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51-511: The original Hampden Club was formed in London in 1812. John Cartwright is generally regarded as the originator and founder although evidence has been offered that Cartwright's friend Thomas Northmore actually initiated the clubs. Edward Blount was another founder member. Cartwright certainly dominated the movement from 1813 onwards. A former naval and militia officer with a long record of political activism, he toured northwest England to promote

102-686: A "Liberal patriot". To the more staid reformers he represented himself as intent on organising a large petition, while insinuating that stronger measures might soon be necessary. To the more violent reformers, angry about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act , he spoke of the use of physical force in London, where seventy thousand men were allegedly ready to rise, as soon as plans were complete. Birmingham , Derby , Sheffield , Wakefield , Huddersfield , Dewsbury , Leeds, Halifax , Royton , Middleton, Manchester , Barnsley and Nottingham were all visited, during which time he wrote reports for

153-585: A full face, a little pitted with the small-pox . His usual dress ... was a light fashionable coloured brown coat, black waistcoat, dark-blue mixture pantaloons, and Wellington boots ". On 28 March 1817 Oliver approached the Home Office offering his services as an informer. He was accepted by Lord Sidmouth and on 23 April began a tour of the North and Midlands, ostensibly for the purpose of obtaining petitions for Parliamentary Reform and representing himself as

204-526: A gold watch to his wife and son. Oliver's historical significance arguably lies less in his activities than in his exposure as an officially sanctioned spy. Readers of the Leeds Mercury and the public at large, were outraged that Lord Liverpool's Government, having been alerted by Oliver, allowed the Penrich rising to continue, rather than nipping it in the bud. The public indignation generated by

255-681: A gruelling cross-examination that he was lucky to survive. Jeremiah Brandreth and the Pentrich revolutionaries were not at Nottingham however and the news that Oliver was a spy, did not reach Pentrich in time to stop its uprising. Following the brief Pentridge or Pentrich rising on the night of 9/10 June 1817 on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border, three rebel leaders, Jeremiah Brandreth, Isaac Ludlam and William Turner, were captured. They were subsequently tried for treason, hanged and posthumously beheaded. Others who had taken part in

306-633: A large mill at the bottom of Spital Hill in Retford . It was called the Revolution Mill in celebration of the centenary of the Glorious Revolution . He hoped to weave cloth using the weaving patents of his brother Edmund Cartwright . He also began the mechanical spinning of wool , or rather worsted . This business was not successful. The mill stood idle within a few years and was advertised to sale in 1798 and 1805. The mill

357-529: A monument from a design by Macdowell was erected to him in Bloomsbury , London, where he had lived. Burton Crescent, the original name of the street, was later renamed Cartwright Gardens in his honour. His statue faces a student hall of residence and backs onto tennis courts and a terrace of houses , most of which serve as small hotels. Captain George Vancouver named Cartwright Sound - on

408-503: A number of the blocks were named after social and political reformers. In 2006, the Estate transferred to Tower Hamlets Community Housing, a local housing association . William J. Oliver William J. Oliver , (?1774–1827) also known as Oliver the Spy , W. J. Richards and W. O. Jones, was a police informer and supposed agent provocateur at a time of social unrest, immediately after

459-453: A son. By the time he came to public notice he had been living for thirty years in London , and had worked as a carpenter and builder, and also latterly as a surveyor. He had not done well as a builder and he declared that he had lost money. He was described as "a person of genteel appearance and good address, nearly six feet high, of erect figure, light hair, red and rather large whiskers, and

510-435: A speedy meeting. We may then commune at leisure, and more fully, on the good and evil, which in the course of our long lives, we have both witnessed; and in the mean time, I pray you to accept assurances of my high veneration and esteem for your person and character. In 1788, Major Cartwight sold his heavily mortgaged estates at Marnham , buying others at Brothertoft , Lincolnshire . The same year with 18 others, he erected

561-619: The Hampden Clubs , named after John Hampden , an English Civil War Parliamentary leader, aiming to bring together middle class moderates and lower class radicals in the reform cause. To promote the idea, he toured northwest England later in 1812, in 1813 (getting arrested in Huddersfield ) and in 1815. He recruited John Knight who founded the first Hampden Club in Lancashire . In 1818, Knight, John Saxton and James Wroe formed

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612-756: The Napoleonic Wars . The Luddite protests of 1811–15 had been followed by the Spa Fields riots of 1816, the Blanketeers demonstration in March 1817 and soon afterwards the Pentridge or Pentrich rising , in June, and it was a time when many of Britain’s middle and upper classes saw a genuine risk of revolution. The system of police informers was not new, but had largely escaped popular censure during

663-599: The Seditious Societies Act , the convention met in public session and described itself as a gathering of deputies from petitioning communities, discussing how to achieve constitutional reform. The wording proposed by the Hampden Clubs' leadership included votes for all householders, electoral boundary reform and annual elections. However, the moderates were outvoted by those who favoured more radical reforms, and there were angry words from those who felt

714-753: The Society for Constitutional Information , including among its members some of the most distinguished men of the day. From this society sprang the more famous London Corresponding Society . Major Cartwright worked unweariedly for the promotion of reform. He was one of the witnesses on the trial of his friends, John Horne Tooke , John Thelwall and Thomas Hardy , in 1794. He left his large estate in Lincolnshire in 1803 or 1805 to move to Enfield , Middlesex , where he made friends with other leading Radicals including Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet , William Cobbett and Francis Place . In 1812, he initiated

765-581: The Birmingham Hampden Club, founded in September 1816 and boasting 300 regular attendees by the following January, had a moderate ethos and publicly condemned violence after a local riot but struggled to find venues as publicans were pressured not to permit club meetings on their premises. Private rooms were found, but by April 1817, in an atmosphere of suspicion and with the government spy and agent provocateur William J. Oliver active in

816-533: The Cape of Good Hope is to settle in that Colony". Oliver arrived at Cape Town in 1820, where it was generally believed that he was the notorious police informer. Here he operated as a builder and contractor until about 1825. His friendship with John Melvill, Government Inspector of buildings, led Melvill to recommend him as his deputy in 1821. During 1821 he acted as surveyor in the Cape Town suburb of Newlands . He

867-574: The Clubs' plans had been hijacked by others. The final resolutions of the meeting carried no reference to the Hampden Clubs. Reports of the meeting in The Times criticised both the meeting and its outcome and accused the delegates of attempting to overthrow the Constitution. The clubs were regarded with suspicion by the authorities, which saw them as breeding grounds for the growing radicalism of

918-618: The English Working Class (1963) more succinctly called Oliver the "archetype of the Radical Judas". It was plainly now in the best interests of the authorities for Oliver to leave the political scene, and in 1819 Henry Goulburn , Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to Cape Colony Governor Lord Charles Somerset ordering that a grant of land be made to a "Mr William Jones whose object in proceeding to

969-535: The Glory and Interest of Great Britain." In 1765, when the Nottinghamshire Militia was first raised, he was appointed major, and in this capacity he served for seventeen years. He was at last illegally superseded. In 1776 appeared his first work on reform in parliament, which, with the exception of Earl Stanhope's pamphlets (1774), appears to have been the earliest publication on the subject. It

1020-533: The Home Office. Oliver toured again in June and began making plans with locals for revolution; a large meeting was to be held on 6 June 1817 in Thornhill Lees , a district of Dewsbury. However on 4 June, he slipped away and met General Byng , the commander of troops in the North and gave him advance warning of the Thornhill Lees gathering. The meeting of would-be revolutionaries, including Oliver,

1071-666: The Patriotic Union Society, the body that called the 1819 public meeting for political reform that became the Peterloo Massacre . John Cartwright (political reformer) John Cartwright (17 September 1740 – 23 September 1824) was an English naval officer, Nottinghamshire militia major and prominent campaigner for parliamentary reform. He subsequently became known as the Father of Reform . His younger brother Edmund Cartwright became famous as

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1122-685: The United Kingdom". Among the other names Cartwright proposed— Sir Francis Burdett , Rev. William Draper; George Ensor , Rev. Richard Hayes, Robert Williams, Sir Charles Wolseley , and Matthew Wood —Bentham described himself as a "nonentity", and declined the offer. Cartwright had sent a copy of The English Constitution to former President of the United States , Thomas Jefferson . Jefferson wrote to Cartwright in July 1824: Your age of eighty-four, and mine of eighty-one years, ensure us

1173-453: The activities of club members in positive terms, emphasising them as a peaceful alternative to riot and destruction of property. Hampden clubs were now established in many of our large towns, and the villages and districts around them. Cobbett's books were printed in a cheap form; the labourers read them, and thenceforward became deliberate and systematic in their proceedings. Nor were there wanting men of their own class, to encourage and direct

1224-609: The age of eighteen entered the Royal Navy . He was present, in his first year of service, at the capture of Cherbourg , and served in the following year in the Battle of Quiberon Bay between Sir Edward Hawke and Admiral Hubert de Brienne . Engaged afterwards under Sir Hugh Palliser and Admiral John Byron on the Newfoundland Station , he was appointed to act as chief magistrate of the settlement. He served in

1275-532: The apparatus used to process the crop. In 1780, he married Ann Catherine Dashwood, a daughter of prominent Lincolnshire landowner Samuel Dashwood and Anne ( née Bateman) Dashwood. She was a granddaughter of George Dashwood , MP for Stockbridge (and son of Lord Mayor of London Sir Samuel Dashwood ), and James Bateman , MP for Carlisle (and son of banker Sir James Bateman ). He adopted his niece Frances Dorothy Cartwright , daughter of his brother Edmund. Cartwright died in London on 23 September 1824, and

1326-513: The city, regular club meetings were suspended. In Manchester, the movement's leaders were targeted by the city's deputy constable, Joseph Nadin, who arrested many of them, including Samuel Bamford, after the unrest of March 1817 and sent them to London in irons, where some spent months in prison before their release without charge. With the Hampden clubs stifled, the Lancashire leadership formed

1377-762: The clubs. He made a further promotional tour in 1815. The first Hampden Club outside London was formed in 1816 by William Fitton at Royton . Other clubs in the North-West soon followed; in Middleton the radical weaver-poet Samuel Bamford started one. Other clubs were formed in Oldham , Manchester , Rochdale , Ashton-under-Lyne and Stockport . Club members paid a penny per week subscription and usually met weekly for political discussion and debate. Radical pamphlets were read, and newspaper articles by prominent reformers like William Cobbett . Samuel Bamford describes

1428-475: The colonists had right on their side, warmly supported their cause and, at the outbreak of the ensuing American War of Independence , refused an appointment as first lieutenant to the Duke of Cumberland . Thus he gave up a path to certain promotion, since he did not wish to fight against the cause which he felt to be just. In 1774 he published his first plea on behalf of the colonists, entitled "American Independence

1479-534: The cottages of quiet nooks and dingles, to the weekly readings and discussions of the Hampden clubs. In January 1817, regional Hampden Clubs and similar political debating societies sent 70 delegates to a convention at the Crown & Anchor tavern in Strand, London , well known as a meeting-place of radicals. The assembly was called by Cartwright and Jones Burdett, brother of Sir Francis Burdett . To avoid falling foul of

1530-563: The country a strong and decided opinion that most of the events that have recently occurred in the country are to be attributed to the presence and active agitation of Mr. Oliver. He is considered as the main spring from which every movement has taken its rise. All the mischievous in the country have considered themselves as subordinate members of a great leading body of revolutionists in London, as cooperating with that body for one general purpose, and in this view to be under its instructions and directions, communicated by some delegate appointed for

1581-573: The idea of a forum for political debate among ordinary people. There had been no similar institutions since the London Corresponding Society , which had disbanded in 1794. The clubs were intended to bring together middle-class moderates and lower-class Radicals in the reform cause and were named for John Hampden , an English Civil War Parliamentary leader. In 1813, Cartwright was arrested in Huddersfield while promoting

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1632-532: The inventor of the power loom . He was born at Marnham in Nottinghamshire on 17 September 1740 to Anne and William Cartwright of Marnham Hall . He was the elder brother of Edmund Cartwright , inventor of the power loom and the younger brother of George Cartwright , trader and explorer of Labrador . He was educated at Newark-on-Trent grammar school and Heath Academy in Yorkshire , and at

1683-463: The liveried footman who readily admitted to being one of General Byng’s servants. All was now clear; Oliver was not a revolutionary, but instead worked for the authorities. Word spread and the editor and reform campaigner Edward Baines of the Leeds Mercury was soon in the know. By the time Oliver reached Nottingham, some rumours of treachery had already reached the town and he was given

1734-457: The new converts. The Sunday Schools of the preceding thirty years had produced many working men of sufficient talent to become readers, writers, and speakers in the village meetings for parliamentary reform. Some also were found to possess a rude poetic talent, which rendered their effusions popular, and bestowed an additional charm on their assemblages; and by such various means, anxious listeners at first, and then zealous proselytes, were drawn from

1785-511: The post for five years (1765–1770). From 1763 to 14 May 1766, Cartwright was commander of HM Cutter Sherborne . His brother George, when at loose ends, went with him on a cruise out of Plymouth to chase smugglers in Sherborne . Ill-health necessitated Cartwright's retirement from active service for a time in 1771. When the disputes with the American colonies began, he believed that

1836-468: The purpose. Had not then a person pretending to come from that body and for that purpose, made his appearance in the country, it is not assuming too much to say that probably no movement whatever would have occurred - it does not follow that a dangerous spirit could not have been found lurking in any breast, but that that spirit would not have found its way into action. E. P. Thompson in The Making of

1887-637: The reformist and popularist newspaper the Manchester Observer . In 1819, the same team formed the Patriotic Union Society, which invited Henry "Orator" Hunt and Major Cartwright to speak at a reformist public rally in Manchester, but the elderly Cartwright was unable to attend what became the Peterloo Massacre . Later in 1819, Cartwright was arrested for speaking at a parliamentary reform meeting in Birmingham , indicted for conspiracy and

1938-490: The rising was about to happen, but had let it go ahead in order to advance their own political ends. Baines revealed that Oliver was actually W. J. Richards, "a spy" working for Lord Sidmouth's Home Office. The newspaper article of 14 June was read out almost in its entirety by Francis Burdett on the 16th in the House of Commons, where it gave rise to sensational debates which were repeated several times. The accusation, of course,

1989-506: The spy's activities was one more step on the road to reform, and the newspaper revelations made sure of a quite different outcome to that which had been hoped for by the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth. Police informers are the subject of Charles Lamb 's deeply disapproving poem of 1820, "The Three Graves", which contains the lines: I ask'd the fiend, for whom these rites were meant? "These graves," quoth he, "when life's brief oil

2040-502: The times. On 9 February 1817 a secret Parliamentary Committee report concluded that the real object of the Hampden Clubs and similar institutions was to foment "an insurrection, so formidable from numbers, as by dint of physical strength to overpower all resistance". The government began to introduce legislation such as the Seditious Meetings Act 1817 , and it became more difficult for political clubs to meet. For example,

2091-424: The uprising were transported to Australia. A few days after the uprising, in a series of astonishing articles in the Leeds Mercury beginning on 14 June 1817, Edward Baines alleged that the Pentrich events had in fact been incited by the earlier activities of "Oliver the Spy", who had been known to the rebels as "London delegate" William Oliver. Baines also alleged that the authorities, had known from Oliver that

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2142-575: The wars against France. In peacetime, it was more difficult to justify. Although some early newspaper reports described Oliver as Welsh and a native of either Cardigan or Pembroke , in evidence to the Home Office he claimed to be from Pontesbury in Shropshire , England. He may have been baptised there in October 1774. He married Harriet Dear of Fulbourn , Cambridgeshire , and they had

2193-625: The west coast of Graham Island in Haida Gwaii , British Columbia , Canada - in his honour in relation to his Royal Navy service under Admiral Howe. The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright , edited by his niece Frances Dorothy Cartwright , was published in 1826. John Cartwright House, built in 1976 on the Mansford Estate in Bethnal Green , was named in his honour. The estate was built by Tower Hamlets Council and

2244-514: Was buried at St Mary's Church, Finchley , north London. In 1835, a monument to him was erected in the churchyard, paid for by public subscription. It is a Grade II listed building and was on the English Heritage Heritage at Risk Register due to its dangerous condition. However the monument has since been removed from the register after being restored in 2019, as a result of a £79,000 grant from Historic England. In 1831,

2295-705: Was commissioned to draw the first designs for an English Church, St George's, for the 1820 settlers in Grahamstown , completed in 1828. Oliver died as "William Oliver Jones" on 2 February 1827, and was buried in Green Point Cemetery on the outskirts of Cape Town. He left a will, dated 10 December 1824, in which he described himself as "a native of Ponsonbury ( sic ) in the County of Salop, aged about fifty, and married to Harriet born Dear of Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire". He left "less than 6000 guilders " and

2346-733: Was condemned to pay a fine of £100. Cartwright then wrote The English Constitution , which outlined his ideas including government by the people and legal equality which he considered could only be achieved by universal suffrage, the secret ballot and equal electoral districts. He became the main patron of the Radical publisher Thomas Jonathan Wooler , best known for his satirical journal The Black Dwarf , who actively supported Cartwright's campaigning. In 1821, he invited Jeremy Bentham to serve with him as one of "seven wise men" to act as "Guardians of Constitutional Reform", their reports and observations to concern "the entire Democracy or Commons of

2397-497: Was entitled, Take your Choice ,. a second edition appearing under the new title of The Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated (1777) and advocated annual parliaments, the secret ballot and manhood suffrage . The task of his life was thenceforth chiefly the attainment of universal suffrage and annual parliaments. In 1798, he conceived the project of a political association, which took shape in 1780 as

2448-432: Was later largely demolished and only one building remains. Cartwright took a keen interest in agricultural improvement and used his estate at Brothertoft to conduct crop trials and to develop new agricultural implements, several of which were invented by his bailiff and later estate steward, William Amos . He also turned over a large part of his estate to the cultivation of woad , creating dedicated buildings and improving

2499-548: Was regarded by a wide section of public opinion as being alien to the spirit of English law, and the exposure in the Leeds Mercury of Oliver’s role, as an agent provocateur , astounded public opinion. Earl Fitzwilliam , the Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, wrote to Lord Sidmouth on 14 June about the uprising, squarely blaming Oliver for what had happened: There certainly prevails very generally in

2550-468: Was surrounded and all were arrested by the troops. A few hours later however, Oliver was spotted in Wakefield talking to a liveried footman, by a tradesman called Dickinson, that he had earlier attempted to recruit. Dickinson asked him how he had managed to escape the troops of General Byng, and he gave an embarrassed answer and hurriedly left the town by stagecoach for Nottingham. Dickinson then spoke to

2601-459: Was that Oliver the Home Office informer was, in fact, the moving spirit in the Pentrich disturbances, and that without him they would not have taken place at all. Although Oliver was not present at the uprising, debate as to his role and responsibility for it has continued ever since. While the use of informers had become routine on the part of magistrates during the Luddite period, the practice

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