Alternatives to Religion: George Jacob Holyoake

Bishsopgate archivist, Stefan Dickers, tells the story and history of radical, George Jacob Holyoake

George Jacob Holyoake was a leader of the Victorian Secular movement, imprisoned for Blasphemy in 1842 for an off the cuff reply at a lecture. Holyoake was also a Chartist, campaigner for Co-operation, Free Speech and a Free and Untaxed Press, he was also an early feminist but he fell out with Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh over their militant advocacy of birth control as the solution to poverty. Holyoake’s long relationship with Bradlaugh however was not always hostile and the interactions of the two men are an important part of the story of Victorian radical secularism ’
Stefan Dickers is the Library and Archives Manager at Bishopsgate Institute which houses most of George Jacob Holyoake’s papers along with collections on the history of London, the labour movement, co-operation, freethought and humanism.

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