John Collins and his selfless desire to improve the plight of the working class by campaigning for political reform and the people's right to vote puts him in the select company of the leaders of the Chartist Movement.
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John Collins was born on 2nd December 1802 into a working class home on Navigation Street, in the heart of Birmingham, Warwickshire, England. Baptized at St Philip's Church on 2nd May 1803, he was the eldest of five surviving children of Joseph (a self-employed buckle-chaser) and Catherine 'Johnson' Collins - including James 1805-1873, Moses 1807-1827, Constance Catherine 1814-1820, and Thomas 'Johnson' Collins 1812-1888. Two other siblings died in their infancy.
On 3rd August 1821 John Collins married Hannah West in St Martin’s Church in the Bull Ring, Birmingham, and they had three children Joseph 1821-1891, Hannah 1824-1871, and John Jr 1827-1861. |
The number of males in the United Kingdom age 21 and above was about 7,000,000, out of which the number of registered electors was a little over 1,000,000 - and amongst them the suffrage was unequally distributed [Sketches of Reforms & Reformers, p 303, Henry B Stanton]. With approximately one-seventh of adult males entitled to vote it constituted an early form of Catch 22: the law needed changing to give working class men the right to vote, but working class men did not have the vote (or representation in parliament) to get the law changed accordingly. Needless to say women did not have the vote at all.
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Because of this, Collins learned to read and write at Sunday School, together with his own nightly efforts. Although unlikely, it's possible he may have attended a "dame school" a few hours a week.
Dame schools were at the very bottom of the school spectrum, usually run out of a woman's home for the benefit of children of tradesmen and artisans who had begun to understand the need for education. |
After completing his recognized apprenticeship, John Collins became a toolmaker and fitter at Joseph Gillot's steel pen factory whose original, start-up premises (making hand made pens) were located in a garret on Bread Street (now Cornwall Street) Birmingham - which is the same street where the Collins’ family lived. Gillot took out a patent in 1831 for making pens using tools and machinery (The Story of the Invention of Steel Pens). Although we cannot know for sure, it is entirely possible that John Collins helped set up the first presses for Gillot's emerging business.
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During the time of his apprenticeship, Coolins took an active part in the Sunday school connected with Lady Huntingdon's, and when he was about twenty-four he was appointed local preacher of the town and neighbourhood including a small church in Harborne near Birmingham.
George Jacob Holyoake (the well-known writer, newspaper publisher and self-proclaimed atheist who first coined the term 'secularist') recalled walking to the church, as a boy, with his friend John Collins - and sitting through Collins' long sermons! Horse drawn buses did not service Harborne until 1838, so Collins and Holyoake would have walked the three miles from Birmingham to the ancient parish church of Harborne. |
Until the latter part of the 19th century there was no free (and compulsory) public education system in England. The wealthy and upper classes had access to governesses or expensive private schools, but the masses could not afford it.
Sunday schools that provided text books and bibles gave working class families an opportunity to learn to read and write for free. Thanks to the charity of the Church of England and Sunday School teachers like John Collins thousands of children from poor and working class homes received a form of "education." |
As a result of Collins' religious beliefs, his political speeches were frequently peppered with scripture. He was opposed to violence, and after touring Scotland (which had some two dozen or more Chartist Churches by 1842) and his term in prison, Collins became greatly influence by Christian Chartism, which combined temperance, morality and religion with a strong dose of social reform.
Together with another "moderate" radical, Arthur O'Neill of Scotland, John Collins established a Christian Chartist Church for working class people on Newhall Street in Birmingham (opened on Dec 27 1840) where Collins served as deacon and pastor [Northern Star 27 Mar 1841]. Eventually, there were a reported two Chartist Churches as well as worship conducted in fourteen houses in Birmingham [Cork Examiner 8 Oct 1841]. One of the many arguments against suffrage for the working class was their ignorance. Collins and O'Neill believed the Chartist Church, with its emphasis on education and self improvement, would help pave the way toward political reform and working class equality, |
"Who had been the authors and writers for the press of this country? Almost always the middle and the higher classes; these men were notoriously ignorant of the opinions and feelings and habits of the working classes. Who knew anything of the history of the working classes? Some books had been published with some pretensions of the kind; but they really contained nothing at all to the purpose; and he should not be surprised if a good history of the working classes should one day be published by one of themselves, and which would really deserve its title.
"Then, again, if there was any good thing done by any of the middle classes, it appeared in all the newspapers. If any of them gave a few pounds for a charitable purpose, everybody was sure to hear of it; but nobody heard of the kindly sympathies of the working man, for his unfortunate brother, when he sat whole nights by his sick bed, or when he clothed his ragged children, and shared his hard crust with his family. All this was done privately, and no noise was made about it, and therefore there was no idea on the part of the middle classes, that working men possessed any feeling or humanity. Thus all the good was attributed to the middle classes, and all the bad to the working classes." |
Industrial Revolution
The 1830s were called "The Times of Trouble" with good reason. The Industrial Revolution which began in Britain in the late 1700s brought about tremendous change and growth to Birmingham - and not always for the better. New inventions and equipment changed the face and pace of manufacturing. Whereas before people worked from home or in small shops (sometimes referred to as the cottage industry) putting out limited quantities of hand made goods, now they - and the country folk who migrated in droves from rural communities into towns - joined assembly lines in smoke-spewing factories producing a proliferation of goods on special machines. |
The Changing Landscape
Huge coal deposits in the nearby "Black Country," to the north and west of Birmingham, provided the necessary energy to drive the iron foundries and steel mills whose towering infernos turned the nighttime sky into a firey glow. Improved transportation opened up new markets. In Birmingham, as in other industrial centres, row upon row of cheap, back-to-back housing provided squalid accommodation for the massive influx of factory workers. The lower class poor struggled to survive in the slum-filled town with its dirt and pollution, and the upper and middle classes moved out to respectable areas and clean country air. |
Fellow Slaves
Collins equated the plight of working men (whose employers dehumanized them as "hands" or "labourers") with that of "white slavery," and in fact he was an abolitionist, along with such men as William Lovett. It was not unusual for Collins to address working men attending his meetings as "fellow slaves," and once, when speaking at a Chartist rally, Collins declared that the existence of slavery was the only stain on America's character, but that it did not come about from her own democratic institutions being a leftover of British rule. |
Explosion of Birmingham's Population
1648 5,472 1700 15,032 1750 24,000 1801 73,000 approx 1831 142,251 1841 182,922 1851 232,841 1871 342,505 [Population Statistics: Revolutionary Players maintained by West Midlands History] www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk.about-us/
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This then was industrialization, and making a profit was central to everything. "It was the best of times, and the worst of times!"
The wealthy manufacturers and property owners grew rich at the expense of the working class poor who worked long hours and earned a pittance. Women and children endured deplorable conditions in factories and down the mines. In the image opposite of a grim subterranean mineworks, notice the harness and chain between the child's legs pulling a trolley full of coal. |
Collins hit the nail on the head when he once said, "Every interest was represented in the Legislature save and except the interest of the people. The church, the bar, the landed and monied interests, and all these interests flourished."
He went on to say: " Jack says to Tom, 'Will you assist me to pass this bill for the landed interest?' 'Certainly,' says Tom, 'if you will assist me in passing the other bill for the monied interest.' Jack attends to Tom's request, and Tom attends to Jack's, and between them the people are victimized." |
However, The Great Reform Bill with its promise of change to the political system actually did little or nothing for the lower classes of society.
There was a semblance of reform in that so-called "Rotten Boroughs" were removed, new towns were given the right to elect Members of Parliament, and those men who owned and occupied property worth at least £10 (or rented property worth £10) were given the right to vote. Such men who qualified for the franchise through 1832 Reform Act became known as the "ten pound voters." Essentially, the franchise was extended to the middle class who qualified due to their financial and propertied status. The working class poor - which the Reform Bill was supposed to help - were left out in the cold along with a growing sense of discontent. That discontent was echoed in the words of the Yorkshire activist Abraham Hanson when he said the working class "were nothing in a political sense but the mean slaves and serfs of the aristocracy of the land and the aristocracy of the spindle." |
To add insult to injury the government introduced the draconian Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Its purpose was to cut funding for the poor thereby encouraging people to work and deterring malingerers from seeking help. The reality of it was it penalized and stigmatized the truly unemployed and destitute families. Those paupers who did apply for help were treated like common criminals, being separated from family members and forced to live and work in the grim and dreaded workhouse or poor house.
Workhouses became crammed with people sleeping eight to ten, head to foot, in one bed. It was that or starve to death. Not unnaturally, workhouses (also called the "New Bastilles") were perceived as a kind of prison. But perhaps most of all, the humiliating 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act served to exacerbate the brewing social discontent among the mass of working class people. |
On 16 June 1837, with some 8,425 newly enrolled members, the council of the BPU agreed they should petition the Houses of Parliament for repeal of certain money laws as well as five demands: household suffrage, voting by ballot (as opposed to a show of hands), triennial parliaments, the abolition of property qualifications for Members of Parliament and a wage of attendance for MPs. [The Chartist Movement, Mark Hovell]
In their previous life the BPU council consisted a group of middle class businessmen with a deep rooted currency agenda. They, especially their leader Thomas Attwood, believed that unlimited paper money would solve the country's social misery. The BPU represented the working class even though none of that class was amongst its leaders. This time around they knew they had to do things differently, except they never quite learned from past mistakes and they began by electing yet another council made up of wealthy businessmen!
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Newhall Hill - 19th June 1837
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It was a warm summer day when the procession set off from the Bull Ring, and by the time it reached Bennett's Hill the whole of New Street from the Town Hall to the High Street was one dense mass of people. Then it was onto Newhall Hill, which was the place of previous mass meetings.
33 year old John Collins would have been in that crowd of 50,000. He, and the cheering crowd, would have heard Union leaders talk of uniting 'two million men' in support of a National Petition for political reform, and if all else failed hints of a possible general strike! (Birmingham Journal 24 June 1837). |
John Collins Elected to the Council of the Birmingham Political Union
On 4th July 1837, two weeks after the Newhall Hill revival, John Collins was present when the BPU council met in the Birmingham Town Hall. Their first order of business was a proposed letter of condolence to the Dowager Queen Adelaide on the death of the King and praise for the conduct of the new, young Queen Victoria.
The council's last order of business was the election of John Collins of Bread Street to the council, which broke with tradition and made him the first working class man to sit on the council of the Birmingham Political Union. It was a good move for the BPU and the ensuing Chartist Movement in that it brought on board a working class "disciple" who turned out to be a man of exceptional character and speaking skills. Thus began the Age of Victoria - and John Collins' radical career. He was re-elected to the BPU council the following year. |
Approaches (in June and October 1837) made by the BPU leaders to the Premier Lord Melbourne and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Mr Rice regarding the people's grievances and the BPU's old agenda of currency reform were ignored by those two government men. Thomas Attwood proved to be an absentee figurehead of the Birmingham Political Union spending most of his time in London, and to cap it all membership in the newly revived BPU began to fall off as it became clear the Union alone did not have (and possibly never did have) the guns and ammunition to win a fight in the national arena.
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Meanwhile, in London and the provinces Working Men's Associations were formed in 1837, and the Birmingham Men's Memorial Committee (Collins chaired their fund raising wing) threw in their lot with the BPU. Speaking at a town meeting of the two organizations in October 1837 to discuss distress in Birmingham, Collins issued a warning of a point beyond which it was not right for the government to oppress the working people. [Chartist Experience, J Epstein & D Thompson]
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In early 1838, at a meeting of the Birmingham Political Union, John Collins told his fellow council members he had visited working class families on one street in the town, and out of some fifty families only one was living in relative comfort.
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