William Johnson Fox

William Johnson Fox was a religious and political orator, born near Southwold, Suffolk.

He was trained for the Independent ministry, at Homerton College (then in London). He later seceded to the Unitarians, and in 1817 Fox became minister of a nonconformist congregation which subsequently went on to become the non-religious South Place Ethical Society.

In 1831, Fox bought the journal of the Unitarian Association, The Monthly Repository, of which he was already editor; for five years this was effectively the first ancestor of the Ethical Record, the Society’s current journal.

Among the causes with which Fox identified himself and the Society were the spread of popular education and the repeal of the Corn Laws. From 1847 to 1862 he intermittently represented Oldham in Parliament as a Liberal whilst remaining minister at South Place for several more years.

Also see…

• Wikipedia article on Fox
• History of South Place Ethical Society

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was one of the greatest figures in the American Enlightenment and the struggle for American independence.

He was born in Boston and was apprenticed to the printing trade — where he educated himself. He set up his own printing trade after a brief spell in Britain. He bought and ran the Philadelphia Gazette. He founded the Philadelphia library and in 1744 set up the American Philosophical Society.

He was an inventor and philosopher. He proved that lightning was electrical by a famous experiment with a key tied to a kite. He invented bi-focals and the water-harmonica.He was interested in education and civil liberties.

Between 1764 and 1775 he was representative of the American colonies in London. While there he encouraged Thomas Paine to visit America, an action which was to have lasting influence. Frankllin was, like Paine, a participator in the American revolution and played his part in writing the American Constitution.

Franklin was brought up as a Presbyterian, but became a deist. He respected religion but thought it had been corrupted. He wrote:

I believe in one God, the creator of the universe; that he governs it by his Providence; that he ought to be worshipped; that the most acceptable service we can render to him is doing good to his other children; that the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.

He later became more sceptical of religion and firmly believed in the separation of church and state. Such views were typical of thoughtful and educated people in the eighteenth century.

Today, Benjamin Franklin House, London where where he lived between 1757 and 1775, is open to the public as a museum.

See Also…

• Wikipedia biography of Franklin

Francis Sheehy-Skeffington

The Sheehy-Skeffingtons – the feminist and Irish nationalist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, her husband, the pacifist, suffragist and writer, Francis, and their son, Owen, a founder member of the Humanist Association or Ireland – were notable Irish atheists.

Hanna and Francis

Born into the Roman Catholic tradition and educated by Dominican nuns and Jesuits, Hanna Sheehy and Francis Skeffington had both already abandoned Catholicism and become avowed atheists when they married in 1903 (they took each other’s surnames as a sign of their shared commitment to gender equality).

When their son was born in 1909 they refused to have him baptised into the Catholic faith, making a public break with their religious backgrounds.

The Sheehy-Skeffingtons were founder members of the Irish Women’s Franchise League and Hanna was imprisoned twice for suffrage militancy in 1912-13.

During the Easter Rising of 1916 the couple were not directly involved in the fighting due to their pacifist principles, but Hanna provided the republican insurgents with food, while Francis formed a group of volunteers to try to stop the looting of businesses in Dublin.

It was while doing this that he was arrested and shot without trial. The officer responsible was court martialed, and a public enquiry followed, but no-one was ever brought to justice.

After Francis’s death, Hanna became more overtly nationalistic in her campaigning against British influence in Ireland, becoming a member of Sinn Féin and being jailed on several occasions for her republican activities. Her feminist activism also continued and she was heavily involved with the Irish Women’s Workers’ Union. She died in Dublin, aged 68.

Owen

Owen Sheehy-Skeffington studied at the École Normale Supérieure and became a lecturer in French at Trinity College, Dublin. After a spell in the Irish Labour Party, he was elected to the Seanad Éireann (Irish Senate) in 1954, after running as a liberal socialist independent.

He shared his parents’ atheism and, as well as being involved in the formation of the Humanist Association of Ireland, he sought to promote secular education in Ireland. He also led a long-running campaign to expose the abuse of children in institutions run by the Irish Christian Brothers and supported the efforts of victims to tell their stories.

Hanna, Francis and Owen are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

Also see…

• Discovering women in Irish history
• wwww.hannashouse.ie
• Review of ‘Founded On Fear’ by Peter Tyrrell

Stanton Coit on holiday. Image courtesy of Bishopsgate Library

Stanton George Coit co-founded the Union of Ethical Societies, which was the forerunner of the present British Humanist Association.

Coit was born in Columbus, Ohio. He studied at Amherst College, Massachusetts, 1879, and became an aide of Felix Adler who had founded the Society for Ethical Culture in New York in 1876.

He continued his studies at Columbia University, New York, 1881-2, and at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he obtained his D.Ph in 1885.

Neighbourhood Guilds – an instrument of social reform

Returning via London in 1885 he was evidently impressed by Toynbee Hall, which began in Commercial Street, Whitechapel, in 1883/4, with the aim of getting university graduates to undertake social work in deprived areas. On returning to New York he founded the ‘Neighborhood Guild’, now known as the University Settlement House, in New York City’s Lower East Side. He later (1891) wroteNeighbourhood Guilds: An Instrument of Social Reform.

London must have had a great impression on him since he soon returned, to open a Neighbourhood Guild in Kentish Town, and he remained for the rest of his life (marrying in 1898 and taking British citizenship in 1903).

London’s Ethical Societies

In 1888, he was recommended by Moncure Conway, who was returning to America, to succeed him as minister of the South Place Religious Society, and it was at this time that its name was changed to South Place Ethical Society, reflecting its change of philosophical viewpoint. He served in this role until 1891 when Conway returned.

Coit met F. J. Gould at a lecture in March 1889 on the Moral Instruction (La Morale Laïque) in French Primary Schools. He assisted Gould in setting up an East London Ethical Society in 1890 at a dancing saloon by Mile End Road, which in 1894 moved to a corrugated iron hall in Libra Road, Old Ford.

In 1894 Coit founded his own West London Ethical Society, set up a Moral Instruction League and began a journal The Ethical World.

In 1896 Coit and Gould helped to found a Union of Ethical Societies which, bringing together existing ethical societies in Britain, was the forerunner of the present British Humanist Association.

Ethical Church

After his naturalisation he joined the Independent Labour Party and stood as a candidate for Wakefield in elections in 1906 and 1910.

In 1909 the West London group purchased an old Methodist chapel in Bayswater, renaming it the Ethical Church. They embellished it with stained glass windows depicting Elizabeth Fry, Bernard Shaw and Saint Joan, and in 1923 a white column dedicated to their Platonic Ideals. Gould describes him in his 1923 autobiography:

Coit was a fair-haired American from Ohio, and he preached an admirable Humanist gospel in a happy alternation of smiles and hurricanes. At Bayswater, West London, he still flies the Ethical Church flag, and continues to exercise a breezy and hygienic influence on religious and social thought.

Coit was editor of the International Journal of Ethics 1893-1905, and wrote a number of books and pamphlets, including an Ethical Hymn Book (1905). He retired as leader of the Ethical Movement in 1935 to be succeeded by Harold Blackham, and spent his last years at Birling Gap, near Eastbourne.

See also…

• Wikipedia article on Coit

Viscount Morley

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn OM, PC was was Liberal Member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne 1883 – 1895 and later Montrose Burghs.

Sorry, this article hasn’t been completed yet.

Would you like to write it for us?

Humanist Heritage relies on contributions from users so if you’re interested in helping us please drop us a line.

Would you like to write it for us?

Humanist Heritage relies on contributions from users so if you’re interested in helping us please drop us a line.

Clement Attlee

Clement Richard Attlee was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955.

In 2004, he was voted the greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 professors organised by MORI.

Attlee’s ashes are buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, London.

Agnostic

Although one of his brothers became a clergyman and one of his sisters a missionary, Attlee himself is usually regarded as an agnostic.

In an interview he described himself as “incapable of religious feeling”, saying that he believed in “the ethics of Christianity” but not “the mumbo-jumbo”.

When asked whether he was an agnostic, Attlee replied “I don’t know”

See also…

• Wikipedia article on Attlee
• Portraits of Attlee at the National Portrait Gallery

Henry Brougham was a radical thinker and reformer who nevertheless was
able to work within the establishment.

A young Scottish lawyer

The son of Henry and Eleanora Brougham, landowners in Westmorland, he was born in Edinburgh, entered Edinburgh University at the age of 14, and while still a student presented a paper on light, to the Royal Society.

In 1800 he joined Edinburgh University’s faculty of advocates a body of independent lawyers who have been admitted to practise as Advocates before the Courts of Scotland.

In 1802 he and a few friends founded the journal Edinburgh Review. He developed radical political opinions and many of his articles dealt with social reform, and became politically influential.

Brougham wrote An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers.

London radicals and Member of Parliament

In 1803 he moved to London and became friends with a group of radicals that included Thomas Barnes, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, and Charles Lamb.

In 1807 he organised the Whigs general election campaign and in 1810 entered parliament via the pocket borough of Camelford controlled by the Duke of Bedford, a Whig aristocrat. He played an important role in making participation in the slave trade a felony.

In 1812 the Duke had to sell Camelford. Brougham stood as Whig candidate in Liverpool, a centre of the slave trade, but was defeated by Tory George Canning.

Defender of unionists

In August 1812 he defended thirty-eight handloom weavers who had been arrested by Joseph Nadin, Deputy Constable of Manchester, while trying to form a trade union. Their leader John Knight was charged with ”administering oaths to weavers pledging them to destroy steam looms” and the rest of the men were accused of attending a seditious meeting; all thirty-eight were acquitted.

Return to Parliament

In 1815 via another pocket boorough, Winchelsea, owned by Lord Darlington, Brougham reentered the House of Commons. Brougham became the leading spokesman for the radicals.

Peterloo Massacre

In 1819 Broughton blamed the Tory government and Manchester’s local magistrates for the Peterloo Massacre. He spoke out against the prison sentences imposed on Henry Hunt, John Knight, Samuel Bamford and the other organisers of the meeting at St. Peter’s Field.

Educational reformer

Brougham was actively involved in educational reform. He supported the Ragged Schools Union, Mechanics Institutes and founded the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1825-1848), and was associated with the formation of the University of London, 1828.

Brougham’s ideas on state-funded education were unpopular with the government and the education bills that he introduced to Parliament in 1820, 1835, 1837, 1838 and 1839 were all defeated.

House of Lords and parliamentary reform

In 1830 Brougham was given a peerage and became Lord Chancellor in Lord Grey’s new Whig government. Brougham, who had been arguing for parliamentary reform for over thirty years, played an important role in persuading the House of Lords to pass the 1832 Reform Act. He was also one of the main people behind the passing of the 1833

Anti-Slavery Act

Brougham lost office after the defeat of the Whigs in 1834, but remained committed to further political reform and helped Melbourne’s government pass the Municipal Reform Bill in 1835. A strong believer in equal rights for women, Brougham also played an important role in the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857.

See also

• Spartacus Education article on Brougham
• Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge article on Brougham

John Mackinnon Robertson was a journalist, secularist and Member of Parliament.

Born on the Isle of Arran. He learnt journalism in Edinburgh but soon settled in London, and worked in the Secularist Movement, editing the National Reformer after the death of Charles Bradlaugh.

He was MP for Tyneside from 1906 to 1918, and was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, 1911-15, and Privy Councillor.

With Bradlaugh’s daughter, Hypatia Bradlaugh-Bonner, he founded the Rationalist Peace Society 1910-1921.

Later in life he was involved with Leicester Secular Society, being for instance principal trustee of the Leicester Rationalist Trust.

His prolific writings cover a wide field: politics, economics, history, and comparative religion. Of particular rationalist interest are his works on history of freethought and on the mythical nature of Jesus.

See also…

• Wikipedia article on Robertson
• Rationalist Peace Society
• The critical liberalism of J.M.Robertson by C. R. Tame
• Leicester Secular Society article on Robertson

F.J. Gould

Frederick James (F.J.) Gould was an educationalist, councillor, secularist and humanist.

Born in Brighton but brought up in London, Gould became a chorister at Windsor, and a religious teacher, but left this comfortable position to teach in the East End of London where he tried to reform religious teaching.

He became involved with Charles Watts in the Rationalist and Ethical movements, and was appointed Secretary to Leicester Secular Society in 1899 where he stayed until 1908, during which time he was also
elected as a Labour Councillor.

He was particularly interested in moral lessons without theology for children, and was invited to give a series of model lessons in America (1911 and 1913-14) and in India, under Government auspices, in 1913.

After leaving Leicester Secular Society he joined the Positivist Church, first in Leicester, later in London, based on the teachings of Auguste Comte. But shortly after, in 1909, he was one of the first to adopt the term ‘Humanist’ in its modern sense. He wrote ‘The Life-Story of a Humanist’, published by Watts & Co, London 1923.

Gould also wrote a History of Leicester Secular Society and a biography of  Comte.

Also see…

• F.J. Gould papers at the Institute of Education