One reason I find the Allday branch of my family particularly interesting to research is that they were well-documented (and opinionated) enough to offer glimpses of how the some of the momentous Regency-era political events they lived through impacted the lives of Birmingham folk like them and how they saw the world of Britain and its empire in the 1830s, so I thought the following might be of wider interest.
The Alldays were among those folk of the town who were heavily involved in the campaign that led to the voting Reform Act of 1832, as I’ve written about elsewhere on the forum. The Reform Act was preceded by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which restored the right of Catholics to sit as MPs and hold other public offices, and thereby contribute to the governance of the newly-formed UK. It was immediately followed by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. This succession of new freedoms for Catholics, for the non-landed classes of Britain and Ireland, and (eventually) for the enslaved folk of Africa in the Caribbean was no coincidence, but were the motivations of those who fought for each of these freedoms linked?
Here's an account of how a Birmingham family campaigned for voting reform, variously aiming to support their commercial and professional interests, and to assert ideas of religious supremacy, but accidentally helped to abolish slavery instead.
Connected Historical Events?
A couple of years back I discovered that my 4 x great grandfather John Allday had been a founding member of Birmingham Political Union in 1830, a group whose campaigning made a notable contribution to the passing of the 1832 act that reformed electoral representation and extended voting rights in the UK.
Having later family who ended up in Nigeria and Ghana, I’d also been reading about the history of West Africa, so intimately bound up with that of Britain and the West Indies, and was conscious of certain other momentous goings on of the time. The official launch of the BPU occurred in the year of the "Baptist Wars", a slave uprising in Jamaica that was soon to have a profound effect on the British abolition movement.
Though the influence of the slave economy on all sorts of aspects of C19th Britain has shown up from time to time in my family research, it's the Alldays who provide the first link to actual slave owners. John's youngest brother Francis was, in 1866, married into the Robinson family of Antrim. His curiously named father-in-law, Skeffington Robinson, had formerly been a "West India Planter", and appears in UCL's database as having claimed compensation for the loss of 200 slaves on Dominica (making him the leading villain of the family so far). This claim was made as a provision of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Noting that the abolition act came just a year after the major electoral changes of the 1832 Reform Act, it occurred to me to wonder what effect, if any, the Reform Act might have had on the Abolition Bill, and whether the cause of abolition influenced the campaign for electoral reform.
Motivations for Reform: Birmingham's Workshop Economy
I learned that the founding principle of the Birmingham Political Union was the vision of its leader, country banker Thomas Attwood. Attwood saw that Birmingham's growth around the iron industry was through the proliferation of small workshops, whose masters were not vastly richer than the 20 to 30 workers they typically employed, and the wild economic peaks and troughs of the past few decades had affected both classes in much the same way. When the prosperity of the working-class suffered, so did that of their middle-class masters, and vice-versa (this was notably different to the vast cloth mill economies of Manchester and Leeds, where the factory owners' riches were often made at the expense of their hundreds of workers)*.
* This is the view of Birmingham historian Asa Briggs, at least. I’ve encountered contrary points of view from other historians.
Attwood believed that the answer to Birmingham's precarious fortunes was currency reform - to detach the value of sterling from that of limited silver and gold reserves, and allow the banks to print more paper money. In so doing, the country could adjust the value of the pound in response to fluctuating economic circumstances, to even out the peaks and troughs, and provide a consistent stimulus to the workshop economy of Birmingham (much as 'quantitative easing' has been used by the Bank of England in recent years, I think). Attwood was well connected in London, and had been making this case to the prime minister - the Duke of Wellington - and others, for some years without success. Attwood was, however, able to put his vision very persuasively to the people of Birmingham, and believed that, in uniting the middle and working class to call for voting reform, he could take the decision out of the hands of the country aristocrats who dominated Westminster at the time, and empower those whose interests his currency reforms would serve.
As the owner of a wire-working workshop in Birmingham (making ornamental fireguards and suchlike), John Allday was exactly the sort of prominent small business owner who gathered around Attwood in the hope that their Union would bring the currency reform to secure their often precarious livelihoods.
Motivations for Reform: Catholic Emancipation vs Anglican Supremacy
John's brother Joseph also supported the BPU's reform campaign, celebrating and promoting it in his newspaper, the Birmingham Argus. Joseph's motivations were likely very different from his brother's, though. Joseph's writings in the Argus paint him as a zealous Anglican, who believed in the divine right of the Church of England, as represented by its followers and its head, the King, to rule the country. Likely intolerant of nonconformists, Joseph was a vehement opponent of rights for Catholics. Once a fervent supporter of Wellington's Tory government, when the latter passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, the Argus printed an edition in black livery with an obituary for the constitution, and Joseph joined the "Ultra-Tory" faction who split from Wellington's circle in protest.
John is perhaps less likely to have shared his brother's position of religious intolerance, having married my 4 x great grandmother, Jane Farquhar, and joined her nonconformist Scottish Presbyterian church.
Seeing voting reform as a means to getting the Catholic Emancipation Act repealed motivated Ultra-Tories like Joseph to support the BPU, and the leading member of the faction, the Marquis of Blandford became an honorary member.
While opponents of Catholic Emancipation supported the reform movement to further their aims of religious and political dominance, at the same time another group saw voting reform as a means to capitalize on their recently won freedoms: Catholics.
The Catholic communities of Ireland and Britain had both been under direct rule from Westminster since the creation of the United Kingdom in 1801. Thomas Attwood had in fact been considerably influenced by the tactics of the Catholic Association, and its leader, Daniel O'Connell, and their campaign to secure Catholic Emancipation. O'Connell went on to work closely with Attwood, and it was O'Connell who presented the BPU's reform petition to Parliament in 1831.
Though always committed to his principal goal of currency reform, Attwood was able to play the political chameleon in other regards, gaining simultaneous support from mutually opposed dissident groups.
Reformers and Abolitionists
Besides fighting for Catholic rights, O'Connell was also a renowned anti-slavery campaigner. In addition to O'Connell's association with Attwood, the prominent Quaker abolitionist of Birmingham, Joseph Sturge, also appears to have joined the BPU briefly in the latter stages of the reform campaign, but otherwise I haven't found significant links between abolitionists and the BPU in my research to date.
As for the Alldays, I've so far found no opinion for or against the British slave colonies attributable to John or Joseph (though Joseph was later critical of the eye-watering public cost of the slave owner’s compensation payments), and Francis Allday’s marriage into the Robinson family was yet to come. The only tenuous impression of an Allday family position I find on the matter ahead of the Reform campaign comes from elder brother Edward who in 1824, in his sideline as a theatre critic, published a glowing review of Thomas Morton's abolitionist musical, The Slave (soon to provide a leading role for Ira Aldridge, the celebrated African-American actor of the day).
My impression, then, is that, in Birmingham at least, the cause of abolition was not a major factor in the movement for voting reform. The results of the Reform Act were nonetheless to have a significant impact on the future of slavery in the Empire.
Continues...
The Alldays were among those folk of the town who were heavily involved in the campaign that led to the voting Reform Act of 1832, as I’ve written about elsewhere on the forum. The Reform Act was preceded by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which restored the right of Catholics to sit as MPs and hold other public offices, and thereby contribute to the governance of the newly-formed UK. It was immediately followed by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. This succession of new freedoms for Catholics, for the non-landed classes of Britain and Ireland, and (eventually) for the enslaved folk of Africa in the Caribbean was no coincidence, but were the motivations of those who fought for each of these freedoms linked?
Here's an account of how a Birmingham family campaigned for voting reform, variously aiming to support their commercial and professional interests, and to assert ideas of religious supremacy, but accidentally helped to abolish slavery instead.
Connected Historical Events?
A couple of years back I discovered that my 4 x great grandfather John Allday had been a founding member of Birmingham Political Union in 1830, a group whose campaigning made a notable contribution to the passing of the 1832 act that reformed electoral representation and extended voting rights in the UK.
Having later family who ended up in Nigeria and Ghana, I’d also been reading about the history of West Africa, so intimately bound up with that of Britain and the West Indies, and was conscious of certain other momentous goings on of the time. The official launch of the BPU occurred in the year of the "Baptist Wars", a slave uprising in Jamaica that was soon to have a profound effect on the British abolition movement.
Though the influence of the slave economy on all sorts of aspects of C19th Britain has shown up from time to time in my family research, it's the Alldays who provide the first link to actual slave owners. John's youngest brother Francis was, in 1866, married into the Robinson family of Antrim. His curiously named father-in-law, Skeffington Robinson, had formerly been a "West India Planter", and appears in UCL's database as having claimed compensation for the loss of 200 slaves on Dominica (making him the leading villain of the family so far). This claim was made as a provision of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Noting that the abolition act came just a year after the major electoral changes of the 1832 Reform Act, it occurred to me to wonder what effect, if any, the Reform Act might have had on the Abolition Bill, and whether the cause of abolition influenced the campaign for electoral reform.
Motivations for Reform: Birmingham's Workshop Economy
I learned that the founding principle of the Birmingham Political Union was the vision of its leader, country banker Thomas Attwood. Attwood saw that Birmingham's growth around the iron industry was through the proliferation of small workshops, whose masters were not vastly richer than the 20 to 30 workers they typically employed, and the wild economic peaks and troughs of the past few decades had affected both classes in much the same way. When the prosperity of the working-class suffered, so did that of their middle-class masters, and vice-versa (this was notably different to the vast cloth mill economies of Manchester and Leeds, where the factory owners' riches were often made at the expense of their hundreds of workers)*.
* This is the view of Birmingham historian Asa Briggs, at least. I’ve encountered contrary points of view from other historians.
Attwood believed that the answer to Birmingham's precarious fortunes was currency reform - to detach the value of sterling from that of limited silver and gold reserves, and allow the banks to print more paper money. In so doing, the country could adjust the value of the pound in response to fluctuating economic circumstances, to even out the peaks and troughs, and provide a consistent stimulus to the workshop economy of Birmingham (much as 'quantitative easing' has been used by the Bank of England in recent years, I think). Attwood was well connected in London, and had been making this case to the prime minister - the Duke of Wellington - and others, for some years without success. Attwood was, however, able to put his vision very persuasively to the people of Birmingham, and believed that, in uniting the middle and working class to call for voting reform, he could take the decision out of the hands of the country aristocrats who dominated Westminster at the time, and empower those whose interests his currency reforms would serve.
As the owner of a wire-working workshop in Birmingham (making ornamental fireguards and suchlike), John Allday was exactly the sort of prominent small business owner who gathered around Attwood in the hope that their Union would bring the currency reform to secure their often precarious livelihoods.
Motivations for Reform: Catholic Emancipation vs Anglican Supremacy
John's brother Joseph also supported the BPU's reform campaign, celebrating and promoting it in his newspaper, the Birmingham Argus. Joseph's motivations were likely very different from his brother's, though. Joseph's writings in the Argus paint him as a zealous Anglican, who believed in the divine right of the Church of England, as represented by its followers and its head, the King, to rule the country. Likely intolerant of nonconformists, Joseph was a vehement opponent of rights for Catholics. Once a fervent supporter of Wellington's Tory government, when the latter passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, the Argus printed an edition in black livery with an obituary for the constitution, and Joseph joined the "Ultra-Tory" faction who split from Wellington's circle in protest.
John is perhaps less likely to have shared his brother's position of religious intolerance, having married my 4 x great grandmother, Jane Farquhar, and joined her nonconformist Scottish Presbyterian church.
Seeing voting reform as a means to getting the Catholic Emancipation Act repealed motivated Ultra-Tories like Joseph to support the BPU, and the leading member of the faction, the Marquis of Blandford became an honorary member.
While opponents of Catholic Emancipation supported the reform movement to further their aims of religious and political dominance, at the same time another group saw voting reform as a means to capitalize on their recently won freedoms: Catholics.
The Catholic communities of Ireland and Britain had both been under direct rule from Westminster since the creation of the United Kingdom in 1801. Thomas Attwood had in fact been considerably influenced by the tactics of the Catholic Association, and its leader, Daniel O'Connell, and their campaign to secure Catholic Emancipation. O'Connell went on to work closely with Attwood, and it was O'Connell who presented the BPU's reform petition to Parliament in 1831.
Though always committed to his principal goal of currency reform, Attwood was able to play the political chameleon in other regards, gaining simultaneous support from mutually opposed dissident groups.
Reformers and Abolitionists
Besides fighting for Catholic rights, O'Connell was also a renowned anti-slavery campaigner. In addition to O'Connell's association with Attwood, the prominent Quaker abolitionist of Birmingham, Joseph Sturge, also appears to have joined the BPU briefly in the latter stages of the reform campaign, but otherwise I haven't found significant links between abolitionists and the BPU in my research to date.
As for the Alldays, I've so far found no opinion for or against the British slave colonies attributable to John or Joseph (though Joseph was later critical of the eye-watering public cost of the slave owner’s compensation payments), and Francis Allday’s marriage into the Robinson family was yet to come. The only tenuous impression of an Allday family position I find on the matter ahead of the Reform campaign comes from elder brother Edward who in 1824, in his sideline as a theatre critic, published a glowing review of Thomas Morton's abolitionist musical, The Slave (soon to provide a leading role for Ira Aldridge, the celebrated African-American actor of the day).
My impression, then, is that, in Birmingham at least, the cause of abolition was not a major factor in the movement for voting reform. The results of the Reform Act were nonetheless to have a significant impact on the future of slavery in the Empire.
Continues...
