Testaments Of Radicalism Of Working Class Politicians, 1790-1825. Edited with an introduction by David Vincent. Europa Publications, £7. 

David Vincent in his introduction refers to the quite unprecedented circulation in the 1790s of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. Its dangerous truth; in explaining the corrupt state of the British government, provoked a response from the political and religious establishment, that, when it could not denigrate and twist the activities of the radicals, threw a blanket of silence over them. Only in recent years is Paine emerging again into the sun. 

After the turbulent 1790s, access to and the use of the means of publication (writes Vincent) became a central component of class struggle – a cannon thread in virtually every campaign was the hostility to the treatment the working class received from the contemporary press. 

This book presents five autobiographies of working class politicians, spanning the period from the crisis over the American Colonies to the threshold of workers discovering Marxism. They told it like it was, and so the memoirs for invaluable correctives to bourgeois histories. Because their stories were feared by the ruling class, the authors have not yet become household names. 

They are Thomas Hardy, Piccadilly shoemaker (not the author) and founder of the London Corresponding Society; James Watson, compositor, freethinker, Owenite and Chartist; Thomas Dunning, another shoemaker, trade unionist and Chartist from Nantwich; John James Bezer, Spitalfields Chartist; and Benjamin whose career bridged half a century of political activity and co-operative work in Halifax.

Fascinating as they are in their varied styles and different periods, all that they deal with, the memoirs are only fragments of our history. They are especially useful, though, in understanding the roots, from which the labour movement developed. In addition to the events they recount, It is the flavor that the five authors give that helps us to understand the struggles of our political forefathers. The least imaginative of us is immediately put in their shoes. 

!n Hardy’s autobiography we can understand the appropriateness of his handy language: he writes of the intrepid martyrs of freedom, “that patriotic band broke the ruffin are of arbitrary power, and dyed the field and the scaffold with their pure red precious blood, for the liberties of their country.” Hardy’s home was raided at 6:30 one morning in 1794, he was thrown into the Tower of London, and his wife died in pregnancy soon after; his treason trial lasted nine days “by the unanimous voice of as respectable a jury as ever was ever empanelled he was found not guilty.

James Watson in the 1830s was imprisoned in Dorchester and Clerkenwell prisons for selling radical end freethought literature. He summarises his memoirs as having one object alone – “to Show our fellow workmen that the humblest amongst them may render effectual aid to the cause of progress if he brings to tho task honest determination and unfaltering perseverance.” 

Thanes Dunning includes an account of organising the defence of two men arrested for Trades Union activity. One was quite illiterate and the other “A light minded, dancing, public house man” – a brace, as Dunning tells us, of very awkward clients. Like thousands after them, Dunning and the comrades rally round; the case was no landmark in trade union history, but the style of operating – reading as an exciting adventure, yet with high and serious stakes – is almost classical In showing that the pioneers knew how to organise. 

In racey style, J.J. Bezer describes his youth and the grinding poverty he suffered in London. At Clerkenwell Green he first learns of Chartism, and hungry in a land of plenty, for the first time seriously enquires “WHY, WHY – a dangerous question…isn’t (sic) it, for a poor man to ask.” There Bezer’s story abruptly ends, since the Christian Socialist, which was serialising It, ceased publishing in December 1851. 

Benjamin Wilson’s The Struggles of an Old Chartist is dry by comparison. Published In Halifax in 1887 it recounts many events of Chartism from the Peterloo massacre of 1319 to the general election of 1886. 

Testaments of Radicalism includes a few Illustrations and is competently indexed.

The post BOOK REVIEW: Testaments Of Radicalism Of Working Class Politicians appeared first on .

RICHARD GIMBEL WAS A BRAVE MAN. He was a Colonel in the United States Army Air Force, so you would expect that. But he had another kind of bravery, too moral, which he particularly showed in the United States during the “Cold War.” 1959 was the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Paine’s death, and Richard Gimbel wrote an incisive assessment of Paine, The Resurgence of Thomas Paine The culmination of his examples of the mounting public appreciation of Paine against generations of bigotry was a proclamation of Paine’s plan of disarmament from Part 2 of Rights of Man. 

Gimbel pointed out that with other of his works, Rights of Man had just been translated into Russian in the USSR, and he conjectured, “Do you suppose that Khrushchev, before he presented his plan of disarmament to the United Nations last month, had read Paine’s plan? I think there has been a resurgence of Thomas Paine.” “Peace” was still a dirty word in 1959 USA “Paine” was far from being 100% clean either for someone like Gimbel, connected with the rich Gimbel Stores family, this was outspoken bravery. It has something of Paine’s character to it.. Gimbel in the same essay said that Paine “did not hesitate a moment to rush in to promote every good cause and to expose every injustice, and he ended up being generally despised with virtually everyone his enemy for one reason or another.’ “But people with principles are not motivated by the hope of flattery or public acclaim. Unlike Paine; Gimbel was no innovator. He was an historian this century’s most knowledgeable expert on Paine, but Paine’s principles have a habit of rubbing off on those who study him. Look how they converted William Cobbett from slinging the vilest mud at Paine to wanting to erect a grand monument to him. 

Now Richard Gimbel, who devoted so many years to researching Paine, has died suddenly in West Germany. My father, Adrian Brunel, first knew him in 1951, during preparations. for Thetford’s Festival of Britain commemorations of Paine, and, though separated by the Atlantic they became firm friends. After my father’s death in 1958, Richard and I became good friends, too, corresponding and sending each other material on Paine. 

Often, we posed each other questions that came up in our work. What Swedish editions do you know of Rights of Man, I asked him. He put this query to me: William Hazlitt and several others have claimed that England declared war on France in 1793 because of Paine’s Rights of Man. They thought not only could they crush the spread of his principles but by declaring war they would be able to stop Paine enthusiasts in England, since they would become ‘collaborators with the enemy’. Do you agree with this?” 

He was constantly working on different projects. Stationed in the USAAF near Thetford during the last war, Colonel Gimbel raised a subscription amongst American servicemen, which resulted in a plaque on Paine’s house for all who passed to see. In 1953 he led a campaign to get the white marble bust of Paine, which for many years had been hidden away in a Philadelphia basement, put on display once again in the city so full of Paine associations. 

In 1956 he claimed to have solved the bibliographical puzzle of the first edition of The Age of Reason with his discovery of a 1793 French publication of the work. Eighteen months ago he approached me about a study he was making” of Paine’s bridge at Monkswearmouth (commonly called the Sunderland Bridge), and eventually I was able to dig out some clues for him. So far I have been unable to find out how near to publication Gimbel was with his findings before he died. 

Perhaps his biggest work was, Thomas Paine: A Bibliographical Check List of Common Sense with an account of its Publication (Yale University Press/Oxford University Press, 1956). This excellent publication contains over 150 listed editions of Common Sense, and about half the book is devoted to a copiously illustrated account of the early publications of Common Sense. Gimbel took twenty-nine years to collect material and write this book. 

Such a person was a very apt Vice-President for our Society, an active man, not just a figurehead. He was also a person of wide interests. Paine’s influence again? Gimbel was a Yale graduate in the class of 1920, and, until 1936, was associated in executive capacities with Gimbel Department Stores (the chairman, Bernard Gimbel, was his cousin) and with Saks Fifth Avenue. After service with the USAAF, he returned to his alma mater in 1951 to direct the Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Programme, retiring in July 1953 to become the Curator of the Aeronautics Library at Yale. I shall always remember his Christmas cards to both my father and I, which had some aeronautical motif to them usually something jolly like Father Christmas in a balloon, 

In addition to owning the finest collection of Paine books and manuscripts in the world, Gimbel was a member of the Grollier Club and a collector of the works of Edgar Allen Poe and of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which is quite a varied mixture. He was an enthusiast in all his interests and studies, but as a serious historian and researcher he never let his enthusiasm cause him to exaggerate in the way that some admirers of Paine have. He did not claim his work on Common Sense was a definitive bibliography, it was a check list, and he constantly sought more information from fellow collectors and librarians as steps towards a bibliography. His approach towards a bibliography of Rights of Man was the same. 

The quality of Gimbel’s work is seen in what is published in this number of our Bulletin. I hope that it will encourage others to continue in the same spirit. Richard Gimbel is among the magnificent band of fighters to restore Paine to his proper place in history. The Thomas Paine Society is dedicated to this work. The fact that it is easier than in 1963, when we were founded, is due to such giants as our late Vice-President, Richard Gimbel. 

It was also an honour to have him as a personal friend. I shall miss him, his cheerfulness, his kindness and his humanity.

The post Richard Gimbel, An Appreciation  appeared first on .

AS A BRITISH institution the public house has survived such varied adversaries as temperance propagandists and television. Whether is a sophisticated city or an unpretentious country pub, one can find relaxation there – and the paradox is that there is also a great deal to stimulate one as well, (even excluding what one drinks:). People feel free to talk their minds in a British pub, and, if like Thomas Paine, you have a good ear for what men and women say about the affairs of the world, you can get it there. 

Some social historians ought to dig the rich veins that I feel sure are to be discovered in our pubs, especially in their contribution to the struggles for freedom. Paine’s followers during the days of the hysterical opposition to ideas of liberty at the end of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries often sound a friendly landlord, who would let them meet, discuss and drink a few toasts to the rights of man, to the liberty of the press and to so much that we today (almost) take for granted. 

It is for these reasons that I echo our President Michael Foot’s verdict on the decision of Watney Mann (East Anglia) Ltd., to call a new pub of theirs in Paine’s birthplace, Thetford, ‘Rights of Man’ a stroke of imagination. Doubly imaginative, in fact, to get Michael Foot to perform the opening ceremony and draw the traditional first pint of beer. 

Mr.Foot was introduced at the ceremony by the local director of Watney Mann (East Anglia), Mr. L.R. Canham, who said that the house was the result of a great deal of hard work, effort and imagination by a team of people. When I visited the site at Brandon Road towards the end of 1967, I saw the foundations and a foot or two of brick wall – and heard from the foreman builder some of the problems in keeping out the water of the nearby Little Ouse that somehow got into the diggings. 

Now there is a most pleasing single-story building that fits delightfully into the flat countryside of East Anglia. The decor features a large number of reproductions of Paine’s works and printed material about him, which are especially well-chosen in the Tom Paine lounge bar – I hope to study them in greater detail on another occasion. 

I want also to study more carefully the inn sign that was painted by Mr. E. Newsome and sign-writers in the Architects’ Department of the brewery; it shows a group of reformers, carrying a banner, inscribed ‘Rights of Man’, and it has the true flavour of the times of the struggle for liberty. If I am not mistaken, it is based on a contemporary print – it looks familiar to me, but the source eludes me (it is based on a “Criss of London” printed.). 

Perhaps, when the weather improves with the Spring, a visit of Society members can be organised to visit Thetford’s ‘Rights of Man’, as well as the other associations with Paine in the town. I take this opportunity of flying this kite, and hope members will write to the Secretary with their ideas for this. I am sure that the landlord, Mr. A.L. Goldstone and Mrs. Goldstone will make us welcome. But to return to the opening, I was delighted at the way the Thomas Paine Society was given honoured guest treatment. Our President rose magnificently to the occasion with a brief sketch of Paine’s life and his greatest work, Rights of Man. “Every time I hear his name,” Mr. Foot said, “I have a glow of English pride. Some may think this is an exaggerated claim, but, if the test of a great man is how far-seeing he can be about the world in which he lives, and how he assists in liberating human ways, then I believe this claim is justified.” 

Rights of Man, he continued, was the greatest democratic manifesto in the English language, and it had a bigger sale than any other book in its time except the Bible. Michael Foot, not being in Harold Wilson’s Cabinet may not have known of the current plans to reform the House of Lords, else he would have been tempted to quote extracts from Rights of Man on hereditary office-holders and legislators – there is always something topical about Paine’s writings. 

The local public library – always keenly aware of Paine being born and bred in Thetford – put on an excellent little exhibition from their marvellous collection of Paine material. Most of this comes from the late Ambrose G. Barker’s collection, which Miss Ella Twynam donated to Thetford, and their selection was most apt to the occasion. The exhibits contained a number of editions of Rights of Man – and I particularly noticed how these drew the attention of one of the specially invited guests, Henry Collins. A great admirer of Paine, Mr. Collins has written the introduction to the Pelican edition of Rights of Man, that is due to be published in 1969. 

Also in the exhibition was the very rare edition of part of The Age of Reason, published in Paris for M. Chateau in 1803, consisting only of Paine’s Essay on Dreams. What nobody can have realised, bearing in mind the occasion, is that this contains Paine’s warning about excess drinking. 

Our President, our Society, and I, were made to feel very much at home at Thetford’s ‘Rights of Man’. The kindness of the organisers of the event will, I know, be repaid many times over in visits by members to the pub in Brandon Road, while at the same . time we bear in mind Paine’s reminder that “long and habitual intemperance” often injures the brain!

The post A Stroke Of Imagination appeared first on .

If ever the magpie instinct in a man were justified, it is wonderfully justified in the case of Ambrose C. Barker, whose collection of Paine material was presented a little while ago by Miss Ella Twynam to the Thetford Public Library. The five shelves of the A.G. Barker Collection, together with other Paineiana that the library has, form an excellent source of fascinating material for students and advanced researchers alike. 

There are some notes in what I recognise as Barker’s handwriting, inserted into one volume, and written about 1936. He says in part: 

“Some forty years ago two Paine Exhibitions were held to celebrate the first issue of the Age of Reason. Wheeler ° wrote the introduction to one of the catalogues expressing the hope that a Paine Institute should be established in which could be gathered books, pamphlets, medals, tokens, prints, etc. relating to Paine. Nothing came of it and the two collections were dispensed, which I regard as a calamity… The coming bicentenary gives us an opportunity of remedying this… Myself beginning in a very modest way, my collection is now probably the largest in England. At my decease, I am now in my seventy—eighth year, what will become of my collection? Were a well established Paine Museum in existence, I might as well Verb sap!” 

Though no Paine Museum exists, Miss Twynam has been true to the spirit of Barker’s wishes in presenting this valuable collection to Thetford, and numerous Painites will be grateful to her. The book, in which the quoted notes were inscribed, is a very rare edition of Paine’s Essay on Dreams, published in Paris in 1803 and printed by M. Chateau under the title Extracts from the M.S. Third Part of Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason Chapter the Second- Article Dream. It is one of the gems of the collection. 

Last December I spent a few days in Thetford, examining the Paine material, taking copious notes, and becoming increasingly enthusiastic by what I saw. Perhaps I can now present a short and personal digest of my notes, in order to make more widely known the sort of material that is there. As will be seen; a broad variety of different aspects of Paine’s life and works is represented, perhaps with a particular richness in material, on his theological views.

Especially topical, in view of the recent ignorant representation of Paine on the British stage, are examples of religious bigotry in the 19th.century, like two illustrated eight page pamphlets, titled Extracts from the Life of Thomas Paine Author of “The Age of Reason”). One was published in Paisley in 1822 and printed by J. Neilson; it has a laureated bust, facing right, in a squared circle, and it starts with the mythical “seduction of Madam Bonneville” by Paine. The other is undated and was published in London, being printed by A. Applegarth & E. Cowper, Nelson Place, Gravel-lane, Southwark. The contents matter is the same as the other pamphlet, but the illustration shows Paine in a dishevelled state with a bottle and two glasses, (one overturned), on a table beside him. 

In some miscellaneous folders at the Thetford Public Library (outside the. Barker Collection) I also came across a fine article by W.T. Stead from the Review of Reviews (undated), entitled 4 Little Homily upon a Well-Known Text, Dedicated to the Rev.Dr.Torrey This deals with the ° slanders against Paine for “taking another man’s wife” and against Colonel Robert Ingersoll for connections with publishers of “obscene literature.” In this article Paine’s relationship with Madam Bonneville is described as “the kindly hospitality shown by an old man of sixty- seven to the refugee family of his French benafactor.” It continues by referring to the libel case that Madam Bonneville brought against James Cheetham – and won – saying:

“The only man who ever imputed a shadow of obloquy to Paine in this connection went into the witness-box after Paine’s death and solemnly swore that there was no foundation for his calumny.”

This matter links with Paine’s views on man’s exploitation of women written and published by him in the August 1775 number of the Pennsylvania Magazine. This essay is little known today, and unfortunately for many years it has been known obliquely and is rarely quoted directly. It does seem to me, though, that Richard Cathie, writing in The Republican in 1822 very well mirrors Paine’s views on the subject and carries them forward: 

“The freedom and independency of women is the best proof of and guarantee and independency of man.” (8th. Feb. 1822)

In this year of the fiftieth anniversary of partial Women’s Suffrage in Britain this is still so true; lip service is paid to the cause of rights of women, as it has been in the past – examples that I culled at Thetford include those of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, (“Paine….first suggested justice to women” 1st. May 1914) and of Ernest Thurtle, (“…he wrote articles attacking slavery and complaining of the inferior position of women, and others showing his ReptIlican sympathies” (July, 1936).

Perhaps 1968 will give an opportunity for reprinting Paine’s short essay, An Occasional Letter on the Female Sex.  

There is a new consciousness of the importance of visual history, and the material at Thetford contains some interesting examples, including a pencil drawing in a grangerised copy of Thomas Martin’s The History of the Town of Thetford, (London, J. Nichols, 1779). The book itself shows T.Bassett’s engraving of Paine, taken from Willson Peele’s portrait; a note on the pencil sketch says, “A drawing from which Mr.Bassett engraved his plate:- I knew Thomas Paine, and positively declare this to be a great likeness Geo B B(illegible) Thetford”. e An important difference between the two is the inscription on the book that Paine is holding. In the engraving it is “The RIGHTS OF MAN”, while in the drawing it is “In the cause of Liberty and my Country the Crises and common Sense” (Note small “c”). 

Also to be seen are photos of places in Paris and America, where Paine lived, of monuments and statues of Paine, and of meetings that commemorate his life. 

Our Vice-President, Colonel Richard Gimbel, started a few years ago to compile a list of events held to honour Paine’s memory, often taking place on the anniversaries of his birthday, both here and in America. In 1960 he published a list of nearly 70 such events. In the Thetford Library I found evidence of six more, (four of them in the USA between 1908-10), that are not recorded in Gimbel. I use the word “evidence” rather deliberately, as some of the scraps of information maddeningly are incomplete, though the clues are enough to put anyone on the right track. 

A while ago a student of Paine was surprised that I had some editions of The Letters of Junius in my Thomas Paine Library, and was equally surprised, when I explained that at one time it was believed that Junius was Paine. The real identity of Junius has not been established, though about forty people have been nominated for the title. The literature on the question is great, but two that I unearthed at Thetford are worth mentioning here: the first, Junius Unmasked: or, Thomas Paine the Author of The Letters of Junius, and the Declaration of Independence, was published at Washington, D.C. in 1872 and carries no author’s name, while the second, Thomas Paine: Was He Junius? by William Henry Burr, was published by the Freethought Publishing Company in San Francisco in 1890. I had never seen these books before, and only my short time in Thetford prevented my studying them – one of the many things I expect to do on a return visit.

Every so often a new theory comes up, too, about what eventually happened to Paine’s bones that William Cobbett dug up and brought to England. I certainly found one or two of the popular theories recorded ‘ in items at the Thetford Library, but especially interesting to me was the confirmation that the pseudonym, “An Old Daylighter”, that the author of a small booklet, Thomas Paine’s Bones and Their Owners,(Norwich,1908), cho00-2for his interesting account was J.Hunns. The source of this information is a letter to Ambrose Barker (30 August,1910) from Edward Burgess,Ltd, of Norwich, who published the booklet. 

As well as items of direct relationship to Paine, the Library has quite a bit that is connected with the radical movement, especially that in Britain in the 1790s. Sampson Perry’s Argus is especially worth mention. Perry and Paine were friends in both London and Paris, so the bits of news about Paine in the Luxembourg prison have added interest, though they add little to what is known already; accounts of the activities of the London Corresponding Society and the Society for Constitutional Information (of which Paine was a member), have all the flavour of progressive political activity against a most repressive British government and its supporters. The sour taste that William Wilberforce left in the mouthes of the fighters for freedom is seen in Perry’s description of him as being “once the defender of distant slaves, now the advocate of absent lords.” (p.98. 1795). 

The Library has several copies of The Jockey Club and The Female Jockey Club, (1794), for which the fearless publishers J.D.Symonds and J.Ridgway were sent to Newgate gaol, the sentences being also linked with some of Paine’s works that they published. The Barker Collection also contains The Case of Charles Pigott, (author of the Jockey Club books), published by D.I.Eaton in 1793, as well as accounts of such democrats as Eaton, William Frend, Thomas Muir, William Cobbett and others. 

Later material includes The Trial of Thomas Davidson for publishing a blasphemous Libel in the Deists’ Magazine, (London,R.Helder,1820), and associated books of the same period, all of which merit study.

Perhaps with this admittedly rather personal survey I have whetted the appetite of others to go to Thetford. I hope so. I am, certain that they will get the same kindly and friendly treatment as I did from Thetford’s experienced Librarian, Mr. J.R. Akam, (but, as he also deals with the – Library at Attleborough the courtesy of a letter in advance would be l advisable — to The Guildhall, Thetford, Norfolk). F.H. Millington, who W. Deputy Mayor of Thetford during the Paine centenary celebrations in 1909, and whose scrap-books form part of the Paine material in the Library, and our former Vice-President, the late G.R.Blaydon„ (erstwhile Mayor and Town Clerk), are Thetford men, who have contributed a great deal to the knowledge of Thomas Paine. They have laid the local – foundations, on which today’s local Thetford pride in the town’s most famous son is being built. The local public library, as much as the fine gilded statue of Thomas Paine, is a corner-stone of this work. 

Joseph Mazzini Wheeler contributed a great number of items to the exhibitions.

The post Thomas Paine In The Thetford Public Library appeared first on .

The Picture Story And Biography Of Tom Paine. By Grace Neff Brett (Library of American Heroes) Colour illustrations by R.C. Frankenberg. Follett Publishing Company, Chicago. $1.95.

I am delighted that children these days are being treated to a great number of excellent books – books, in which they can discover pleasure and stimulation for their receptive minds. My delight was doubled, when I received Mrs. Grace Neff Brett’s The Picture Story and Biography of Tom Paine. Here is a faithful account for children from ten years up – or, in my view, for adults as well – of the important parts of Paine’s life, but with an understandable bias on his life in America, during the struggle for independence. 

Its story-book style ensures that no youngster, glancing at it, will be afraid it is dry history. But this style is in no way untrue to the character of Paine and the facts of history. Mrs.Brett told me recently, during her first visit to Britain, how she became Paine, while writing the book. A good writer might do this anyway, but I mention it for two reasons. 

I could see from the way she told me how much she had enjoyed the experience (so much so that she is now preparing a longer work on Paine). The second reason goes back to 1943, when Howard Fast’s Citizen Tom Paine was published in America, a book which is still quoted by people who should know better. Fast wrote his historical novel, and signally failed to produce from his imagination anything much more than a caricature of Paine. 

My late father, himself a writer and, as a film scenarist, not averse to mixing fiction with history, defended Fast’s right to invent scenes and dialogue, in which Paine was featured – so long as they were in character. Fast committed the sin of giving even further twists to the prejudiced slanders, levelled against Paine and produced an inexcusably false portrait. 

Once bitten, I was shy about approaching Mrs. Brett’s book. But I need not have feared, as she is scrupulously right in the way she had approached her subject. When Thomas Paine opens his mouth in her book, his words . – his kind of Quaker words – authentically issue from him. I do not wish to insult her by merely saying that she passes the test of not being inaccurate!

She shows Paine’s great qualities – his caring in youth about the shame and torture of a young neighbour with her head and feet locked in the local stocks, his caring about all men’s rights, his personal bravery, his scientific achievements, and the way, when he was full of his subject, that his thoughts flowed with the ink in a simple, direct language that every man would understand. She shows these qualities, and makes them exciting. 

As an adult, I should have liked a longer book. Though I have read many longer biographies of Paine, I can truly say that I understand him better from having read Mrs. Brett’s fine work.

The post BOOK REVIEW: The Picture Story And Biography Of Tom Paine appeared first on .

Men like G.R. Blaydon are rare – one of the reasons why he was one of our Vice-Presidents. He was first associated with Thomas Paine’s birthplace, Thetford, when he became a pupil at the same Boys’ Grammar School there, where Paine had studied. In 1890 he started work as a junior in the office of the Town Clerk, and went on to serve Thetford for the rest of his long life, becoming Town Clerk in 1923 a post he held until 1950 and a Freeman in 1940. 

After his retirement in 1950, he was elected Mayor for the year 1951, the Festival of Britain, helping to organise among other civic activities the events that commemorated Thomas Paine, the man he was wont to call “Thetford’s greatest son.” On this he collaborated with my father, Adrian Brunel, and a warm friendship developed between them, for they often wrote to each other, exchanging information about Paine. Mr. Blaydon was an expert on local history, being also an Associate of the Royal Historical Society. In the correspondence appear notes on many fascinating topics of interest to students of Paine what may have happened to Paine’s bones, whether Paine was a Freemason, and details of the Rev. William Knowles, the Grammar School usher who considerably influenced Paine’s early life. 

Mr. Blaydon was the author of A Short History of Thetford Grammar School,in which he showed it to be one of the oldest schools in Britain he traced the names of the headmasters as far back as 1144. He remembered Moncure Conway visiting Thetford and inspecting the Register of Freemen, where he discovered that Paine’s father’s surname ended with an “e”. Conway remarked that the discovery alone was worth a visit to Thetford, as it dispelled the idea spread by Paine’s enemies that he had added the “e” to his supposed surname, Pain, for social reasons. 

My own correspondence with Mr. Blaydon, too, is full of the valuable information that he always gave with great courtesy, even when in his last years he was not always in the best of health. But my most vivid impression of him is a visual one: a fine, tall man, glowing with pride and happiness a few minutes after one of our other Vice-Presidents, Joseph Lewis, had concluded the unveiling ceremony of Sir Charles Wheeler’s statue of Paine in June 1964. It was only when he told me that he was so happy to have lived long enough to see the day, when Thetford had honoured Paine in the way it should, that I realised that this was not a young man I was talking to. 

He was not just a person with an historian’s interest, for he sincerely believed that Paine should be given his rightful place in history, and he struggled many years to achieve just such an event as we had been witnessing that would honour Paine and Thetford alike.

The post Obituary of George Richard Blaydon 1875-1966  appeared first on .

“A House on Clerkenwell Green” by Andrew Rothstein. 80pp. Lawrence & Wishart, London. 7/6. 103.

AND.

“History of a House” by Elizabeth Collins. 8pp. National Secular Society, London. 1/-. 

Two booklets, both published in early August, tell the respective histories behind two London buildings, at present occupied by national organisations. A House on Clerkenwell Green is now threatened with destruction, unless its present owners, the Marx Memorial Library, succeed in getting the plans of the local authorities amended. The story of this house, built in 1738 as a Welsh Charity School by a distinguished architect, and the Green on which it stands together form a most remarkable slice of history of the democratic struggle in Britain. The Charity Schools used religion to keep the poor submissive in a manner that Thomas Paine understood well, and Andrew Rothstein gives a most interesting survey of this phase of the house’s existence. Later, he notes that in 1792 Clerkenwell had a branch of the London Corresponding Society the body that used Rights of Man as its textbook and from this period on it is interesting to see the number of times that Paine’s ideas recur in the story of Clerkenwell, which by the early nineteenth century had become the recognised sounding board for popular causes. 

Part of the building became a coffee-room and part the “Northumberland Arms” both taking the place of workingmen’s clubs in those days and Mr.Rothstein records that at Lunt’s coffee-rooms, a few doors along, Richard Carlile and other reformers used to speak. Further research may show whether Carlile, that fearless publisher of Paine’s works, also lectured at what is now Marx House. 

When in later years pressure was brought to bear on tavern-keepers to stop politics being discussed at their premises, the London Patriotic Society, (Later, the London Patriotic Club) bought the premises, help coming amongst others from Moncure Conway (identified, I am glad to see, by Mr. Rothstein as “biographer of Thomas Paine”). Charles Bradlaugh certainly knew the place, as he was a speaker on the Green in 1885 at a meeting convened by the London Patriotic Club. 

And so the story of this house continues through its tenancy by the famous Twentieth-Century Press and through the time of Hitler’s notorious book-burning, when the Marx Memorial Library was founded, to the present, and one notes that recent events there, in tune with its unique past have included the 1959 Thomas Paine Exhibition, held to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Paine’s death. 

An anniversary is the occasion got the publication of 103: History of a House, which also tells a story of noble traditions; in this case it is a more personalised story, as it was from the Queen’s Head Inn, on the site of which now stands the Georgian building at 103, Borough High Street, London, owned by the National Secular Society, this year celebrating its first 100 years of work, that John Harvard left England in 1637 with his newly-married bride and his precious books for Massachusetts. In the previous year the American colony had voted £400 towards the building of a college at Newtown, and when in 1638 John Harvard died, leaving some £750 and his entire library to the college, it was agreed to name the new seat of learning Harvard College. In her booklet Mrs. Elizabeth Collins sketches in the savage persecutions and censorship on the printing trade in England and the high prices of books printed here factors that decided John Harvard in setting out for America, the land of the free, as Paine did some 140 years later for reasons not so dissimilar. 

I happen to know the authors of both these booklets, and I also know the tremendous amount of research that each put into the preparation of their works; I trust that I shall be forgiven, when I say that, as after a healthy meal, I wanted more, after I had finished reading them. Neither sets out to be exhaustive studies but my appetite is certainly whetted for just that in each case. 

The post BOOK REVIEW: A House on Clerkenwell Green appeared first on .