Adapted from a talk given at the Morrab Library, Penzance on Wednesday, 8th November 2000 and first published in the Cornwall Association of Local Historians Journal (Autumn 2001).

William Lovett was born in the village of Newlyn, a mile from the market town of Penzance, on the 8th May, 1800. His was no rags to riches story. Financially he was no better off at the end of his life than at the beginning but he worked tirelessly to gain for working people the rights that are taken for granted today. Lovett was born into a period of social change. At the time of his birth politics were the preserve of the hereditary elite and political rights went hand in hand with property rights. Industry was in the throes of revolution; hand workers – such as weavers – were becoming obsolete, their crafts and traditions dying to be replaced by large factories and mills. Mechanization had overtaken the country. In one sense we see Cornwall as being in the forefront of industrial society at that time, with its mining tradition and all that entailed. But many of the mineworkers were ‘tributers’ or ‘tut workers’, direct contract workers, some of whom varied their work with pilchard fishing and farming. The big recent influence in their lives at that time is likely to have been Methodism.

In January 1792, some eight years before Lovett’s birth, a small group of men, described as ‘well meaning, sober and industrious’ had met in a London Tavern to discuss Parliamentary Reform. By the end of the evening eight of the nine men present had become founder members of the London Corresponding Society. The first secretary was a shoe-maker, Thomas Hardy. The Society had as its first rule that the number of members should be unlimited. There was only one requirement for membership and that was an affirmative reply to three questions. The most important of these was:

Are you thoroughly persuaded that the welfare of these kingdoms require that every adult person, in possession of his reason, and not incapacitated by crimes, should have a vote for a Member of Parliament?

This was a question thoroughly debated over the next few months as membership grew and other societies were set up, mainly in the north of England and Midlands. However the LCS was in touch with similar groups of political reformers in Truro and Helston. The members decided, having debated the question from every point of view, that they had the right to obtain Parliamentary reform. But two years later, in 1794, Thomas Hardy and others were arrested on a charge of high treason. They were examined by the Privy Council but acquitted by a Grand Jury after a nine-day trial. Despite their acquittal reform was suppressed and the London Corresponding Society outlawed. Tom Paine’s book ‘Rights of Man’ (published in 1791/92) was banned. Meetings were prohibited. One of Thomas Hardy’s colleagues in the Corresponding Society was Francis Place, a young man on his way to becoming a master-tailor. He was later to work closely with William Lovett in their efforts to gain political reform.

The LCS saw political education among working men as the way forward. They were not militant but wanted an end to suppression on grounds of liberty and equality. However, those in authority would have been only too aware of the dangers of allowing power to the majority. They would have had the model of the French Revolution as a reminder of that. The French would also have been in the minds of the inhabitants of Newlyn in 1800, not because of revolution but because of the Napoleonic Wars. There were food shortages; the price of corn in 1800 was prohibitive. It was difficult to obtain salt, essential for curing fish. There was the threat of invasion and also of visits by the press-gang, the cry that they were coming sent all eligible men fleeing inland to hide until the danger was over. In his autobiography Lovett tells the story of Honor Hichens, a woman of some 30 – 40 years, who, with her father, was cleaning fish in a small stream when a press-gang landed. She was deaf and her father was seized before she realised it and was being borne off. She snatched up one of the dog-fish she was opening and repeatedly hit her father’s captor across the face with the rough skinned fish; holding him at bay until other women and girls came to her assistance. Lovett writes that fishermen were seized from their boats at sea and often never heard of again.

Newlyn at this time consisted of fishermen’s homes, mainly small thatched cottages, clustered around the medieval quay. The community was dependent on fishing and related industries, such as curing and rope making. John Wesley had visited Newlyn on fourteen occasions between 1747 and 1789 and Methodism was strong in the village, although as yet no chapel had been built. William Lovett was born in one of the thatched cottages that once stood on the site of the present Centenary Methodist Chapel. He was baptised in Paul Church on May 25th, 1800 and recorded as the base child of Keziah Green. What we know of his father is what William Lovett himself recorded in his autobiography. He tells us that his father was a native of Hull ‘ of the same name as myself, and the captain of a small trading vessel, often entering the port of Falmouth, where he met with my mother. He was, however, unhappily drowned in his last voyage before I was born, so I can say nothing further respecting him’.

Lovett started to write his autobiography – which he entitled ‘Life and Struggles of William Lovett in his pursuit of Bread, Knowledge and Freedom’ at the age of forty-five and continued adding to it until he was seventy-four. It was published in 1876, just one year before his death. Lovett’s life falls into three main areas. Firstly, his youth and life to the age of 21 years, when he left Cornwall to seek employment in London, then his marriage and political activities up to the mid 1840s, which saw a turning point in his career. From then on he was to acquire an increasing reputation for integrity and moderation; education and moral improvement became primary concerns for the rest of his life.

Lovett has little to say about his early life in Newlyn, which is unfortunate as it is not possible to get this information from other sources. In his early youth his mother was supported by her brother, in business as a rope maker, but he was to die at the age of 32 years. Keziah was left to support her young son, and increasingly her own mother, by what employment she could get and by selling fish at Penzance market. A strict Methodist she was concerned that her son should attend chapel or church three times each Sunday, the time between services being occupied with reading texts, prayers and portions of scripture. All books other than the bible and prayer book were strictly prohibited. Not surprisingly he found this irksome. In later years Lovett was to campaign for the opening of museums and libraries on Sundays. He drafted a petition to that effect in 1829 in which he emphasised the importance of ‘useful knowledge’ and ‘rational instruction and amusement’ particularly on the only day of leisure available to working men. The petition gained several thousand signatures but little support in the Commons.

- Despite her strictness in regard to the Sabbath, Lovett describes his mother as being kind and indulgent. She kept him scrupulously clean and respectable in his person and discouraged his mixing with other boys. To this end she encouraged interests such as cultivating a small flower garden, carving wood, drawing and writing, which could be done at home. Despite this he appears to have escaped to join other boys whenever possible and tells of a number of pranks in which he became involved. He didn’t display a particularly early desire for learning, going, we are told, to all the dame schools in town before he could master the alphabet. Eventually he was taught to read by his great-grandmother who lived in Sancreed, a lady of some eighty years. Once he could read he just couldn’t get enough reading material, there being little available to him other than religious books. After the dame schools he went to another school in Newlyn, learning little but catching smallpox. Finally he went to the school in the nearby village of Paul. Here, he tells us, he learned to write tolerably well and know a little arithmetic. Not a bad education at a time when it was estimated that only two out of three working men were able to read after some fashion, although rather fewer could write.

Having completed school Lovett became apprenticed to a rope maker and about this time his mother married a miner by the name of Carne. Lovett moved with his grandmother to a small house, living on the five shillings a week he received in wages and the little his grandmother could earn in the fishing season. He records that they lived mainly on barley bread, fish and potatoes with a little pork on Sundays, not an uncommon diet at that time. Lovett had developed the interest in carving wood he had as a child and through this earned a little extra money, this skill was to serve him well later. He relates that he was fortunate in gaining access to a carpenter’s shop in which cabinet work was occasionally executed. He spent his leisure time here and acquired some proficiency in the use of carpentry tools. Rope making had not been a good choice of trade as chains were replacing rope for many purposes and Lovett’s employer, for whom times were bad, was prevailed upon to release him from his indentures. He then turned to fishing but suffered terribly from seasickness. In the carpenter’s shop Lovett met an old sea captain who suggested that he should try his fortune in London.

Despite reluctance to leave his family this idea attracted Lovett. With the little money he had put by he purchased wood and mahogany veneers to make a lady’s workbox and a couple of tea caddies. He writes that he got these up ‘in the best style he was master of’ and was able to sell them and some other trinkets he had by him. This raised fifty shillings. He made another workbox which he persuaded the captain of a small trading vessel to take as part payment of his passage money. William Lovett, who had previously been no further than Porthleven, left home on the 23rd June 1821 and eventually arrived in London with thirty shillings and a few letters of recommendation to master rope makers. Space precludes recounting the considerable difficulties he encountered in finding work or the hardship he endured but eventually he obtained employment with a firm of cabinet makers.

Once his employment difficulties had eased Lovett sought to make some intellectual progress. He refers to his ‘provincialisms’ and bad English and talks of making a book on grammar his pocket companion for some months. On the advice of an old schoolmaster at his lodgings he joined a small literary association, composed mainly of working men, which met on two evenings a week. They paid a small subscription towards forming a select library of books for circulation between members. They also had discussion evenings and Lovett recalls that this was the first time he had heard impromptu speaking outside of the pulpit. He had until then believed that such speaking was a kind of inspiration from God. At first Lovett concentrated on subjects related to Christianity and when invited to join in debates often sat up all night reading and preparing his arguments. Political questions were also discussed. Lovett felt his mind was awakened to a new mental existence. He read all the books he could borrow, joined the Mechanics Institute and attended lectures there and went whenever possible to debating places, usually coffee houses. At about this time he met his future wife, Mary. With opposing religious views all did not go smoothly at first and to ‘divert his mind’ he joined several associations, literary, scientific and political, which filled all his evenings. Eventually they married on the 3rd June 1826. At this time he had good employment in a cabinet makers but about two years after they married, his wife also wanting to work, they took a small pastry and confectioners shop. This business venture failed as did several others he undertook over the years.

Lovett had come to think that human effort should be applied for ‘the benefit of all in common, to the lightening of their toil and the increase of their comforts.’ He favoured the idea of small co-operative villages, self governing communities, with their structure and rules to be determined by majority vote. He then felt that poverty, crime and other social evils would disappear, to be replaced by an educated population with unlimited access to the physical and intellectual comforts of life. At the same time he did not advocate, as did some of his contemporaries, an end to private ownership of property.

In 1824 the London Co-operative Society was formed, in part to restore the whole produce of labour to the labourer. In 1827 this group established the first London Co-operative Trading Association in Clerkenwell and Lovett was appointed shopkeeper. The group bought goods from weavers, artisans and other working men and sold them cheaply to its members. By eliminating middlemen and ‘non-producers’ the Association aimed to pave the way for a restructuring which would place trade and industry under the control of labour. This never happened and the group did not prosper, Lovett eventually having to resign when his salary was reduced due to substantial losses. This group was in effect a forerunner of the Rochdale Co-operative Association of 1844.

During this time Lovett was increasingly politically active. Giving speeches advocating economic co-operation and writing essays for working class newspapers. In the early 1830s he was involved in the battle to remove stamp duty from newspapers, this had been imposed in 1712. Working-class and middle-class reformers argued that this tax prevented cheap periodicals and newspapers from circulating, depriving working-men of the means of gaining political knowledge. Opposition to the tax (4d[2p] on a newspaper, 3/6d [17.5p] on adverts and a paper tax) took the form of drafting petitions to Parliament and the publication and sale of unstamped periodicals through a political network controlled by the National Union of the Working Classes and Others (NUWC). Lovett wrote occasionally for the Poor Man’s Guardian and other penny papers, and helped to distribute them. But his most important role was an administrative one. He held the positions of sub-treasurer and secretary of a ‘Victim Fund’ set up in 1831 to provide financial aid to the hundreds of vendors and publishers who were arrested and imprisoned for violating the stamp laws. In 1831 he also became the part-time secretary of the British Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Knowledge which had been founded in 1829, this was a short-lived organisation. In April 1832 he played an active part in organising the Third Co-operative Congress. By now political and educational goals were beginning to absorb an increasing amount of his time and energy.

In 1831 Lovett had opposed service in the Militia (for which names were drawn) on the grounds that he was not represented in Parliament. He did not have any voice or vote in the election of those persons who made the laws which compelled one to take up arms to protect the rights and property of others. Lovett encouraged others, through the medium of the penny press, to refuse to serve. Under the slogan ‘no vote, no musket’ this gained him some notoriety. He was fined £15 and refused to allow friends to pay this for him. His possessions were seized, including furniture he had made himself. His wife backed him in this, as she did in all things, sharing his interests and views.

In the late 1830s Lovett emerged as a major leader of reform. Through all of the campaigns with which he had been associated he never lost sight of his ultimate objective, universal suffrage. The London Working Men’s Association was formed in 1836 and William Lovett became its secretary. This group sent out missionaries all over the country, which helped to start related groups elsewhere. The most important manifesto of the Association was the petition to Parliament that became known as ‘The People’s Charter.’ Debated in public and drawn up by Lovett it advocated:

• Manhood Suffrage (that is – one man,one vote)
• The secret ballot
• Payment of members
• Annual Parliaments
• Equal Electoral Districts
• The abolition of property qualifications for Members of Parliament

All of these except annual parliaments, which we would not advocate today, have come to pass but in the 1830s such ideas were regarded as a direct threat to the established order. Lovett at first argued for Universal Suffrage but realised that there would be no chance of passing a bill advocating votes for women.

In May 1839 it was proposed to hold the General Convention of the Industrial Classes, known as the Peoples Parliament, in the Bull Ring at Birmingham, but the meeting was prohibited. The meeting was intended to further the aims of the Peoples Charter and gain support for the national petition. The Convention passed three resolutions of protest at this interference with the liberties of the people, these were drawn up by Lovett as Secretary and taken to the printers by another member, Collins. Both were arrested, charged with seditious libel and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. The Chartist petition was duly debated in Parliament and defeated by 235 votes to 46.

Lovett and Collins were released from Warwick Goal on July 25th 1840 and, after a public dinner, Lovett set off as soon as possible for Cornwall, his first visit since leaving nearly twenty years earlier. His friends had secured subscriptions to pay for his journey and support his wife and child in his absence. He was in a poor state of health. While in prison, Lovett had written, with Collins, a book Chartism, or a New Organisation of the People. Its chief object was to persuade Chartists to form themselves into a National Association having as its objective the erection of halls and schools for educational purposes. The establishment of libraries, printing of tracts, and the sending out of missionaries – all with the aim of fostering an enlightened public opinion in favour of the Charter.

On his return to London Lovett opened a bookshop on the Tottenham Court Road, but this, like his other business ventures, failed. He had some secretary-ships that paid a little and from 1849 earned his living by teaching. In 1843 he published a book Social and Political Morality, and he wrote many pamphlets including one in which he advocated that MPs should be chosen from competency lists based on public examinations. The National Association had managed to open a hall in Holborn in 1842, it started in debt and remained so. Most of a testimonial given to Lovett by friends in 1848 went in payments connected to it. A Sunday School was opened there in 1843 at which Lovett taught and in 1848 a regular day school was started under his supervision. From 1851 he did most of the teaching himself. The National Hall, and in consequence his school, closed in 1857, a heavy blow. Lovett taught at other schools afterwards and continued writing text books in elementary science. He had views on teaching far ahead of his time and his activities in teaching adults could be said to have anticipated the Working Mens College movement of the 1860s and the establishment of the Workers Educational Association in 1905. Lovett still remained a sound committee man and sat on the working class committee for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

In his later years Lovett’s health was poor, he suffered severe attacks of bronchitis. He died on the 8th August 1877 and was buried at Highgate, near the grave in which Karl Marx lies under a slab of Cornish granite. William Lovett left his wife, Mary, one daughter – also Mary, and a grand-daughter, Kezia. A second daughter had died in childhood. His mother had died in Newlyn in 1852, Lovett was able to be there, his second and last visit to Cornwall since leaving in 1821.

From an early age influenced by a desire to gain political and social justice William Lovett had become a leading radical. Born in unpromising circumstances in Newlyn in 1800 he rates five columns in the National Dictionary of Biography. Gammage, in his History of Chartism says of him that he was the ablest writer and best man of business among the London Chartists, and had a clear and masterly intellect and great powers of application, but he was suspicious of others and somewhat impracticable. Joel Weiner, in his biography of Lovett in the ‘Lives of the Left’ series, wrote that he had no sense of humour, was earnest, at times inflexibly so. He saw time as a precious commodity and eschewed frivolity, concentrating only on things he regarded as worthwhile. He describes Lovett as a strong-willed and decisive leader of disaffected working men, remembered as the man who put Chartism on the political map and as a leader in the struggle for adult education. William Lovett lived to see the Education Act of 1870 and, characteristically, to denounce its inadequacy. He is commemorated in Newlyn by a plaque which reads:

To the honoured memory of William Lovett. As a national leader in Social
Reform he suffered imprisonment for advocating liberties which we now
enjoy. 1800-1877.

Bibliography

Jim Batten, William Lovett {1800-1877) – A Cornish View (Old Cornwall Vol VIII. No 12)
John J. Beckerlegge, William Lovett of Newlyn: The Cornish Social Reformer (1948)
Michael Foot, ‘The Chartist William Lovett’, in Loyalists and Loners (Collins 1986)
Barbara Hammond, William Lovett (Fabian Tract No.199 1922)
William Lovett, Life & Struggles of William Lovett (G. Bell & Sons, London 1876)
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (Victor Gollanz 1963)
Joel H. Weiner, William Lovett, (Lives of the Left series, Manchester Univ. Press 1989)

The narrative of this text is copyright © Margaret E. Perry. Anyone wishing to reproduce this text should obtain permission from the author.

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