The Chartist London ‘pothouse conspiracy’ of August 1848.
A research note
In August 1848 following the arrest of Chartist leader Ernest Jones and the passage of repressive legislation covering Ireland in Parliament plans were made for a general rising involving Manchester, Liverpool and London.
The Irish dimension, too often overlooked, was important here, as was the informal link to Chartism.
One of those arrested after the rising failed was the black leader of London Chartism in 1848 William Cuffay. His precise role in events remains open to interpretation.
The rising was only actually attempted in London and there is some detail about it. David Goodway’s London Chartism covers it briefly. He argues that it was probably the most well supported (but also the last) of attempts at insurrection in the Capital dating back to the 1790s and running through events like Cato St (1820). It was tradition of revolutionary conspiracy, rather than open organising.
A supposedly secret committee met to plan events on most days in the first half of August 1848. Meetings were actually mostly in coffee houses but some were in beer shops. The beer shop had come into being after the 1830 Licensing Act and might perhaps be likened to the modern micro-pub.
It’s true however that when the police and military moved to arrest the leaders of the conspiracy they were to be found in two pubs, one off Red Lion Square and the other off Blackfriars Rd. Neither is still there.
Goodway estimates that up to 5,000 Chartists and others gathered at Seven Dials in the West End and in Southwark. However with the leaders arrested the rising melted away into the mid-August night.
A good deal about what was intended during the August days in London in 1848 remains unclear. What is known is that the conspiratorial means of organising allowed significant infiltration by police and State agents. However as the current SpyCops Inquiry has underlined avoiding spies and undercover officers remains problematic even where much more open forms of organising are used.
We earnestly recommend all persons in the great towns of the kingdom, who in any way may have become informed of the haunts or proceedings of these pothouse conspirators to give timely warning to the police…
The Times 18th August 1848
Meeting Places for the August 1848 Rising in London
Seven Dials,(Covent Garden)
Strutton Ground (Victoria St)
Clerkenwell Green
Tower Hamlets(Bishop Bonners Fields, now part of Victoria Park)
Pubs where the leadership met
Orange Tree beer-shop, Orange St off Red Lion Sq. Licensee Robert Hodges
Angel, Webber St(off Blackfriars Rd) Southwark. Demolished 1944
Leave a Reply