and when it was found that the
unscrupulous Whig devices had triumphed, had turned the election
against him, and given over the borough to a Tory, the fury broke out
into open violence. One illustration may be given as a type of these
cruel slanders. It was known that Mr. Bradlaugh was separated from his
wife, and it was alleged that being an Atheist, and, (therefore!) an
opponent of marriage, he had deserted his wife and children, and left
them to the workhouse. The cause of the separation was known to very
few, for Mr. Bradlaugh was chivalrously honourable to women, and he
would not shield his own good name at the cost of that of the wife of
his youth and the mother of his children. But since his death his only
remaining child has, in devotion to her father's memory, stated the
melancholy truth: that Mrs. Bradlaugh gave way to drink; that for long
years he bore with her and did all that man could do to save her; that
finally, hopeless of cure, he broke up his home, and placed his wife
in the care of her parents in the country, leaving her daughters with
her, while he worked for their support. No man could have acted more
generously and wisely under these cruel circumstances than he did, but
it was, perhaps, going to an extreme of Quixotism, that he concealed
the real state of the case, and let the public blame him as it would.
His Northampton followers did not know the facts, but they knew him as
an upright, noble man, and these brutal attacks on his personal
character drove them wild. Stray fights had taken place during the
election over these slanders, and, defeated by such foul weapons, the
people lost control of their passions. As Mr. Bradlaugh was sitting
well-nigh exhausted in the hotel, after the declaration of the poll,
the landlord rushed in, crying to him to go out and try to stop the
people, or there would be murder done at the "Palmerston," Mr.
Fowler's headquarters; the crowd was charging the door, and the
windows were being broken with showers of stones. Weary as he was, Mr.
Bradlaugh sprang to his feet, and swiftly made his way to the rescue
of those who had maligned and defeated him. Flinging himself before
the doorway, from which the door had just been battered down, he
knocked down one or two of the most violent, drove the crowd back,
argued and scolded them into quietness, and finally dispersed them.
But at nine o'clock he had to leave Northampton to catch the mail
steamer for America at Queenstown,