Francis Place

Francis Place (1771–1854) portrayed by Daniel Maclise (1806–1870)

Francis Place (born November 3, 1771 in London , † January 1, 1854 ibid) was a radical English social reformer and Chartist .

Life

Francis Place grew up in poor and not so happy circumstances. His father, actually a baker by profession , was a drinker and gambler . He served as a bailiff in the notorious Marshalsea prison in Southwark in London, which was known as the guilty prison , among other things by Charles Dickens ' (1812-1870) stories.

When Francis was nine years old, his father opened a tavern , but his gambling addiction quickly got the family back into trouble. His father never spoke to the children. If the children spoke to their father, he became palpable. In contrast, Francis' mother was described as neat, kind, and warm and helpful.

Francis attended school at the age of four, but only developed an interest in the subject matter in the last 2 years of his 10-year school years. He was interested in books, became a "head boy" at school and was employed for a small fee to teach other students. He also learned his lessons in the street and became the leader in street fights among the children in the neighborhood.

At the age of 15, he took an apprenticeship with a breeches -Maker ( German : Knickerbockers makers ) that he gave up after 4 years because of disagreements with his training masters. After some difficulties in finding employment, a tailor and trouser maker finally discovered his business talent and employed 15 people in his company.

On March 3, 1791, he was now 20 years old, he married Elizabeth Chadd , with whom he had their first child in 1792.

In 1793 the knickerbockers decided to strike for higher wages. The strike fund was full and Francis Place was quickly found among the leaders of the strike . When the strike collapsed after just under 2 months, he was among those blacklisted and unable to find a job. His first child died of smallpox at the same time, and he and his wife sank into utter poverty .

After a short job as secretary of the Breeches-Maker Union in 1794 and many small jobs for customers on his own account, he finally opened a tailor's workshop together with a partner in 1799 and by 1800 already employed 32 tailors and 4 knee breechers. After differences of opinion with his partner, he continued to run the business alone in the Charing Cross from April 1801 . Business was so good that 16 years later, at the age of 46, he was able to hand over the business to his eldest son.

His wife Elizabeth died in 1827 and in 1830 Place married actress Louisa Simeon Chatterley of the Covent Garden Theater.

Act

Even in the times of his deepest poverty, Place continued to educate himself. He read Greek and Roman history , dealt with geography , anatomy , science and art .

He came into contact with the ideas of Adam Smith (1723–1790), moral philosopher and folk scientist , John Locke (1632–1704), philosopher , David Hume (1711–1776), philosopher, economist and historian and through the book The Age of Reason with Thomas Paine , politician and revolutionary .

In June 1794, Place became a member of the London Corresponding Society , founded in 1792 , a moderately radical society that held weekly discussions with its branches spread across London, was close to the French Revolution (1789–1799) and was politically active for parliamentary reform in the Kingdom of Great Britain began, in which the working class should be represented accordingly.

1807, after King George III. had dissolved Parliament, Place was involved in the Westminster Reform Committee to get Sir Francis Burdett as a candidate for Westminster and advocate of parliamentary reform in the House of Commons .

In 1810 he took over the chairmanship of the 12-member jury at the court. When a trial against a popularly hated member of the House of Brunswick did not come to a swift conclusion, Place was charged with being paid by the court. He resigned and withdrew from the public and politics for a while. Instead, he was more concerned with education and organized, together with Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), an English teacher , inexpensive primary school education, which was seriously lacking. With education, Place hoped to improve the situation of the working class and to eradicate alcoholism, bad morals and manners, and problems caused by overpopulation.

Although he was the father of 15 children himself, he recommended strict contraception for the purpose of birth control in his only publication, Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population, based on Malthus (1798) . With his work, Place is considered to be the founder of the birth control movement in England.

Place supported the radical politicians in the House of Commons and, between 1822 and 1824, dealt with the Combination Act of 1799, a law that prohibited the gathering of workers for the purpose of demanding higher wages or reduced working hours, and thus practically banning the formation of trade unions . It was thanks to Places's brilliant data processing, persistent dedication and good collaboration with Joseph Hume (1777–1855), politician and member of the House of Commons, that the law finally fell in 1825.

After this victory he devoted his energies to parliamentary reform and played an important role in public agitation . In 1832, the old Parliament Act also fell through the passage of the Reform Act 1832 .

In 1836 he took part in the founding of the London Working Men's Association and in the formulation of the " Peopl's Charter ", which led to the political reform movement of the Chartists .

After 1840 he was involved in the campaigns against the Corn Laws (grain law), which kept the prices of grain high, to the advantage of the large landowners and to the detriment of the poor.

From 1841 it became quiet around him. His health was in poor health and a stroke in 1844 left him bedridden. Francis Place died on the night of the New Year on January 1, 1854 in Hammersmith, London, in the house of his two daughters.

Works

• Illustrations and Proofs of the Principles of Population . Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown , London 1822 (English).

literature

• Margaret Cole : Makers of the Labor Movement . Longmans, Green and Co. , London 1948 (English).

Web links

• Jeremy Wickins : An Overview of Francis Place's Life, 1771-1854 . History Home , accessed May 25, 2016 . 
• Francis Place . Spartacus Educational,accessed May 25, 2016. 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ VC Medvei: The History of Clinical Endocrinology. Lancs and New York 1993, p. 245.