W hen I first entered London, one Saturday evening in 1842, I was not known personally to half a dozen persons in it. On reaching the office of the Oracle of Reason, I found an invitation (it was the first I received in the metropolis) from Richard Carlile to take tea with him on the next afternoon at the Hall of Science. There was no name known to me in London from whom an invitation could have come which I should have thought a greater honour. The conversation at table was directed to advising

Richard Carlile was born in Ashburton, Devonshire, December 8, 1790. He was but four years of age at the death of his father. He early felt his father’s ambition. Before he was twelve years of age, he determined to be something in the world, and afterwards his unexpressed ideas were ever at work and accumulating. His dreams by night, and his thoughts by day, all worked one way, and vaguely contemplated some sort of purification of the church.(1) But how far he was from understanding the part he

In 1817 The Black Dwarf made its appearance, which was much more to Carlile’s taste than Cobbett’s Register , but as the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and Sidmouth had sent forth his Circular, there was a damp among the newsvendors, and few would sell. This excited Carlile with a desire to become a bookseller. The story of Lackington beginning with a stall encouraged him. He resolved to set a good example in the trade of political pamphlets. Finding the sale of the Black Dwarf very low, he bo

While others were calling Carlile ‘Atheist and Infidel,’ Place was calling him ‘the most, obstinately superstitious fellow alive;’ but always paid him the compliment of admitting that he was worth the trouble, and that if he could be set right he would keep right.(1) When Carlile’s days of thinking began, he began with himself. He knew himself well, and this was the source of his strength. Like Cobbett he could write always well of himself. His first study was to form a mind of his own on the ba

Carlile’s burial took place at Kensal Green Cemetry. He was laid in the consecrated part of the ground—nearly opposite the Mausoleum of the Ducrow family. At the interment, a clergyman appeared, and with the usual want of feeling and of delicacy, persisted in reading the Church service over him. His eldest son Richard, who represented his sentiments as well as his name, very properly protested against the proceeding, as an outrage upon the principles of his father and the wishes of the family. O

Mr. Grainger vindicated medical men from the charge of irreligion, and contended that medical and anatomical studies, if properly pursued, served to demonstrate the truth, not only of natural, but of revealed religion. The Lancet, No. 1,016, p. 774, February 18, 1843. Watson, Printer, 3, Queen’s Head Passage, Paternoster Row. ————...