Richard Carlile (8 December 1790 – 10 February 1843) was an English radical publisher and writer. He was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom.
Early life and career Richard Carlile was born on 8 December 1790. He was the second of three children of William Carlile and Elizabeth (née Brookings). His father, from a Devon family, worked variously as a shoemaker, exciseman, teacher, and soldier. William Carlile published a book on mathematics but later became a drunkard, deserted the family a few years after his son's birth, and died shortly thereafter. His mother ran a shop in Lawrence Lane, Ashburton, and was a devout Anglican, providing her children with a strict Christian upbringing. Carlile received an elementary education at two local free schools until age 12 but did not attend the prestigious local grammar school. After leaving school, he worked at Edward Lee's chemist shop in Exeter but soon returned to his mother's shop. In 1803, through his father's family connections, he became a tinplate worker. For the next 15 years, he worked as an itinerant tinworker, making domestic items. The trade's decline forced him to move frequently in southern England, living in constant anxiety about future employment. From 1812 to 1813, while in Portsmouth, he considered joining the Church of England, inspired by sermons from reforming theologians Lant Carpenter and David Bogue. These were difficult years for Carlile, compounded when he married Jane Cousins, of poor origins from Hampshire, on 24 May 1813 in Alverstoke. The couple moved to London, hoping for better prospects. Living in Bloomsbury, Carlile worked for Benham & Sons and Masterman, Matthews & Co. between 1813 and 1817. They had four children: Richard (1814–1854), Alfred (b. 1816), Thomas Paine (1818–1819), and Thomas Paine (b. 1819).
Politics and publishing
His interest in politics was kindled first by economic conditions in the winter of 1816, when Carlile was put on short-time work by his employer creating serious problems for the family: "I shared the general distress of 1816 and it was this that opened my eyes." He became influenced by the leading campaigners for economic and parliamentary reform, such as Henry Hunt and William Cobbett. As a way of making a living he sold radical publications, such as Cobbett's Political Register and Thomas Wooler's The Black Dwarf, on the streets of London, often walking "thirty miles for a profit of eighteen pence". In April 1817 he formed a publishing business with the printer William Sherwin and rented a shop in Fleet Street. They produced a radical journal, Sherwin's Weekly Political Register, which Sherwin edited and Carlile published. He also published pamphlets, including unauthorised copies of William Hone's parody of parts of the Book of Common Prayer, for which Hone had already been arrested. For this, Carlile was imprisoned awaiting trial for seditious libel and blasphemy. He remained there for four months until he was released, following Hone's acquittal. Prison did not deter Carlile from radical activity. He immersed himself in the literature of religious freethought and wrote his first pamphlet, The Order for the Administration of the Loaves and Fishes, a parody of the Anglican Communion Service. He also began to reprint the political essays of Thomas Paine, including Common Sense and The Rights of Man. In order to reach as wide an audience as possible, these first appeared in the Weekly Political Register, then as two-penny pamphlets, and finally as bound volumes. Upon his release, Carlile threw himself into publicising radical causes. He published the trades union newspaper, Gorgon, edited by John Wade, Francis Place and John Gast, and assisted Henry Hunt's unsuccessful campaign to be elected to Parliament. He continued his project to republish all of Paine's works. This enhanced his reputation in working-class circles, but also made the government more determined to silence him. In 1819, following his publication of Paine's long-banned The Age of Reason, Carlile was faced by a series of law suits from both the Attorney General and the Society for the Suppression of Vice. This had the effect of increasing sales of Carlile's publications and by the summer of 1819 he claimed to be making a profit of £50 per week.
Peterloo and The Republican
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
