"Were any persons struck with truncheons there? – Yes.
"Surely the police were armed with cutlasses? – I think I remember two being drawn as well; but I know some of them were struck with truncheons. I was struck with a truncheon myself, so that I am perfectly capable of remembering it.
"You were at Bonner's Fields? – I was.
"Mr Stuart Wortley. – Is there anything else that you wish to add? – Nothing.
"The witness withdrew."
In his "Autobiography"19 Mr Bradlaugh says: "I was very proud that day at Westminster, when, at the conclusion of my testimony, the Commissioner publicly thanked me, and the people who crowded the Court of the Exchequer cheered me… This was a first step in a course in which I have never flinched or wavered."
Before dismissing this Sunday Trading question altogether, I may as well notice here that in the succeeding year my father made a short humorous compilation of some of the more striking "English Sunday laws" for the Reasoner. I am ignorant how many of these are still in force, but I repeat part of the article here: as a trifle from my father's pen, it will be welcome to some, and in others it may, perhaps, provoke inquiry as to how many of these restrictions are binding (in law) upon us to-day.
"Travelling in a stage or mail coach on a Sunday is lawful, and the driver is lawfully employed. Contracts to carry passengers in a stage coach on a Sunday are therefore binding, but the driver of a van travelling to and from distant towns, such as London and York, is unlawfully employed, and may be prosecuted and fined 20s. for each offence; and presuming that the laws of God and England are in unison, the driver of the van will be damned for Sabbath breaking and the driver of the coach will go to heaven for the same offence.
"Mackerel may be sold on Sunday either before or after Divine service.
"There is no offence against the common law of England in trading or working on a Sunday; therefore the statutes must be strictly construed. If a butcher should shave on a Sunday, he would commit no offence, because it would not be following his ordinary calling.
"Persons exercising their calling on a Sunday are only subject to one penalty, for the whole is but one offence, or one act of exercising, although continued the whole day. A baker, a pastrycook, or confectioner, is liable to be prosecuted if selling bread or pastry before nine or half-past one o'clock on the Sunday.
"If the Archbishop of Canterbury's cook, groom, footman, butler, and all other his men servants and maid servants do not each of them attend church every Sunday, they may be prosecuted and fined.
"If the Archbishop of Canterbury's coachman drive his master to church on Sunday, if his footmen stand behind his carriage, these being their ordinary callings and not works of charity or necessity, they may be prosecuted and fined 5s. each.
"Tobacconists may be prosecuted for selling tobacco and cigars on a Sunday.
"Railway officials may be punished for working on a Sunday; certainly on excursion trains.
"The stokers and men employed on the steamboats plying to Gravesend, etc., are also liable to prosecution, although a few watermen enjoy the privilege of Sabbath-breaking by Act of Parliament.
"Civil contracts made on a Sunday are void with some few exceptions, viz. a soldier may be enlisted on a Sunday. A labourer may be hired on a Sunday. A guarantee may be given for the faithful services of a person about to be employed. A bill of exchange may be drawn on a Sunday.
"Civil process must not be served an a Sunday, but an ecclesiastical citation may; therefore the Church reserves to itself the right of Sabbath breaking on all occasions.
"A cookshop may be open on a Sunday for the sale of victuals.
"Every person who should go to Hyde Park, or any of the other parks, to hear the band play, if out of his own parish, is liable to be fined 3s. 4d.
"If two or three go from out of their smoky city residences to the sea to fish, or to the green fields to play cricket, they may each be fined 3s. 4d. if out of the parish in which they reside."
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORSINI ATTEMPT
The first allusion which I can find to any lecture delivered by my father after his return from Ireland appears in the Reasoner, and is the briefest possible notice, in which no comment is made, either upon the speaker or upon his name, although I find the nom de guerre of "Iconoclast" and the subject (Sunday Trading and Sunday Praying) given. We may, therefore, conclude that by this time20 he had become a tolerably familiar figure on the London Freethought platform. The next reference I come across relates to his first lecture, given on 24th August 1855, on behalf of Mr B. B. Jones, the aged Freethinker who sheltered him on his first leaving home, and for whose benefit he afterwards lectured every year during the remainder of the kindly old veteran's life.
In the latter part of 1856 my father's lectures are referred to in the reports of meetings with tolerable regularity, and I gather that even at that time he was lecturing four or five times a month. He lectured at a little hall in Philpot Street, Commercial Road; Finsbury Hall, Bunhill Row; at a hall in St George's Road, near the "Elephant and Castle," afterwards given up by the Freethinkers who were accustomed to hire it on Sundays, because they did not approve of the uses to which it was put during the week; at the Hoxton Secular Class Rooms, 101 High Street; and the John Street Institution, Fitzroy Square.
Amongst his many and varied occupations he yet contrived to make time for study, for in the same year he was lecturing on Strauss' "Life of Jesus," and Mahomet and the Koran, in addition to the more general questions of the Existence of God, Materialism, etc. And here I may cite a little instance showing that my father's power of repartee was a very early development. He happened to be lecturing upon "The God of the Bible," and in the discussion which ensued "a Christian gentleman, Mr Dunn, … informed his auditory that it was only by God's mercy they existed at all, as all men had been tried and condemned before their birth, and were now prisoners at large." My father in his reply promptly took "objection to this phrase, as implying that society was nothing more than a collection of 'divine ticket-of-leave men.'"
In 1856, too, Mr Bradlaugh once more ventured into print. His first essay in the publishing way, it may be remembered, was the little pamphlet on the "Christian's Creed," which he dedicated to the Rev. Mr Packer. This time he issued, in conjunction with John Watts and "Anthony Collins," a little publication called "Half-hours with Freethinkers," which came out in fortnightly numbers, and opened on October 1st with a paper on Descartes from the pen of "Iconoclast." Two series were ultimately issued, each of twenty-four numbers, but some time elapsed between the two; in fact, the second did not come out until 1864, and was edited by my father and Mr John Watts. These stories "of the lives and doctrines of those who have stood foremost in the ranks of Freethought in all countries and in all ages" met with a hearty welcome, and are in demand even to this day; several were at the time reprinted in America by the Boston Investigator.
The new year of 1857 opened with a promise of growing activity by an address from "Iconoclast" to a party of Secular friends who assembled in the hall at Philpot Street, to watch the New Year in, and by a course of ten (or twelve) lectures in criticism of the Bible, which he commenced on the following day. On the 12th of February, also, was held his first discussion, or at least the first I can find recorded, if we except the youthful encounters of Warner Place. The discussion between "Mr Douglas and Iconoclast" took place at the little Philpot Street Hall; but who Mr Douglas was I know not, for the report is limited to a mention of an allusion by the Christian advocate to Atheists as "monsters, brutes, and fools," which was – as we may well believe – "severely commented on by 'Iconoclast.'"
Another and more important work, however, was begun in the early spring of 1857. This was "The Bible: what it is: Being an examination thereof from Genesis to Revelation." This work, advertised by my father as "intended to relieve the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge from the labour of retranslating the Bible, by proving that it is not worth the trouble and