The Radical Campaigns of John Baxter Langley The Radical Campaigns of John Baxter Langley A Keen and Courageous Reformer DAVID M. GEORGE First published in 2021 by University of Exeter Press Reed Hall, Streatham Drive Exeter EX4 4QR, UK www.exeterpress.co.uk © 2021 David M. George The right of David M. George to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format, for non-commercial purposes only. If others remix, adapt, or build upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material. https://doi.org/10.47788/LVPH3819 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http://creative commons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN 978-1-90581-647-7 Hardback ISBN 978-1-90581-648-4 ePub ISBN 978-1-90581-649-1 PDF Cover image: portrait of John Baxter Langley by an unknown artist, c.1865. © David Slade Typeset in Perpetua 11½ point on 14 point by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh In producing this book my appreciation goes to my partner Kirsty for her patience and to Felix and Edith George for occasionally playing outside. I would also like to dedicate it to the memory of my Dad, Dr Maurice H. George. Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1. The Early Years of John Baxter Langley 19 2. A Radical Voice, 1848–1858 37 3. Supporting the Miners, 1859–1860 67 4. Fighting Against Slavery, 1861–1864 95 5. Demanding the Franchise, 1858–1869 119 6. Challenging Sabbatarianism, 1856–1869 145 7. Contesting Prejudice, 1870 177 8. Nurturing the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, 1872–1873 211 9. Aspiring to Parliament, 1865–1874 247 10. Housing the Working Classes, 1870–1877 275 Conclusion 311 Postscript 317 Bibliography 319 Index 349 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor David Kent and Dr Richard Scully of the University of New England for their unstinting support, encouragement and good advice. Also, Professor Rob Allen of the Auckland University of Technology for assistance and for suggesting the topic. To Dr Bronwyn Hopwood of the University of New England I owe a debt for organising help during times of financial difficulty. The Reverend Andrew Pakula of Newington Green Unitarian Chapel helped me to understand the attraction and validity of Unitarianism. ‘Olliecat’, ‘Coromandel’ and other contributors to British- Geneaology.com also provided assistance far beyond my expectations. I would also like to thank Langley’s descendants Kirstine Mayall, David Slade, ‘100% Kiwi’ and Adrian Watson for allowing me to use letters, pictures and family stories; Louis Pichel of the Library and Museum of Freemasonry for her help, including her uncanny ability to decipher unintelligible handwriting and Ian Minkley of Royal Oak Lodge No. 871 Deptford, for information on Langley’s membership. I am also very grateful to the staff of the British Library, both at Euston and most especially at Colindale; the National Archives, Kew; the Women’s Library (formerly Fawcett Library); the Waterloo Directory; the Bradlaugh Library, Bishopsgate; the Greenwich Heritage Centre; the Lambeth Archives; the Linnean Society of London; Dr Williams’s Library, Bloomsbury; the Wellcome Library, Bloomsbury; the British Library of Political and Economic Science at the London School of Economics; the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, Tyne and Wear Archives Service; the Martineau Society; Sue Killoran of Harris Manchester College; and finally to the many historians, both academic and amateur, especially Professor Martin Hewitt, Dr Joan Allen, Alan Bettany, Dr Andrew Hobbs, Dr Richard Huzzey and Dr Andrew Prescott, among many others who have answered my often unsolicited emails with grace, politeness and encouragement. Figure 1: Head and shoulder sketch of John Baxter Langley, c.1870 (Howell/8/83 Bishopsgate Library). Introduction John Baxter Langley (1819–1892) is a minor figure in the established politi- cal history of Victorian Britain. Although largely forgotten, even by scholars of radical history, he is representative of the many neglected men and women of the mid-Victorian period who sought fundamentally to challenge the mores of the world in which they lived. His activities and political contribu- tions make up small, but important, components of many of the most signifi- cant political campaigns of the period. From tentative early steps as an educa- tor in the Blackburn Mechanics’ Institute and the Manchester Athenaeum, and as a writer, teacher and lecturer, he became an effective proponent of political reform both in Britain and abroad. Within Britain he sought the extension of the franchise through the Reform League; campaigned effec- tively with Josephine Butler for the repeal of the oppressive Contagious Diseases Acts; questioned the morality of Sabbath legislation; saw first-hand, at the Burradon Mining Disaster, the suffering that occurred through untram- melled industrialisation; and through the Miners’ Provident Society and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants sought its alleviation. He campaigned for prison reform and an end to public executions; he advocated the construction of improved housing, better sanitation and the extension of life insurance for the working classes. He also took an active role in political campaigns beyond the borders of his native country. As editor and owner of several newspapers, he opposed British military actions in the Second Opium War (1856–1860) and exposed acts of British brutality in the wake of the euphemistically named ‘Sepoy Mutiny’. At considerable personal risk, he opposed slavery then existing in the southern United States and through direct action contributed in a small way to the demise of the regime that supported it: the Confederate States of America. He met with the Italian patriot, Giuseppe Garibaldi, shared a stage with Jessie White the Englishwoman who rode with his army, and organised opposition to cotton tariffs in British India. 2 THE RADICAL CAMPAIGNS OF JOHN BAXTER LANGLEY Throughout his remarkable campaigning career, Langley’s ultimate goal of taking a seat in Parliament eluded him. It was this failure to become an MP and a ‘parliamentary radical’, combined with the variety of his political activities, that has restricted Langley to the ranks of secondary or ‘second tier’ reformers. Educated but independent, many middle-class reformers of Langley’s stamp have been overlooked because of their failure to fit neatly into one of the well documented and thoroughly researched manifestations of ‘radicalism’. All radicals, as the term implies, aimed to change things by getting to the root of a particular problem. For the philosophical radicals it was a matter of better governance; for the Manchester School it was laissez-faire and free trade; and for the Chartists it was the attainment of better wages and conditions for work- ing people by securing the right to vote. Each of these strands had run its course by 1850 but many of their central ideas were part of the intellectual inheritance of radicals such as John Baxter Langley. The works of the ‘philosophical radicals’, for example, inspired many of Langley’s political attitudes, but in some important details his political values diverged from, and even opposed, their agenda. This movement could trace its origins back to the earlier works of David Hume and Francis Hutcheson, but in the early nineteenth century it was represented by the works of Jeremy Bentham and father and son James Mill and John Stuart Mill.1 Their belief, as famously outlined in John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, was that ‘[t]he creed that accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to provide the reverse of happiness.’2 Langley would have found much in this ethical viewpoint with which he sympathised—the abolition of the death penalty; the separation of church and state; gender equality; and the eradication of slavery. Mill, however, was a firm believer in the benefits of British imperial expansion. This was evident in his defence of the continuing appropriation of Indian principalities—Mill wrote that the annexation of Oudh (‘Awadh’) had been ‘a criminally tardy discharge of an imperative duty’.3 Langley, in a Morning Star editorial declared: ‘It is probable that there is nowhere on the face of the earth more grinding oppression on the one hand, or more hopeless misery on the other than that which prevails in our Indian dependencies.’4 A further difference was the means of achieving such goals, with the philosophical radicals seeking to influ- ence the ruling elite rather than creating a genuine support base among the working classes.5 Although remaining influential among British radicals, this lack of a mass movement led to the philosophical radicals being overshadowed from the late INTRODUCTION 3 1830s and through the 1840s by the Manchester School of Richard Cobden and John Bright. The Manchester School rose to prominence through the Anti-Corn Law League and the successful campaign to repeal the protectionist Importation Act 1815 (55 Geo.3c.). With their initial goals achieved, Cobden and Bright continued to champion free trade and governmental withdrawal from the econ- omy and the extension of the franchise.