Were the Chartists frustrated by bad weather in 1848?
Most historians (there are obviously notable exceptions) have no experience of organising a demonstration and that is true of many of those who have opined about the Chartist rally for the vote on Kennington Common 175 years ago on Monday 10th April 1848.
In his book on London Chartism 1838-1848 David Goodway suggests that one reason for the famous photograph of the rally looking the way it does (with an empty space near the main Chartist platform) is that people stayed at the edge of the Common where it was drier. The Times report on 11th April 1848 noted that the ground while wet was firm.
After the rally finished many of those present sought to return to the more pleasant vistas of North and East London by going over Blackfriars Bridge where they were met, for a time, by police and soldiers who refused to let them cross. Some traditional histories have it that the crowd dispersed due to heavy April showers. Yet neither the reports of the Times or the Illustrated London News (let alone the Northern Star) mentions rain. Dispersal of demonstrators in so far as that happened related to the deployment of police truncheons and other weaponry.
On 12th June 1848 the Chartists gathered again on Bishop Bonner’s Fields in East London (part of Victoria Park). The meeting was banned but many Chartists still gathered as did over 4,000 police and special constables (not all present at the Fields)with the military in reserve.
The Chartist organiser on the day noted that matters concluded when a thunderstorm forced not the Chartists but the police to disperse.
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