Charles Bradlaugh

Charles Bradlaugh (26 September 1833 - 30 January 1891) was a political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the 19th century.

Born into poverty in Hoxton (an area near central 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 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 (which was at that time part of the United Kingdom). 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, but 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

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, and he 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, 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, George Bernard Shaw, and John Stuart Mill, 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 funeral was attended by 3,000 mourners, including Mohandas Gandhi. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery.

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John Clare

quotes:

"Love lies beyond / The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew! / I love the fond, / The faithful, and the true."

"The best way to avoid a bad action is by doing a good one, for there is no difficulty in the world like that of trying to do nothing"

"Language has not the power to speak what love indites: The soul lies buried in the ink that writes"

"I long for scenes where man has never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator God And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below, above, the vaulted sky."

"And all the charms of face or voice Which I in others see, Are but the recollected choice Of what I feel for thee"

"If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs"

Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 - 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist, who is most noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953.

He, James D. Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

His later work, until 1977, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, has not received as much formal recognition. During the remainder of his career, he held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He remained in this post until his death; "He was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" (a quote from his close associate Christof Koch).

Click here for a detailed look at Francis Crick on Wikipedia.

John Chamberlain

Born in 1777 John was the eldest son of John and Ann Chamberlain, a poor family living in Welton. In his infancy he was weak and delicate and succombed to a fever at the age of 3 which left him deaf in one ear. He was a dedicated reader and quickly became a very intelligent child often standing by his school mistress reading the Testament to older boys in his school. He is quoted as saying he dared not do anything sinful and quickly began to gravitate to religious teachings. He is also quoted as saying "I thank god for my parents who, though poor, taught me to read the Bible, and took me to hear the word of God preached. Ah! how much I owe to the care of my dear mother!"

At the age of 12 he left home to work at a farm in Market-Harborough, Leicestershire. The intention was that the hard, open air work would strengthen his frail body but he was distraught to be seperated from his parents. He is said to have spent many a spare moment praying for them.

At age 17 he moved on to Burby in Northamptonshire where he met Dr Bridges. He was constantly disturbed by his conscience which caused him a lack of sleep and spent a good deal of his time studying religious texts. He was Baptised by the Rev. Mr Simmons of Guilsbrough in 1796 at age 19.

In 1798 he entered the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) under the care of Mr John Sucliffe at Olney. From there he ventured to India for 1 year which proved to have a profound impact on him. The BMS returned him to England and to Bristol to study at the Baptist Academy.

Returning to India in 1802, he became a prominent missionary and pioneered the expansion in the North. He spent most of his time in Katwa and Agra but was expelled from Agra in 1812 by the East India Company for preaching to the soldiers there.

He spent his final years at Mongehyr in Bihar and sadly decided to return home due to ill health in 1821. He did not complete his journey and died at sea alone in his cabin off the coast of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) just 20 days into the voyage.

Want to know more? We have a lot of information about John Chamberlain so if you do want to read more, drop us an email or leave a comment and we will publish more details.

William Kerr, Dr

Dr William Kerr (1738-1824) founded medical education in Northampton and was the principal fundraiser for the hospital on Billing Road (Northampton General Hospital) which opened in 1793.

Dr Kerr practised at the hospital until he was 83, and died just 3 years later in 1824.

He lived at number 47 Sheep Street for a while and is believed he may have planted the Beech Tree which went on to become one of, if not the largest of it's kind in Europe at the time of its sad and recent demise in September 2007. More information on this tree (and photos) can be found in our guide to 'Britains Largest Beech Tree'.

In 2005 a new educational building was opened at the hospital and named the 'William Kerr Building' in his honor. The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson opened the site with new student accommodation which he said would "help put Northampton's hospital on the national training map and prompt an improvement in the quality of patient care.". It houses 45 students and a state-of-the-art library.

There is a portrait of Dr Kerr at the National Portrait Gallery by William Say, painted in 1813. A recent visit (27th October 2007) confirmed this image is in the archive and unfortunately not on display.

Edgar Mobbs

Edgar Roberts Mobbs DSO (1882 - 1917) was an English rugby union footballer who played for and captained Northampton R.F.C. and England. He played as a three quarter.

After initially being turned down as too old to join the army in World War I, Edgar raised his own "sportsmans" battalion of 250 sportsmen (also known as Mobbs' Own) for the Northamptonshire regiment. He rose to command his battalion with rank of Lt. Col.

Edgar was killed in battle, in July 1917, at Zillebeke during the Third Battle of Ypres, whilst attacking a machine gun post. His body has never been found, so his name is on the Menin Gate memorial.

In 1921 the first Mobb's Memorial Match was held between the East Midlands and the Barbarians at Franklin's Gardens and has continued ever since.

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Thomas Randolph

Born June, 1605 near Daventry, Thomas Randolph was a poet and dramatist.

He died whilst in Blatherwycke just before his 30th birthday. He was staying with William Stafford and is now buried in the nearby churchyard. There is a stone tablet which was laid in 1650 in the church a full 15 years after his death.

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