or M'Crae) prominent on the platforms. But with habeas corpus suspended in Ireland, an uprising there reported to be imminent and the police now arresting Chartist leaders in London, meetings of the would-be insurrectionaries resumed.

Plans were hatched to rescue the arrested Ernest Jones and others from police custody as they were moved from Newgate to Coldbath Fields Prison. Goodway says that this second conspiracy was unknown to the Chartist Executive – but not to the police, whose sources were now Davis, and Thomas Powell (alias Johnson) of Cripplegate, neither of whom knew of the other's role.

Between 20 July and 16 August, when the uprising was scheduled to begin, the conspirators met in one form or another on 16 occasions. Fear of police spies, troubling news of the suppression of the Irish revolt, and new tensions between the Chartist and Irish conspirators saw committees come and go. Nevertheless, after making contact with Chartists in Manchester, Loverpool, Leicester, Nottingham, Birmingham and possibly Bradford, the London conspirators agreed that the rising would take place on Wednesday 16 August. The localities were to meet at 8pm and to be ready to move at 9.20pm.

At 6pm on the night of 16 August, 11 men were arrested at the Orange Tree public house. Later, at 9pm, 13 more were held at the Angel in Southwark, and within 20 minutes more a large mob had been dispersed at Seven Dials. For four more days arrests continued and quantities of weapons discovered and seized. Joseph Ritchie, William Lacey, Thomas Fay, William Cuffay, William Dowling, and later George Bridge Mullins were transported to Australia for life. Fifteen others were imprisoned for up to two years. Chartists arrested in 1848.

David Goodway notes that this was the last in a line of revolutionary attempts dating back to the 1790s. He argues that Cuffay, commonly held responsible for the rising, had in fact only become secretary of the “ulterior committee” of organisers three days before the rising. Nor did the Chartist Executive know anything of the conspiracy. The true leaders, he says, were Payne, John Rose, Brewster, James Bassett, and most of all the 22-year-old surgeon's apprentice George Bridge Mullins.

The following table is taken from London Chartism 1838-1848 by David Goodway (Cambridge University Press, first published 1982, first paperback edition 2002), and is reproduced here in line with the publisher's permissions policy.

Find out more about Chartism on this website, or browse the Chartist Ancestors Bookshop.

More history resources

Trade union history: union family trees,
A to z listing of 5,000 UK unions and more

Everything about Chartism and the Chartists

History guides and eyewitness accounts from mytimemachine

Tribune Magazine

More about me