Dan Chatterton (1820-1895) was – in his own words ‘one of the revolutionary type of workers for political and social advancement’. He was an opponent of what he called ‘priestcraft and kingcraft, two rascals who have ever gone hand in hand to cramp the brain’. He was a street-corner orator – a tenacious pamphleteer – and begetter of quite the most remarkable of late nineteenth century radical papers Chatterton’s Commune: the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher self-written, self published, self-printed and self-marketed and appearing roughly every three months over more than a decade.
This History Workshop podcast takes us in the footsteps of Dan Chatterton, who was born 200 years ago this year. Andrew Whitehead leads listeners around Chatterton’s London – beginning at the revolutionary Clerkenwell Green, through some of Chatterton’s favourite haunts in Holborn and Soho, and finishing at the British Museum – with readings from and about Chatterton along the way.
fantastic rescue work on a fascinating and neglected figure
Thank you for this. Old Chat is interesting because he is both a militant republican, malthusian, freethinker and a socialist. He straddled both camps which was unusual in the 1870s and 1880s.