Highgate Cemetery #13: Edward Truelove

'IN MEMORY OF
EDWARD TRUELOVE
PUBLISHER.
BORN OCTOBER 29TH 1809,
DIED APRIL 21ST 1899,
IN HIS NINETIETH YEAR.

 

REGARDLESS OF OBLOQUY, SUFFERING AND
WORLDLY LOSS, HE BATTLED BRAVELY THROUGHOUT
A LONG AND TROUBLED LIFE TO MAINTAIN THE RIGHT

OF FREE SPEECH AND FREE THOUGHT.'

 

Edward Truelove was a radical publisher who followed Robert Owen and worked for a year at Owen's utopian community, New Harmony, in Indiana. His first bookshop was in the Strand in 1852, followed by another in Holborn. Although he escaped prosecution for blasphemy (for publishing W. E. Adams's Tyrannicide), he spent four months in prison for publishing Owen's son Robert Dale Owen's Moral Physiology, concerning contraception.

Highgate Cemetery #12: Ernestine Rose

'ERNESTINE L. SUSMOND
POTOWSKI ROSE
WOMENS RIGHTS AND ANTI-SLAVERY ADVOCATE,
FREETHINKER
B. JAN 13 1810 D. AUG 4 1892

 

WILLIAM ELLA ROSE
SILVERSMITH, REFORMER, FREETHINKER
B. 1813 D. JAN 31 1882'

Ernestine Rose (née Polowski) was born in Russian Poland and was sixteen when her mother died and her father married her to a friend of his, although she rebelled, journeyed to the civil court and successfully had the marriage annulled. When she returned home her father had married a girl the same age as her. She left home and travelled to several countries before finding support for her feminist and atheist ideas in England with Robert Owen, who encouraged her to lecture.

Her marriage to William Ella Rose was by a civil magistrate and they emigrated to the US in 1836, where they became American citizens, Ernestine continuing to lecture and meeting opposition because of her atheism. She won the support of, among other people, Susan B. Anthony. The Roses returned to England in 1869.

Ernestine Rose's work is collected in Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women's Rights Leader (2008), edited by Paula Doress-Worters.

Robert Owen, and the Reformers' Memorial, Kensal Green, London

The cenotaph to Robert Owen, who was buried in Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Wales, is fittingly at the side of the Reformers' Memorial.

'ROBERT OWEN

PHILANTHROPIST

BORN MAY 14TH. 1771.

DIED NOVR. 17TH. 1858.'

'1879

ERECTED BY SUBSCRIPTION

IN MEMORY OF

ROBERT OWEN

OF NEW LANARK,

BORN AT NEWTOWN, N. WALES 1771.

HE DIED AND WAS BURIED

AT THE SAME PLACE 1858,

AGED 87 YEARS.

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HE ORIGINATED AND ORGANIZED INFANT SCHOOLS, HE SECURED A REDUCTION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN FACTORIES. HE WAS A LIBERAL SUPPORTER OF THE EARLY EFFORTS IN FAVOUR OF NATIONAL EDUCATION AND LABOURED TO PROMOTE INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION. HE WAS ONE OF THE FOREMOST ENGLISHMEN WHO TAUGHT MEN TO ASPIRE TO A HIGHER SOCIAL STATE BY RECONCILING THE INTERESTS OF CAPITAL AND LABOUR. HE SPENT HIS LIFE AND A LARGE FORTUNE IN SEEKING TO IMPROVE HIS FELLOW MEN BY GIVING THEM EDUCATION, SELF-RELIANCE AND MORE WORTH.

                          HIS LIFE WAS SANCTIFIED BY HUMAN AFFECTION AND LOFTY EFFORT.

                                                                     J. W.CORFIELD'

'MR. OWEN'S WRITINGS.

–––––––––––––––––

REPORT TO THE COUNTY OF LANARK.

NEW VIEWS OF SOCIETY.

TWELVE LECTURES.

LECTURES ON MARRIAGE.

LECTURES ON A NEW STATE OF SOCIETY.

THE BOOK OF THE NEW MORAL WORLD.

SIX LECTURES AT MANCHESTER.

MANIFESTO OF ROBERT OWEN.

SELF SUPPORITNG HOME COLONIES.

LETTERS TO THE HUMAN RACE.

REVOLUTION IN MIND AND PRACTICE.

ROBERT OWEN'S JOURNAL.

LIFE OF ROBERT OWEN.'

The Reformers' Memorial, which contains a great number of names.

'THIS MEMORIAL

IS RAISED AS A TOKEN OF REGARD TO THE

BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN WHOSE NAMES IT BEARS BY JOSEPH W. CORFIELD,

AUGUST 1895.'

'THE REFORMERS' MEMORIAL

ERECTED TO THE GLORY OF MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE GENEROUSLY GIVEN THEIR TIME AND MEANS TO IMPROVE THE CONDITIONS AND ENHANCE THE HAPPINESS OF ALL CLASSES OF SOCIETY. THEY HAVE FELT THAT A FAR HAPPIER AND MORE PROSPEROUS LIFE IS WITHIN THE REACH OF ALL MEN, AND THEY HAVE EARNESTLY SOUGHT TO REALIZE IT. THE OLD BRUTAL LAWS OF IMPRISONMENT FOR FREE PRINTING HAVE BEEN SWEPT AWAY AND THE RIGHT OF SELECTING OUR OWN LAW MAKERS HAS BEEN GAINED MAINLY BY THEIR EFFORTS. THE EXERCISE OF THESE RIGHTS WILL GIVE THE PEOPLE AN INTEREST IN THE LAWS THAT GOVERN THEM, AND WILL MAKE THEM BETTER MEN AND BETTER CITIZENS.'

A great number of people are mentioned on the monument, and among them are:

Robert Owen (New Lanark), John Bellars, Robert Dale Owen, Abraham Combe, Joseph Lancaster, William Thompson, John Minter Morgan, William Pare, William Galpin, Henry Travis, MD, Alex Campbell, James Rigby, W. D. Saull, Julian Hibbert, Rev. Charles Kingsley, Lady Noel Byron, Francis Wright, Thomas Spence, Allan Davenport, Mary Hennell, Francis Place, Harriet Martineau, George Odger, Elizabeth Fry, Sarah Martin, Mary Carpenter, Benjamin Flower, Henry Fawcett, Barbara Bodichon, Maria Grey, Arnold Toynbee, W. K. Clifford, Edward T. Craig, C. Dobson Collet, Charles Bradlaugh, Richard Congreve, William Morris, John Ruskin, F. Power Cobbe, Herbert Spencer, Hodgson Pratt, Francis Newman, Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler, Anna Swanwick, C. Jacob Holyoake, J. Kells Ingram, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Paine, William Hone, John Stuart Mill, Major Cartwright, Richard Carlile, William Lovett, William Carpenter, John Frost, William Cobbett, W. J. Fox, Richard Moore, William Howitt, Samuel Bamford, Henry Hunt, George Thompson, David Williams, Thomas Wooller, Ebenezer Elliott, Ernest Jones, Alex Macdonald, Richard Cobden, Robert Cooper.

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Robert Owen in Manchester

Robert Owen, Manchester

This statue of the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen (1771–1858) stands outside the Co-operative building at the corner of Balloon Street and Corporation Street, Manchester. It was sculpted by Gilbert Bayes and is a copy of the one erected in Newtown, Montgomeryshire – where Owen was born - in 1956. It was commissioned by the Co-op plc.

'THIS STATUE WAS UNVEILED ON 28TH MAY 1994 BY HUGHIE TODNER

PRESIDENT OF THE 1994 CO-OP CONGRESS

IN THE PRESENCE OF

THE LORD MAYOR OF MANCHESTER CLLR. SHEILA SMITH

THE LEADER OF THE CITY COUNCIL CLLR. GRAHAM STRINGER

THE MAYOR OF NEWTOWN CLLR. DAVID PUGH

THE CHAIRMAN OF THE CO-OPERATIVE BANK TOM AGAR

THE MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE CO-OPERATIVE BANK TERRY THOMAS'

This is a link to the Robert Owen Museum in Newtown, and the website also contains a great deal of information about Owen, including his Manchester years, and there are a number of excerpts from his writings.