William Cobbett and English Education in the Early Nineteenth Century

1964 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Osborne
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Education ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
William Cobbett

scholarly journals “The Great End of All Government…”: Working People's Construction of Citizenship Claims in Early Nineteenth-Century England and the Matter of Class

1995 ◽  
Vol 40 (S3) ◽  
pp. 19-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc W. Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Manual Labour ◽  
Working People ◽  
Parliamentary Reform ◽  
The Right ◽  
William Cobbett ◽  
A Share

In the heat of the battle for parliamentary reform William Cobbett preached to the working people of England in his inimitable blustery dictums. “[I]f you labour honestly,” he counselled, “you have a right to have, in exchange for your labour, a sufficiency out of the produce of the earth, to maintain yourself and your family as well; and, if you are unable to labour, or if you cannot obtain labour, you have a right to maintenance out of the produce of the land […]”. For honest working men this was part of the legacy of constitutional Britain, which bequeathed to them not only sustenance but, “The greatest right […] of every man, the right of rights, […] the right of having a share in the making of the laws, to which the good of the whole makes it his duty to submit”. Nonetheless, he warned, such rights could not legitimately negate the toiling lot that was the laborer's fate: “Remember that poverty is decreed by the very nature of man […]. It is necessary to the existence of mankind, that a very large proportion of every people should live by manual labour […]”.

The Preston Cock, Adultery, Homophobia and the First Petition for Female Suffrage

2021 ◽  
Vol 170 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
John Belchem
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Married Men ◽  
Mutual Conversion ◽  
William Cobbett

Originally spurred by determination to bring the Manchester authorities to justice in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre, Henry Hunt persisted in seeking to gain election for the popular constituency of Preston. Eventually successful in 1830, he entered parliament pledged to present every petition sent to him, including that from Mary Smith calling for female suffrage. Having provided a rational vindication of the rights of women, her petition descended into a diatribe against married men who indulged in homosexual acts to the despair of their suicidal wives. This was a thinly veiled reference to alleged goings on in the household of the radical journalist William Cobbett. This article seeks to place in context the allegations and subsequent heated controversy by examining the long-term relationship between Hunt and Cobbett, dating back to the early nineteenth century and their mutual conversion from loyalism to radicalism. Already strained by the longstanding animus of Cobbett’s wife towards Hunt on account of his adulterous domestic circumstances, the radical allies were increasingly at odds in the years after Peterloo, divided over political and personal issues in a bewildering and increasingly unrestrained manner. Jealous of Hunt’s electoral success at Preston and furious with his radical condemnation of the Reform Bill, Cobbett inveighed against the ‘Preston Cock’. Hunt responded in kind, repeating allegations soon taken up in Mary Smith’s petition. Historians have simply noted how the petition was greeted with derision, but as this article shows, it merits deeper study. An early milestone on the long journey to secure votes for women, Mary Smith’s petition reveals political, personal and sexual divisions in early nineteenth-century radicalism - over feminism, homosexuality and adultery - attitudes and prejudices which inhibited any decisive pre-Victorian advance beyond manhood suffrage. The article concludes with a postscript noting Hunt’s fall from favour as the Reform Bill was passed, losing his Preston seat in the first election under the new propertied franchise. He died shortly thereafter but was rehabilitated and revered a few years later by the Chartists. His presentation of the first petition for female suffrage has seemingly been lost from history.

The Schooled Voice: Sound and Sense in the Victorian Schoolroom

2015 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janice Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
English Education ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Effective Pedagogy ◽  
Speech Training ◽  
Education Discourse

AbstractThis article examines the vocality of teachers and schoolchildren in nineteenth-century English education discourse. Drawing on Andrew Bell’s model of the monitorial schools of the early nineteenth century, as well as the annual reports of the school inspectorate for the Committee of Council on Education, the article investigates the disaggregation of vocal sound and linguistic meaning in speech training and reading instruction in the writing of the mass schoolroom. Of particular interest is the development of notions of the teacher’s voice as a potentially powerful vehicle for the development of moral selfhood. Children’s speaking voices were understood as crucial indices of an effective pedagogy, something which the Revised Code of 1862 simultaneously enshrined and misrecognized.

William Cobbett: Patriot or Briton?

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 123-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The People ◽  
Parliamentary Reform ◽  
Post War ◽  
William Cobbett

Cobbett remains best known to historians and to a wider audience as one of the two or three major figures in the popular radicalism of the early nineteenth century: one of the leading actors in the agitations which eventually led to the Great Reform Act of 1832 and a persistent tribune of the people at a time of profound economic and social change. Fundamental to his influence and reputation was his career as a popular journalist, in his own time regarded as a phenomenon and capable of almost single-handedly turning the labouring poor from machine-breaking and insurrection into more peaceful and productive paths. Famously, Cobbett was envisaged in Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical as the instrument whereby the disturbances of the post-war years were channelled into parliamentary reform. Opening his account of 1816 with a great litany of riot, insurrection and distress, Bamford noted that it was also in 1816 that Cobbett wrote his Address to the Journeymen and Labourers, published in November 1816 as the sole contents of the first cheap edition of the Register, priced at twopence. Cobbett's linking of ‘our present miseries’ to the need for parliamentary reform had an immense circulation, reaching an estimated 200,000 within two months. Its effects were no less dramatic according to Bamford:… the writings of William Cobbett suddenly became of great authority; they were read on nearly every cottage hearth in the manufacturing districts of ‘South Lancashire, in those of Leicester, Derby and Nottingham; also in many of the Scottish manufacturing towns.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

Disease and Civilization: A Scottish Atlantic Network of Physicians in the Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
American Physician ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
A Current

Through an examination of the extensive papers, manuscripts and correspondence of American physician Benjamin Rush and his friends, this article argues that it is possible to map a network of Scottish-trained physicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. These physicians, whose members included Benjamin Rush, John Redman, John Morgan, Adam Kuhn, and others, not only brought the Edinburgh model for medical pedagogy across the Atlantic, but also disseminated Scottish stadial theories of development, which they applied to their study of the natural history and medical practices of Native Americans and slaves. In doing so, these physicians developed theories about the relationship between civilization, historical progress and the practice of medicine. Exploring this network deepens our understanding of the transnational intellectual geography of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century British World. This article develops, in relation to Scotland, a current strand of scholarship that maps the colonial and global contexts of Enlightenment thought.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document