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Born: Kettering circa 1836, died: 1885
In the late 1860’s, Edwin Dadley
worked as a clicker in the shoe trade. He was critical of the Leicester
Co-op for poor auditing and a ‘grovelling view of co-operation,’ which did
not see beyond the provision of ‘bread and cheese.’ He believed that the
Co-operative movement should desire the moral, mental and social elevation
of the working classes. It should have “principles that recognise the
interests of capital and labour as one – principles uniting capital,
brains, hearts and heads, to lift men to their proper station, that teach
employers to regard their employees as their brothers, as men with hopes,
aspirations and like passions with themselves…” In the 1873, Dadley
was elected to the LCS board and was a member until 1877.
In 1872, Dadley was involved in
setting up a local boot and shoe co-operative. It had 120 members and was
about to set up in business when the proposal to establish up a C.W.S.
boot shoe works in Leicester was made. This was welcomed by Dadley and his
society and he then became John Butcher’s assistant at the C.W.S. works on
Duns Lane. On Butcher’s resignation in 1878, Dadley was appointed manager.
Whilst on business in Paris in 1885, he died suddenly and Butcher was
re-appointed. Dadley’s wife Anna (born circa 1838) was a member of the LCS
education committee and president of the Co-op Women’s Guild during the
1890s.
Sources: Midlands Free Press, 27th
November 1869, Leicester Co-operative Record, August 1885, Benjamin Jones,
Co-operative Production, 1894, Leicester Co-operative Society,
Co-operation in Leicester
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(Labour Party)
Dorothy Davis was a former teacher
and was a social studies lecturer when she was first elected to the City
Council in 1970. She was the last chairman of the education committee
before education was passed to the County Council. In 1972, she was one of
nine Labour councillors who rebelled over issue of Ugandan refugees. They
took issue with the ‘no room at the inn’ being approach taken by the
leadership of the Labour group. She was subsequently elected as a County
Councillor.
Sources: Valerie Marett,
Immigrants Settling in the City, 1987, personal knowledge
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Born: Ladywood, Birmingham, September 14th 1860,
died: 1953
 Frederic
Lewis Donaldson received his early education at
Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, where he was a
member of the Cathedral Choir. He later entered Merton College, Oxford, to
take Holy Orders. After having been ordained in 1884, he served in some of
the poorer London curacies, where he began a long and detailed study of
social questions to see how their solution could be united with the
Christian faith. He married the daughter of Alderman Eagleston of Oxford
in 1885, and after a year as rector of the colliery village of Nailstone
in Leicestershire, became vicar of St. Mark’s Church, Leicester in 1896.
Here, he initiated and supervised the painting of the sanctuary murals -
seven large canvas panels painted in oils by J. Eadie Read of Gateshead on
Tyne, depicting Christ as the Apotheosis of Labour. In a pamphlet
describing the murals, Rev. Donaldson wrote:
“The Church of St. Mark’s stands
in a town of 244,255 souls, of whom the greater number belong to what
are termed ’the working classes’. St. Mark’s is one of the chief working
class parishes of the town, and contains towards 15,000 souls. In this
parish there is represented much of the tragedy and pathos, shame and
horror of modern social conditions - infant mortality, child labour,
underpayment or sweating of men and women, decadence of physical life,
consumption and premature death....”
Rev. F.L. Donaldson was one of the
founder members of the Church Socialist League, and between 1896 and 1906
was chairman of the Leicester Branch of the Christian Social Union. He was
also editor of ’Goodwill’, a Journal of International Friendship, and led
a deputation of Church of England clergy in 1913 to the then Prime
Minister, Asquith, on the subject of women’s suffrage. But it as an
organiser and leader of the Leicester Unemployed March that he is
especially remembered.
Before the march, he wrote to Randall
Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, asking respectfully whether he
would receive a deputation of unemployed marchers at Lambeth, but the
request was refused. Donaldson replied in critical tones and the whole
correspondence was published, causing much comment and arousing public
opinion. Some believed that this later cost Donaldson the Bishopric of
Birmingham. In 1918, he was transferred from Leicester to the comparative
quiet of the countryside of Peterborough as rector of Paston within
Walton.
In Ramsay MacDonald’s first episcopal
appointment in 1924, he was made a canon of Westminster Abbey, where he
acted as President of the London Council for the Prevention of War in
1927, and Chairman of the League of Clergy for Peace from 1931-40. Canon
Donaldson steeped himself in the traditions and history of Westminster
Abbey, and when approaching his nineties could be seen piloting round
little groups of visitors who had no idea of his identity.
Sources: The Times, 8th
October 1953 (obit), Barbara Butler, Vicar of the Unemployed, 2005
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Born:
Oxford, circa 1862, died 1950
Before coming to Leicester, Louise
Donaldson was the first woman magistrate of the Soke of Peterborough.
Louise Donaldson was active in the National Union of Women Workers (later
known as the National Council of Women) She was also involved with the
formation of the Leicester Health Society in 1906. She was a member of the
Leicester & Leicestershire Women’s Suffrage Society and active in the
Women’s Labour League, becoming its president for 1914-15. Although she
did not enjoy domestic work and had a servant, it was her view that a wife
and mother should be paid directly by the state for her work to enable to
her to give more time to her family.
Sources: Barbara Butler, Vicar of
the Unemployed, 2005, census returns
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 Born:
13th June 1898, died: 12 December 1971 (Labour Party)
Terence Donovan served in France in
1917-18 in the Bedfordshire regiment and later joined the RAF. After the
war, he entered the legal profession and was called to the bar in 1924. In
1945, he was elected as MP for Leicester East and was later sent on the
British Government's legal mission to Greece in 1945. Following boundary
changes, he was elected for North East Leicester in February 1950.
However, by July he had resigned in order to become a High Court judge.
During 1960-63 he was Lord Justice of Appeal and during 1965-68 he served
on the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations.
Sources: Who Was Who 1971-80, Vol VII
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Born: c1903 (Communist Party)
Bill Duncan was communist activist
during the 1930s and 1940s in Leicester. He had joined the Communist Party
in 1922 in Scotland and become a full-time worker for the Young Communist
League. He was sent by the Party to the International Lenin School in
Moscow in 1929-30 The I.L.S. was established to train British Communists
for leadership positions, establishing a core of within the Party who
would always be loyal to the Soviet Union.
Bill Duncan was expelled from the
school for embezzlement. According to Dorothy Adams he came to Leicester
straight from Russia and was ‘full of it.’ (Russia) His daughter arrived
with him knowing no English worth speaking of. He tried to get back into
industry, but was thrown out of work every time he was discovered to be a
Communist. He was barred from being a delegate to the Trades Council from
the local AEU branch No 1, because of his membership of the C.P. He went
to London in the 1940s, got a job in management and left the party.
Sources: Leicester Mercury 20th
July 1938, Labour History Review April 2003, Forging the Faithful,
D.M. Adams interview, Leicester Oral History Archive 1983
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Born: 1852
Keythorpe Notts, died: 1912 (Secularist)
 The
Secularist shoemaker, Charles Eagle, was a
dominant figure in the Anti Vaccination League.
(along with Michael Wright and the Liberal MP Taylor) In May 1876, he and
Frank Palmer were jailed for ten days for disobeying the law on
vaccination. When they were released they went in a procession to the
Market Place and received a homage of 15,000 cheering townsmen. In 1887,
Charles Eagle was imprisoned again. By 1885, nearly 3,000 people were
awaiting prosecution under the 1871 Vaccination Act and on 23 March 1885
some 100,000 protestors processed from the Temperance Hall
to the Market Place where copies of the Vaccination Acts were burnt in
full view of the Mayor and Chief Constable of Leicester.
This demonstration led to a royal commission that
was appointed to investigate the anti-vaccination grievances as well as to
hear evidence in favour of vaccination. The commission sat for seven
years, hearing extensive testimony. Its report in 1896 concluded that
vaccination protected against smallpox, but as a gesture to the anti-vaccinationists
it recommended the abolition of cumulative penalties. A new Vaccination
Act in 1898 removed cumulative penalties and introduced a conscience
clause, allowing parents who did not believe vaccination was efficacious
or safe to obtain a certificate of exemption. This act introduced the
concept of the ‘conscientious objector’ into English law. Charles Eagle
was also a co-operator who had a long association with Equity shoes and
was a member of the Trades Council. He died of T.B.
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Born: Leicester c1822 (Framework knitter)
Joseph Elliott lived on Wharf Street
and in 1853, he was involved with George Buckby in the agitation against
frame rents. After the defeat of Henry Halford’s bill to abolish frame
rents, he and Buckby were
victimised by local employers and both emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1856.
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Born Middleton Cheney, N’hants 1820, died: August 1868 (Owenite
& Liberal)
 Thomas
Emery came to Leicester in 1833 with his family. His father was a maker of
knotted stockings and Thomas worked as a glove hand for 10-12 years. He
was studious and was known to sit at his frame with a book. He became a
supporter of Robert Owen and attended meetings, classes and discussions
run by the local Owenites. Although a supporter of universal suffrage, he
does not appear to have been a supporter of Thomas Cooper’s Chartists.
By 1850, he ran a bookshop at 148
Belgrave Gate. That year he published three essays as pamphlets on
education, crime and wages. In his pamphlet on education he argued for the
provision of compulsory, state secular education. In 1850, he was active
in support of Thomas Cooper’s progress union and, in 1852, he was one of
the founders of the Leicester Secular Society and its corresponding
secretary. However, according to his obituary “His history is of a self
made man. By slow degrees he made his way out of the labyrinth of darkness
and unbelief and attended services at the Great Meeting.” His
abandonment of Secularism may have been influenced by his second wife who
came from a clergyman’s family. She continued as a supporter of the
radical cause into the 1870s. He played a prominent part in the affairs of
the St. Margaret's select vestry, which had levied a church rate in 1836
and proceedings were taken against 21 dissenters who failed to pay. In
1837 the dissenters obtained control of the select vestry which for the
future declined to authorize the levy of a church rate.
In 1855, he became the
founding editor of the South Midlands Free Press and used the paper to
support the Liberal cause. In 1857, he acted as secretary to the public
meetings of the women of Leicester called by Anne Wigfield and Mary
Woodford to consider women’s rights.
In 1861, he was part of a delegation of ‘extreme Liberals’
who invited the radical P.A. Taylor to stand for Leicester and after his
election he remained in the M.P.’s confidence until his death. Emery gave
his support to the Northern cause against slavery during the American
civil war and was a member of the All Saints Open discussion group from
1849 until his death from heart disease. Emery was a figure whose politics
and background enabled him to be a bridge between those from a moral force
Chartist background and the Liberal Party. By ensuring that there was an
active radical wing to Liberalism in Leicester, he helped to garner
working class support for the Liberal Party
Sources: The Midlands Free Press, 22nd
August 1868 (obit), VCH, The City of Leicester (1958)
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© Ned Newitt Last revised:
June 28, 2011. |
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