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Title: Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh

Author: George W. Foote

Release Date: October 6, 2009 [EBook #30205]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES BRADLAUGH ***

Produced by David Widger

REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES BRADLAUGH

By G. W. Foote

President of the National Secular Society AND Editor of "The
Freethinker"

LONDON: PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,

1891.

INTRODUCTION.

The following pages are reprinted, with some alterations and additions,
from the columns of the _Freethinker_. They are neither methodical nor
exhaustive. I had the privilege of knowing Mr. Bradlaugh more or less
intimately for twenty years. I have worked with him in the Freethought
movement and stood by his side on many political platforms. It seemed to
me, therefore, that if I jotted down, even in a disjointed manner, some
of my recollections of his great personality, I should be easing my own
mind and conferring a pleasure on many readers. Beyond that I was not
ambitious. The time for writing Mr. Brad-laugh's life is not yet,
but when it arrives my jottings may furnish a point or two to his
biographer.

G. W. FOOTE, March 30, 1891.

REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES BRADLAUGH.

When I came to London, in January, 1868, I was eighteen years of age. I
had plenty of health and very little religion. While in my native town
of Plymouth I had read and thought for myself, and had gradually passed
through various stages of scepticism, until I was dissatisfied even with
the advanced Unitarianism of a preacher like the Rev. J. K. Applebee.
But I could not find any literature in advance of his position, and
there was no one of whom I could inquire. Secularism and Atheism I had
never heard of in any definite way, although I remember, when a little
boy, having an Atheist pointed out to me in the street, Naturally I
regarded him as a terrible monster. I did not know what Atheism was
except in a very vague way; but I inferred from the tones, expressions,
and gestures of those who pointed him out to me, that an Atheist