Charles Southwell was a radical English journalist, freethinker and colonial advocate.
16 Facts About Charles Southwell
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Charles Southwell was born in London, the youngest of 33 children in a poor family.
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Charles Southwell's father, William, was a piano maker who had married three times.
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In 1830, Charles Southwell set up as a radical bookseller in Westminster, London, and joined the radical lecture circuit.
5.
Charles Southwell married Mary Seaton in 1832, but the relationship was a troubled one.
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Charles Southwell was confirmed as an Owenite "socialist missionary" by the Association of All Classes of All Nations in 1840, and worked in that capacity in London and Birmingham.
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Charles Southwell had entered the Owenite movement through the Lambeth branch after he had made a reputation for himself as an anti-theological lecturer on Kennington Common.
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Charles Southwell firmly believed, and many Owenites shared his view, that religion must be destroyed if truth were to prevail: freethought was therefore the necessary prerequisite for socialism, and neutrality on religious issues was impossible.
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Charles Southwell was arrested for blasphemy on 27 November 1841, spending 17 days in gaol awaiting bail.
10.
Charles Southwell faced trial in January 1842, and defended himself.
11.
On his release, Charles Southwell discovered that the Oracle, after a succession of editors had been imprisoned, was struggling financially, so he began his own journal, the Investigator.
12.
Charles Southwell emigrated to Australia in April 1855, moving to Auckland, New Zealand, in 1856.
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Charles Southwell's emigration was unexpected and sudden, but should be seen in the context of his being disinherited, and difficult relations with Holyoake.
14.
In New Zealand, Charles Southwell lectured against the Russian cause in the Crimean War and published the anti-corruption Auckland Examiner.
15.
Charles Southwell was hostile toward Maori, as he called Maori "savages" and was opposed to missionary support for Maori land claims.
16.
Charles Southwell was responsible for reviving the wave of blasphemy prosecutions that occurred during the early 1840s, and his conduct in publishing the Oracle of Reason was largely responsible for moving the freethought movement into a more open and defiant atheistic phase.