Yorkshire Almanac Thomas Stewart, analytical chemist, and John Gott, author of Rib-ticklers for Parsons, are jailed for blasphemy at Leeds

5 December 1911: Thomas Stewart, analytical chemist, and John Gott, author of Rib-ticklers for Parsons, are jailed for blasphemy at Leeds

Times. 1911/12/06. Imprisonment for Blasphemy. London. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

IMPRISONMENT FOR BLASPHEMY.
At Leeds Assizes yesterday, before Mr. Justice Horridge, THOMAS WILLIAM STEWART, 28, analytical chemist, was indicted for blasphemy at Leeds on August 28.
It was stated that the prisoner was president of the Free Thought Socialist League and the British Secular League. In the course of speeches made in the Leeds Town Hall-square he said, “God is not a fit companion for a respectable man like me,” and made a number of other profane remarks.
The prisoner said he was being prosecuted under a moth-eaten statute. He quoted Lord Morley and other writers.
The prisoner was found Guilty. On being sentenced to three months’ imprisonment he said, “The sentence is worthy of your religion.”
At the same Assizes JOHN WILLIAM GOTT, 45, traveller, was charged with having published blasphemous libels against the Holy Scriptures in a pamphlet entitled “Rib-Ticklers,” or “Questions for Parsons.” He was found Guilty and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

WP:

His imprisonment produced a number of petitions in his support and an attempt in parliament to repeal the law on blasphemy. Gott was supported by a number of M.P.s. as well as the Conway Hall Ethical Society and many of its members and supporters like Frederick James Gould, William Thomas Stead, Chapman Cohen and George William Foote.[4]: 280 The proposed new legislation to replace the blasphemy law was supported by the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, but it failed to pass through parliament.[4]: 282

[…]

His final arrest was in 1921, initially for obstruction after selling birth control tracts and other material.[4] The charge was increased to blasphemy. At his last trial at the Old Bailey in London in 1921, he was found guilty, and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment with hard labour.[5] An appeal was lodged, supported by the National Secular Society; the Lord Chief Justice upheld the conviction. Giving the judgement at the Court of Appeal, Lord Trevethin C.J. said:

It does not require a person of strong religious feelings to be outraged by a description of Jesus Christ entering Jerusalem “like a circus clown on the back of two donkeys”. There are other passages in the pamphlets equally offensive to anyone in sympathy with the Christian religion, whether he be a strong Christian, or a lukewarm Christian, or merely a person sympathizing with their ideals. Such a person might be provoked to a breach of the peace.”[6]

By the time Gott was released, his weak health had been broken by the conditions of his imprisonment. He died on 4 November 1922, at the age of 56. Historian Edward Royle describes him as a “witty and attractive character” who became more “embittered” after the death of his wife.[4] He was buried at Scholemoor Cemetery, Bradford.

Unfortunately for this almanac, his 1921 conviction was based on offences committed in London while living in London – see The Times report on the appeal.

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Comment

WP:

His imprisonment produced a number of petitions in his support and an attempt in parliament to repeal the law on blasphemy. Gott was supported by a number of M.P.s. as well as the Conway Hall Ethical Society and many of its members and supporters like Frederick James Gould, William Thomas Stead, Chapman Cohen and George William Foote.[4]: 280 The proposed new legislation to replace the blasphemy law was supported by the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, but it failed to pass through parliament.[4]: 282

[…]

His final arrest was in 1921, initially for obstruction after selling birth control tracts and other material.[4] The charge was increased to blasphemy. At his last trial at the Old Bailey in London in 1921, he was found guilty, and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment with hard labour.[5] An appeal was lodged, supported by the National Secular Society; the Lord Chief Justice upheld the conviction. Giving the judgement at the Court of Appeal, Lord Trevethin C.J. said:

It does not require a person of strong religious feelings to be outraged by a description of Jesus Christ entering Jerusalem “like a circus clown on the back of two donkeys”. There are other passages in the pamphlets equally offensive to anyone in sympathy with the Christian religion, whether he be a strong Christian, or a lukewarm Christian, or merely a person sympathizing with their ideals. Such a person might be provoked to a breach of the peace.”[6]

By the time Gott was released, his weak health had been broken by the conditions of his imprisonment. He died on 4 November 1922, at the age of 56. Historian Edward Royle describes him as a “witty and attractive character” who became more “embittered” after the death of his wife.[4] He was buried at Scholemoor Cemetery, Bradford.

Unfortunately for this almanac, his 1921 conviction was based on offences committed in London while living in London – see The Times report on the appeal.

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11 July 1829: A Leeds Mercury subscriber asks why Christians do not seek to refute the claims of the Rev. Robert Taylor and Richard Carlile’s “infidel home missionary tour”

17 July 1844: Tory Radical Joshua Hobson tells Leeds council that Liberal mayor Hamer Stansfield was wrong to prohibit public meetings on the semi-privatised Kirkgate market

22 February 1865: Rioters besiege the Park Square, Leeds, home of surgeon and magistrate Henry Chorley, on the release from Armley Gaol of his dripping-thief cook Eliza Stafford

21 March 1890: Following a miners’ strike, an anonymous Yorkshire vicar says that only parliamentary reform will bring industrial peace

18 September 1858: The Spectator is bowled over by the new Leeds Festival chorus’s singing of the Messiah – “the music text-book of the West Riding”

18 July 1784: Wesley finds children “restrained from open sin” at one of the first Sunday schools, at Bingley

23 August 1933: John Betjeman witnesses the opening of the Leeds Civic Hall

26 October 1864: Martin Tobin confronts his ex-banker, William Beckett-Denison, regarding the bank charges levied on his account

27 August 1754: The (Tory) Leeds Intelligencer calls on Holbeckers to accept the appointment by Samuel Kirshaw, Vicar of Leeds, of a new curate, Richard Fawcett Snr, to St Catherine’s Chapel

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Comment

Via Roy Wiles (Wiles 1965).

Events

“Sunday last” is 25 August, but Fawcett managed to get in by 11 September:

On Wednesday last Mr. Fawcett for the first time performed Divine Service in the chapel of Holbeck, but was escorted to and from the chapel by a party of Dragoons, who kept guard at the doors during the service. Notwithstanding this precaution, some evil-disposed people found means to break the windows and throw a brickbat at Mr. Fawcett while he was in the reading- desk. The Sunday following he went through the service unmolested. And on Sunday last he preached a most excellent sermon, 46th verse of 13th chapter of Acts… The same night some prophane sacrilegious villains broke into the chapel and besmeared the seats with human excrements.

On 22 September he was able to conduct a reduced Sunday service in peace:

On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Fawcett was received and behav’d to by his congregation at Holbeck with great decency… One of Mr. F.’s friends admitted their favourite preacher to his pulpit in the town-by this means the tumultuous part of the people were mostly drawn away from Holbeck, and the curate left at liberty to perform his duty amongst the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants of the chapelry.

However, on 22 October we read that

In the night between the 16th and 17th inst., the windows of the chapel of Holbeck were again broken. No wonder, when Holbeck contains such a nest of vermin whom neither the laws of God or man can confine within the bounds of decency, etc.

For which John Robinson, a “Houlbecker,” was in November sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine of £5 (Griffith Wright 1895).

In the summer of the following year he published his first Sunday’s sermon and and his resignation letter. I think that in the following Fawcett is quoting things actually said to him:

A man might oftentimes, by due Care and Watchfulness, perhaps very safely defeat the Schemes, and discourage the Practices of the private Pilferer; and yet, whenever this is done, it is commonly suspected to be done rather for the Preservation of his own Property, than out of a pure Regard to the Public-good: But when he is attack’d in his house, or upon the road by open Plunderers, and requir’d to deliver, or suffer himself to be rifl’d of what he is possess’d of, with some one of these dreadful Alternatives, of having his Brains immediately blown out,” or their hands “wash’d in his hearts Blood,” or “having bis “Entrails pull’d out at his Mouth,” or “being “buried alive,” it will Then surely be accounted highly Romantic in him to reject their demands, out of a Pretence to prevent the bad Influence of their Example; and he will be generally suspected of giving a Proof of his Fool-hardiness or his Avarice, rather than of his public Spirit, by such a Refusal.

In the resignation letter he says that he

perform’d the Duty of the Curacy for near Three Months after he gain’d Admission into the Chapel, and this too, rather to prepare a Say for the peaceable Reception of any other Person whom the Patron shou’d think proper to nominate, that out of any Prospect of reconciling the People to himself.

Fawcett declines to attribute responsibility (“Who the Incendiaries were, the Sufferer neither Pretends to Know, nor Desires to be Inform’d”). He also explicitly excuses the lord of the manor, who at this juncture I take to be Lord Irwin (aka Henry Ingram, 7th Viscount of Irvine) rather than the Whiggish Scholey family, as well as other leading citizens (Fawcett 1755).

Was Fawcett a lousy preacher, or was the mob’s alternative, whoever he was, utterly adorable? Was there a Whiggish or Radical element at work? Was there some element of revenge for Samuel Kirshaw’s victory over James Scott in the struggle from 1745-51 for the vicarage of Leeds (Taylor 1865)? Perhaps you know.

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