16 Facts About Francis Place

Francis Place was an illegitimate son of Simon Place and Mary Gray.

Francis Place then became a Marshalsea Court officer and ran a sponging-house in Vinegar Yard, Brydges Street, opposite the south side of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; Brydges Street is named Catherine Street.

At around the time that Francis Place was apprenticed, his father was involved in a suit in the ecclesiastical court in the parish of St Clement Danes: A lady named Anna Place, had come to the Overseers and claimed parish aid, as the wife of Simon Place of Arundel Street.

Francis Place had a daughter named Mary, who was then the wife of Henry Kitchin of Clerkenwell.

At the time of marriage, Francis Place was nineteen years old, and his bride was three weeks short of her seventeenth birthday.

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In 1794, Francis Place joined the London Corresponding Society, a reform club, and for three years was prominent in its work, before resigning his post as chairman of the general committee in 1797 in protest at the violent tactics and rhetoric of some group members.

When Francis Place retired in 1817, he lived for several months with Bentham and the Mills at Forde Abbey.

Francis Place successfully associated Malthus with the idea of birth control.

Francis Place lobbied successfully for the 1824 repeal of the Combination Act, which helped early Trade Unionism, though new restrictions were soon introduced.

Francis Place himself regarded trade unionism as a delusion that workers would soon forget about if they were allowed to try it.

Also in this year, Francis Place helped support Rowland Detrosier, a working class radical activist who sought to distance himself from socialism.

Francis Place was active in the agitation that led to the Reform Act of 1832, holding up the recent revolution in Paris as an example of what could happen if reform was not allowed by legal means.

Francis Place then went to live in Hammersmith for two years with his daughter Annie, the wife of John Miers, and their family.

Francis Place then brought a house at 6, Foxley Terrace, Earls Court, Kensington, and lived there with his two unmarried daughters, Mary and Jane.

Francis Place died at this address on the morning of 1 January 1854.

Francis Place is listed on the Reformers' Memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.