Bradlaugh and Anthropology
18/03/09 14:21 Filed in: science
I’m thinking about a story that includes CB and some of the scientists of his day. Darwin is the obvious one who comes to mind, but I’m actually more interested in the people around Darwin (both before and after), who either elaborated ideas similar to Darwin’s, or alternatives.
Victorian Sensation needs another, closer look (as does the Vestiges). And there are some interesting leads in a series of lectures on Anthropology given by CB in 1881 at the Hall of Science. These are interesting for several reasons. First, they show CB in the role of scientific lecturer. Significant, because he isn’t just debating churchmen or attacking the Bible (this is the picture his rivals wanted to paint of him; and even the sympathetic reader might fall into this belief, given the huge volume of writing and speaking CB did on anti-religious topics).
The lectures show CB disseminating the latest ideas of British and French scientists to the general public. The Hall of Science attracted crowds of working people, so the nature of these talks is altogether different from lectures by the scientists themselves to academic audiences. As a result, it’s interesting to look at the type of information that was making its way into the general public’s understanding of contemporary science (both from the pulpit of the Hall of Science, and in the form of penny reprints of CB’s talks).
CB begins the first of his three talks with a quote from Huxley’s Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature: “The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place man occupies in nature and of his relation to the universe of things.” Thomas H. Huxley had himself been lecturing to working men at Jermyn Street since 1855. The lines CB quotes are the beginning of Huxley’s section “On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals,” which he had given as a series of lectures at Jermyn Street in 1860. Huxley wrote to his friend Dyster, “I am sick of the dilettante middle-class, and mean to try what I can do with these hard-headed fellows who live among facts.”
CB goes on to quote Dr. Paul Broca, Dr. James Hunt, and W.H. Fowler on the scope of anthropology. The science seems to have contained an element of archaeology and physiology, as well as an unfortunate focus on race based on contemporary ideas from craniology and language theory. He cites as his main sources Dr. Paul Topinard’s text, Huxley’s book, Geiger’s “History of the Development of the Human Race,” and Letourneau’s Biology.
CB is clearly interested in establishing in his listeners’ minds that the anthropological point of view is at odds with Christianity. Discussing the controversy over single or multiple origins, he notes that “polygenists” like Louis Agassiz, Gliddon and Nott, “having in view the very few thousand years then claimed by the Churches for man’s existence on earth, contended that the ordinarily accepted time was insufficient for the development of known diversities of type…But two features have now to be considered which were then excluded: one, the admittedly huge period of time man has inhabited the earth; the other, the light resulting from the untiring labors of Darwin in the path opened out by Lamarck and somewhat hesitatingly trodden by Wallace.”
In addition to being the field that “more than any other science finds itself in conflict with religious and political institutions,” anthropology in CB’s mind is the best place to look for moral answers. “To know what man should do,” he says, “it is first necessary to know what man is, and what it is he can do.” This is a key to CB’s interest in lecturing to his working-class audiences on the subject. The other key is anthropology’s potential as a source of insight for the biological improvement of humanity. He quotes Topinard saying “it is undeniable that man by a certain method of high breeding and well-managed crossing is capable of being changed in successive generations in his physical as well as in his moral character. According to the modes adopted he will go on either degenerating or improving.” While these words in Topinard’s “Introduction” form the closing point in an argument regarding the utility of anthropology, CB would have seen their congruence with his belief in individual self-determination. Perfectibility in CB’s mind was all about individuals making the right choices. As such, it was quite distinct from the top-down, large-group focus a eugenicist might use to interpret Topinard’s words. Biological improvement and moral choice was also a refutation of the type of historical inevitability proposed by Marx and his followers. And it was a positive application of the principles that led CB to support population control doctrines. Anthropology provided a way out of both the accusation that “atheism is only a rejection,” and the claim that Neo-Malthusian ideas were “against life.”
Victorian Sensation needs another, closer look (as does the Vestiges). And there are some interesting leads in a series of lectures on Anthropology given by CB in 1881 at the Hall of Science. These are interesting for several reasons. First, they show CB in the role of scientific lecturer. Significant, because he isn’t just debating churchmen or attacking the Bible (this is the picture his rivals wanted to paint of him; and even the sympathetic reader might fall into this belief, given the huge volume of writing and speaking CB did on anti-religious topics).
The lectures show CB disseminating the latest ideas of British and French scientists to the general public. The Hall of Science attracted crowds of working people, so the nature of these talks is altogether different from lectures by the scientists themselves to academic audiences. As a result, it’s interesting to look at the type of information that was making its way into the general public’s understanding of contemporary science (both from the pulpit of the Hall of Science, and in the form of penny reprints of CB’s talks).
CB begins the first of his three talks with a quote from Huxley’s Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature: “The question of questions for mankind—the problem which underlies all others and is more deeply interesting than any other—is the ascertainment of the place man occupies in nature and of his relation to the universe of things.” Thomas H. Huxley had himself been lecturing to working men at Jermyn Street since 1855. The lines CB quotes are the beginning of Huxley’s section “On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals,” which he had given as a series of lectures at Jermyn Street in 1860. Huxley wrote to his friend Dyster, “I am sick of the dilettante middle-class, and mean to try what I can do with these hard-headed fellows who live among facts.”
CB goes on to quote Dr. Paul Broca, Dr. James Hunt, and W.H. Fowler on the scope of anthropology. The science seems to have contained an element of archaeology and physiology, as well as an unfortunate focus on race based on contemporary ideas from craniology and language theory. He cites as his main sources Dr. Paul Topinard’s text, Huxley’s book, Geiger’s “History of the Development of the Human Race,” and Letourneau’s Biology.
CB is clearly interested in establishing in his listeners’ minds that the anthropological point of view is at odds with Christianity. Discussing the controversy over single or multiple origins, he notes that “polygenists” like Louis Agassiz, Gliddon and Nott, “having in view the very few thousand years then claimed by the Churches for man’s existence on earth, contended that the ordinarily accepted time was insufficient for the development of known diversities of type…But two features have now to be considered which were then excluded: one, the admittedly huge period of time man has inhabited the earth; the other, the light resulting from the untiring labors of Darwin in the path opened out by Lamarck and somewhat hesitatingly trodden by Wallace.”
In addition to being the field that “more than any other science finds itself in conflict with religious and political institutions,” anthropology in CB’s mind is the best place to look for moral answers. “To know what man should do,” he says, “it is first necessary to know what man is, and what it is he can do.” This is a key to CB’s interest in lecturing to his working-class audiences on the subject. The other key is anthropology’s potential as a source of insight for the biological improvement of humanity. He quotes Topinard saying “it is undeniable that man by a certain method of high breeding and well-managed crossing is capable of being changed in successive generations in his physical as well as in his moral character. According to the modes adopted he will go on either degenerating or improving.” While these words in Topinard’s “Introduction” form the closing point in an argument regarding the utility of anthropology, CB would have seen their congruence with his belief in individual self-determination. Perfectibility in CB’s mind was all about individuals making the right choices. As such, it was quite distinct from the top-down, large-group focus a eugenicist might use to interpret Topinard’s words. Biological improvement and moral choice was also a refutation of the type of historical inevitability proposed by Marx and his followers. And it was a positive application of the principles that led CB to support population control doctrines. Anthropology provided a way out of both the accusation that “atheism is only a rejection,” and the claim that Neo-Malthusian ideas were “against life.”
Bradlaugh in 1874
18/03/09 09:52 Filed in: pics
Charles Bradlaugh in A Few Words About the Devil, and Other Biographical Sketches and Essays, Charles Bradlaugh (New York: A. K. Butts & Co., 1874). This is a US edition of Bradlaugh’s 1861 book, which I haven’t seen. But assuming the engraving is in the English edition, Bradlaugh would have been about 28 when this image was made.
Prehistory
17/03/09 19:25 Filed in: timeline
Prehistory
1807: James Bradlaugh, a younger son of a blacksmith in Brandeston, Sussex, arrives in London with his family. He settles and opens a gunsmith shop at 4 Parson’s Ct., Bride Lane, off Fleet Street. (David Tribe, President Charles Bradlaugh, MP, London: Elek, 1971, p. 13)
1811: Charles Bradlaugh (Sr.) born in London. Father James Bradlaugh dies of Tuberculosis less than six months later.
In addition to Tribe (above), the best source for the general story of Bradlaugh’s life is his daughter’s book: Charles Bradlaugh, A Record of His Life and Work by His Daughter Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895.
1-18-1818: Francis Place writes to George Ensor about neo-Malthusianism, the idea that people should deliberately limit the size of their families to a number of children they can reasonably support. This doctrine was to become a taboo subject in Victorian England, The arguments against artificial birth control were first, that it was against the “law of God,” and second, that it would encourage vice. Although James Mill had adopted Malthusian ideas first, Place was becoming the leader. The idea of simply encouraging later marriages made no sense, he argued. His early marriage (at 19, to a 16 year old girl) had, in his opinion, saved his life. But neither was “moral restraint” the answer. He and his wife had 15 children (five died), and he wrote to Ensor that between himself, Ensor, James Mill (who had 9), and Wakefield, they had “no less I believe than 36 children—rare fellows to teach moral restraint.” (James A. Field, “The Early Propagandist Movement in English Population Theory,” The Bulletin of the American Economic Association, Vol. 1, No. 2, Princeton: American Economic Association, 1911. p. 221)
1-4-1822 Richard Carlile writes his new year issue of The Republican In the Dorchester Gaol, where he is imprisoned for publishing Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason in an inexpensive edition that poor people could afford to buy and read. The issue contains summaries of the trial of his wife, Jane Carlile, imprisoned for carrying on his business and publishing the report of his trial, and his sister, Mary Ann Carlile, who was also imprisoned for continuing to keep the shop open.
1823: Francis Place begins Neo-Malthusian movement. One of his earliest recruits is his student John Stuart Mill. “The talented son of a talented father, a public character universally known and esteemed, throughout civilized Europe, but whose name I withold because its publication might injure the man without benefiting the cause—bought up many hundred copies of Carlile’s pamphlet [Every Woman’s Book or possibly “What Is Love?”], and, aided by a young friend, distributed them gratuitously in the most crowded part of London. Their doing so attracted the attention of the police, and they were brought before a magistrate. He inquired of them their names, which they gave to his surprise; asked them what could induce them to circulate such a pamphlet, and upon their replying, calmly, but firmly, ‘that they had been actuated solely by a desire to assist and instruct those who stood most in need of assistance and instruction,’ they were quietly dismissed by the perplexed magistrate, who would not approve, and yet knew not how to condemn their proceedings; and who feared the effect, to moral as to religious orthodoxy, of publicly associating names of such high standing with principles so heterodox.” (Robert Dale Owen, son of social reformer Robert Owen, Indiana Congressman, and author of Moral Physiology, 1830, quoted in John Cunningham Wood, John Stuart Mill: Critical Assessments, London: Routledge, 1991, p. 41-2) Note that by this time, they’re talking about “every woman,” not every married woman. Mill and his friend were throwing the pamphlets into the cellars of well-to-do houses where the servants lived, in 1823 or 1824. This event, although it didn’t end in official sanctions against Mill, seems to have scared him straight. He never again went so far out on a limb, and for the rest of his life he very rarely made public statements about his private opinions. Mill even withheld the publishing of his autobiography until after his death in 1873.
1-2-1829: Richard Carlile begins his New Year edition of his new paper, The Lion, with an open letter to the Duke of Wellington on “The Vice of Oath-Taking.” He says “the keeping of a man out of an office by a testing oath, and swearing a man into an office, are acts alike unwise, unnecessary, and vicious.” (4) He continues, when “a man is kept from an office by his dislike of an oath: and here the first principle indicated is, that very honesty and energy which is so very desirable in a public officer.”
1832: The church, alarmed at the popularity of speakers like the Carliles and the interest shown by the working people, began publishing defenses of “Inspiration, the Canon, and Revealed Truth.” In their view, “By modern infidelity... we are simply to understand those new forms, and that new energy which skepticism has put on, in modern times, and more particularly since the era of the French revolution; by which it has mightily diffused itself among all ranks of society, and has produced a class of writers capable of making their appeal to each separate branch of the community.” (John Morison, D.D., A Portraiture of Modern Scepticism or A Caveat Against Infidelity, London: Frederick Westley and A. H. Davis, 1832. pp. 7-8)
1831-2: Charles Bradlaugh (Sr.), who had been apprenticed to a law stationer since the age of ten or eleven, is “loaned” to one of the stationer’s clients, Lepard & Company, solicitors at 6 Cloak Lane. They like the young man’s work, and buy his indenture from the stationer. Charles Sr. becomes a clerk, and later a confidential clerk and office manager for Lepard & Co. He works for them for the rest of his life, eventually earning two guineas (42 shillings) a week. Bradlaugh marries Elizabeth Trimby, a domestic servant. They move to 31 Bacchus Walk, Hoxton, where their first son, Charles, is born September 26 1833.
1833: William Ewart Gladstone enters the House of Commons at age 23. Gladstone is a younger son of a father who turned a modest inheritance into huge wealth by investing in West Indian sugar and slavery. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, “hothouses for the governing classes,” William Gladstone had planned to become an Anglican priest, until he became impassioned by the 1832 reform movement. He shouted himself hoarse at rallies, OPPOSING the increase in the franchise. In the election following the 1832 Act, the Duke of Newcastle (whose son, Lord Lincoln, was a school chum of Gladstone’s) offered Gladstone his “pocket” borough or Newark. Gladstone entered the Commons convinced he was going into politics to save England from the unwashed masses. In his first session he opposed reform to working conditions, the poor law, local government, and the Church of England. “His maiden speech was a defense of West Indian plantation owners, of which his father was one, against government attempts to abolish slavery.” (Richard Aldous, The Lion & the Unicorn: Gladstone V. Disraeli, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007. Pp. 12-14)
Freethinker summary
17/03/09 19:14 Filed in: freethinker
Inscription: “To my friend WE Adams” (From Memoirs of a Social Atom, W. E. Adams 1903, volume 2, facing page 407)
This was a summary/pitch for Freethinker, which I envisioned as a young-adult biography:
Charles Bradlaugh’s parents threw him out of their house when he was sixteen for admitting his doubts about their religion. Bradlaugh survived on the streets of East London, and met radicals fighting for reform. He watched poor families starve as an occupying soldier in Ireland, and returned home to London determined to change the world.
Victorian London is America. Bradlaugh was the most notorious radical in the world’s first modern city. Readers of Freethinker get a glimpse of Victorian society from an unusual angle. Freethinker provides a view from below, but from Bradlaugh’s intelligent, energetic, constructive point of view. This distinguishes it from other stories that tap into the fascinating energy of the London streets but focus on crime, vice, and moral decay (Alan Moore’s graphic novel series From Hell, dealing with the Whitechapel murders, is a good, edgy example).
There is no recent biography of Charles Bradlaugh. The most current work on him is nearly four decades old, and the best biography went out of print a century ago. Bradlaugh is a compelling subject not only because he was an iconoclast, but because he was a reformer rather than a revolutionary. Bradlaugh’s story illustrates the complexity of fighting for change from within. This is a valuable addition to school and library shelves filled with stories about revolutionaries, who destroy and replace the systems they oppose.
Freethinker provides a new historical perspective, the point of view of an engaged partisan rather than a neutral historian. Bradlaugh’s eventful life and Freethinker’s narrative nonfiction approach enable his biography to read like an adventure novel. The reader participates in Bradlaugh’s reaction to his world, and gains a sense of what it would feel like to fight for change.
