1. George Jacob Holyoake was an English secularist, co-operator and newspaper editor.
27 Facts About George Holyoake
1. 2.
George Holyoake coined the terms secularism in 1851 and "jingoism" in 1878.
3.
George Jacob Holyoake was born in Birmingham, where his father worked as a whitesmith and his mother as a button maker.
4.
George Holyoake attended a dame school and a Wesleyan Sunday School, began working half-days at the same foundry as his father at the age of eight, and learnt his trade.
5.
George Holyoake married Eleanor Williams in 1839 and decided to become a full-time teacher, but was rejected for his socialist views.
6.
Unable to teach full-time, Holyoake took a job as an Owenite social missionary.
7.
George Holyoake's first posting was in Worcester, but the following year he was transferred to a more important one in Sheffield.
8.
George Holyoake joined Charles Southwell in dissenting from the official Owenite policy that lecturers should take a religious oath to enable them to take collections on Sundays.
9.
George Holyoake took over as editor, having moved to an atheist position as a result of his experiences.
10.
George Holyoake was an acquaintance of Harriet Martineau, who translated various works by Comte and was perhaps the first female sociologist.
11.
George Holyoake wrote to him excitedly on reviewing Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859.
12.
In 1842, George Holyoake became one of the last persons convicted for blasphemy in a public lecture, held in April 1842 at the Cheltenham Mechanics' Institute, though this had no theological character and the incriminating words were merely a reply to a question addressed to him from the body of the meeting.
13.
George Holyoake was well supported by the Cheltenham Free Press at the time in his actions, but attacked in the Cheltenham Chronicle and Examiner.
14.
George Holyoake nonetheless underwent six months' imprisonment and editorship of the Oracle changed hands.
15.
George Holyoake founded The Reasoner, where he developed the concept of secularism,.
16.
George Holyoake was the last person indicted for publishing an unstamped newspaper, but the prosecution was dropped when the tax was withdrawn.
17.
George Holyoake retained his disbelief in God, but after the Oracle soon came to see "atheism" as a negative term, preferring "secularism".
18.
George Holyoake then adopted the term "agnostic", when it appeared.
19.
George Holyoake "saw the light of reason" in 1855 and became a supporter of Holyoake and a prominent secular speaker.
20.
On 6 March 1881, George Holyoake was a speaker at the opening of Leicester Secular Society's Secular Hall in Humberstone Gate, along with Harriet Law, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh.
21.
George Holyoake served as President for the first day of the 1887 Co-operative Congress.
22.
George Holyoake published an autobiography entitled Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, and in 1905 two volumes of reminiscences, Bygones Worth Remembering.
23.
George Holyoake died in Brighton, Sussex, on 22 January 1906, and was buried in the eastern section of Highgate Cemetery in London.
24.
George Holyoake House was opened in 1911 and houses the National Co-operative Archive.
25.
George Holyoake was the uncle of an independent MP and convicted fraudster, Horatio Bottomley, and contributed to the cost of Bottomley's upkeep after he was orphaned in 1865.
26.
The New Zealand Prime Minister Keith George Holyoake was related to him.
27.
George Holyoake is listed on the south face of the Reformers' Memorial in London's Kensal Green Cemetery.