William Benbow

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title: "William Benbow" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1787-births", "1864-deaths", "english-christian-religious-leaders", "chartists", "prisoners-who-died-in-england-and-wales-detention", "english-people-who-died-in-prison-custody", "people-from-middlewich", "publishers-(people)-from-london", "19th-century-english-businesspeople"] description: "English preacher, pamphleteer, pornographer and publisher" topic_path: "people/1780s" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Benbow" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary English preacher, pamphleteer, pornographer and publisher ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/William_benbow_punch.JPG" caption="Punch]]'' magazine, 1848"] ::

William Benbow (1787 – 1864) was a nonconformist preacher, pamphleteer, pornographer and publisher, and a prominent figure of the Reform Movement in Manchester and London. He worked with William Cobbett on the radical newspaper Political Register, and spent time in prison as a consequence of his writing, publishing and campaigning activities. He has been credited with formulating and popularising the idea of a general strike for the purpose of political reform.

Early life, religion and family

Benbow was born on 5 February 1787 in Middlewich, Cheshire, son of William Benbow, shoemaker, and his wife Hannah (née Chear). His early employment history is unknown, but McCalman describes him as an ex-soldier. By 1808 he was preaching Nonconformist sermons in the Newton area of Manchester, and evidence suggests he may have been a Quaker. When interviewed in Chester gaol in 1841, where he was serving a sentence for sedition, he described himself as a married shoemaker with three sons, and gave his religion as Baptist.

Publishing and political activism

Benbow attended political meetings in London during 1816 as a delegate of one of the Lancashire Hampden Clubs, and became interested in Spenceanism. according to the memoirs of the Manchester radical Samuel Bamford, who also spent several months in the Coldbath Fields Prison in London and petitioned Parliament unsuccessfully for redress.

To support himself and his radical activities, Benbow worked as a printer, publisher and bookseller, and also as a coffee house proprietor. In addition to political texts, he also produced pirated editions of other works, and pornography – around 1818 he employed the young William Dugdale who went on to become one of London's most notorious publishers of obscene and pornographic material. He was closely linked to the writer and publisher George Cannon, printing and marketing a number of his works and translations, and it has been suggested that some of the writings published under Benbow's name may have been written by Cannon.

In 1822 Benbow published an edition of Lord Byron's Don Juan, and also an edition of William Lawrence's controversial The Natural History of Man (1819), which had lost its copyright protection when deemed blasphemous by the Lord Chancellor. A heated exchange with the then Poet Laureate Robert Southey, who objected to Benbow's unauthorised reprinting of parts of his early poem Wat Tyler, prompted a response in the form of a pamphlet entitled A Scourge for the Laureate in which Benbow drew a pointed contrast between the radical sentiments of the early poem and Southey's later role within the establishment.

In 1832 he published Crimes of Clergy, a collection of his own articles highly critical of Church of England ministers. The articles had previously been published individually, and one, dated May 1821, gives its place of composition as King's Bench Prison. In early July 1821 Benbow's MP, John Cam Hobhouse, had raised the case of Benbow's imprisonment in Parliament, requesting the Attorney General to investigate the matter.

The Grand National Holiday

On 28 January 1832 Benbow published a pamphlet entitled Grand National Holiday and Congress of the Productive Classes. He had joined the National Union of the Working Classes in 1831, and his coffee house and beer shop at 8 Theobalds Road, otherwise known as the Institution of the Working Classes, became the focus for the Union's activities. Benbow was a regular, high-profile speaker at its gatherings at Blackfriars Rotunda, where he advocated direct and even violent action for political reform, and in particular his idea for a "national holiday" and "national convention". By this he meant an extended period of general strike by the working classes, which would be a sacred or holy action (hence "holy-day"), during which time local committees would keep the peace and elect delegates to a national convention or congress, which would agree the future direction of the nation. In his pamphlet Benbow drew parallels between his plan and the ancient Jewish Jubilee year, which embraced concepts like forgiveness of debt and redistribution of land. The striking workers were to support themselves with savings and confiscated parish funds, and by demanding contributions from rich people. Benbow briefly edited published a newspaper, the Tribune of the People, whose subject-matter was the topics to be included in the congress, but it was discontinued after just three issues. In April 1832 he was arrested again, along with James Watson and William Lovett, for his involvement in planning a Chartist parade and "general feast" He was tried and acquitted the following month.

Benbow's popularity waned for a time after the passage of the Reform Bill, but his idea of a Grand National Holiday or "sacred month" was adopted by the Chartist Congress of 1839, Benbow having spent time in Manchester during 1838–9 promoting the cause and his pamphlet. The month was scheduled to begin on 12 August, but on 4 August Benbow was arrested for seditious libel along with George Julian Harney, for campaigning to persuade workers to participate. The Chartists called off the strike. Benbow spent eight months on remand. At his trial, in Chester in April 1840, he spoke for over ten hours in his own defence, but was convicted and sentenced to sixteen months imprisonment.

References

References

1. {{usurped
2. Carpenter, Niles. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1884099 William Benbow and the Origin of the General Strike]. ''The Quarterly Journal of Economics'', Vol. 35, No. 3 (May, 1921), pp. 491-499. Oxford University Press
3. Kent, Gary, 'Tom Paine's Grave-Robber Ends His Days in Sydney', ''History'', Magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society, March 2015, no 123, pp 11-14
4. (2004). "Benbow, William (1787–1864), radical and publisher".
5. McCalman, Iain. (1988). "Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London 1795-1840". Cambridge University Press.
6. Prentice, Archibald. (1851). "Historical sketches and personal recollections of Manchester". C. Gilpin.
7. "Chartist Prisoners, January 1841". www.chartists.net.
8. Bamford, Samuel. (1843). "Passages in the Life of a Radical".
9. Ruter, A. J. C.. (April 1940). "Willam Benbow as Publisher". Bulletin of the International Institute of Social History.
10. Fisher, David R.. "HOBHOUSE, John Cam (1786-1869).". History of Parliament Trust.
11. "Institution of the Working Classes". University College London.
12. Linton, W. J.. "James Watson". Abel Heywood & Sons.
13. Beer, M. (1921). "A History of British Socialism". G. Bell & Son.
14. William Benbow, his wife and son George emigrated to Australia around 1853. He died in Sydney on 24 February 1864.Kent, Gary, 'Tom Paine's Grave-Robber Ends His Days In Sydney', ''History'', Magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society, March 2015, no 123, pp 11-14;

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