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William Cuffay

Updated: Jul 10, 2020

The Memoirs of William Cuffay, as recorded as faithfully as possible by his amanuensis, James Rochester, the Tasmania workhouse, Brickfields depot, November 4th 1869.

‘I was admitted to this ward last month, and I do not feel that I have long left. I am pleased that Mr Rochester has volunteered to attend to my recollections and transcribe what I can recall of my life as an active citizen. It may well be that future historians will find something noteworthy in my account.

Today is, of course, the thirtieth anniversary of the Newport Rising. I once met and talked with John Frost over here. Zephaniah Williams, too - I made a suit for Zephaniah. But I did not cross paths with William Jones, which is a shame, for my watch stopped some years ago. But this is a good day to remember the past, and make time stand still.

I can still recall some of my words from the resolution I proposed in the aftermath of the Rising: ‘That it is the opinion of this meeting, that the insurrection in South Wales has been brought on by the injustice and cruelty of government … the insulting and scornful manner in which they rejected the great petition of the people for the Charter … We therefore do most deeply feel for, and sympathise with, our brethren in Wales, and with Mr Frost in particular; and further, we pledge ourselves to use every exertion to save them’.

Little did I think then that I would meet Mr Frost in the circumstances in which we would eventually meet. I met him after we had both been pardoned. John was making some notes about the colony and its punishments before embarkation. We gazed about and reminisced, but our meander down memory lane was stopped abruptly by the sight of coils of rope immersed in sea water. John talked of how the whipcord was routinely saturated in salt water and then sun-dried so its lash was that of unrelenting wire or the jagged saw. John looked at me with those earnest eyes: ‘Never, in my opinion, in any age or country, has society existed in so depraved a state as I have witnessed in the penal colonies, produced too, by laws not equalled in severity in any part of the civilised world’.

We bade farewell.

But now to my early life. I was born in Chatham in the year 1788. My father had been born enslaved on the island of St Kitts, for his father had been transported from Africa and enslaved prior. My father gained freedom of sorts, however, and served as a cook in the Royal Navy. Hence my birth in Chatham.

I was of delicate constitution as a child - my spine and shin bones have never been right - but made my way into life with exertion and determination.

I became a journeyman tailor after moving to the Great Wen of London but marital tragedy was my lot. I married when I was thirty years of age, but my dear wife Ann died five years later. My next Ann died in childbirth one year after our marriage and our dear daughter died shortly afterwards. I married Mary Ann Manvell in 1827 and she has been my rock of ages, God bless her soul. Such is the domestic misfortune suffered by wives, children and husbands of my class.

Long working hours compound domestic miseries, and that’s one of the reasons why I joined the tailors’ strike in 1834; I was a marked man after that and found work hard to come by. Mary Ann worked all hours on her trade as a straw-hat maker but times were flint-hard.

Finding injustice to be more palpable than theoretical, I became an enthusiastic Chartist. And being of intelligence and eloquence, I was soon asked to take on positions of responsibility and leadership both locally within the Westminster Chartists, and within the wider purlieus of the metropolis itself. I could also make an audience laugh with joy, and, yes, even sing along with me, or listen to a poem.

No-one I knew commented on the fact that I was of an African lineage, unless it was to praise me. But, essentially, it didn’t matter a farthing.

It was only our so-called betters who regularly expressed an opinion cognisant of my skin. Punch and The Times, for example. They tried to belittle both me and the movement – ‘the Black man and his Party’ was a phrase oft-used. Of course, they only belittled themselves. But such was their pernicious influence that my wife, Mary Ann, lost her position. Times grew even harder, in consequence. Winters were especially hard in those years. Mr Dickens’ Scrooge displayed scant redemption as far we were concerned!

But times grew even harder in the spring, summer and autumn of 1848, of course. I had felt let down and deceived by Mr O’ Connor over the Land Plan, and with his pusillanimity over the Kennington Common procession. All this has been corroborated in newspapers and reports and I need not dwell on this further. Suffice it to say that I had positions of authority for both the Land Scheme and the Meeting – and felt deceived on both accounts, you might say.

April 1848 was a most melancholy disappointment to me but hope springs eternal! I had responsibilities as an elected commissioner to do my utmost to obtain the Charter: we viewed Kennington as an interruption rather than a terminus. It was, we thought, no more than a hiccup. But even though hope springs eternal, it can still go awry …

I think, in retrospect, that the threat of what could have been another Peterloo, with two squadrons of cavalry at the ready, and the consequent cancellation of our planned mass meeting at Bonner’s Fields, Bethnal Green, in June ’48, was the cause of my eventual arrest and transportation. With peaceful protest illegalised, underground secret committees became the order of the day. As did mass arrests. As did the malfeasance of the spy system.

Our group - the Ulterior Committee of Chartists and Irish Confederates - became infiltrated by government spies and agent-provocateurs. Principally, that duplicitous Powell. He started sowing his dragon’s teeth at our meetings at Cartwright’s Coffee House in Redcross Street.

And so, eleven of my associates were arrested at the Orange Tree, near Red Lion Square, in the August of 1848. Others were taken when meeting at the Angel tavern in Southwark. Other places too whose name I cannot recall, now. I was arrested shortly afterwards where we lodged at 11 Holles Street, Wardour Street, Soho.

I had only just taken on a position of influence with the arrested and had argued against any attempted uprising. I knew it would be doomed to failure – yet my old friend The Times once more ploughed in and declared that I was, in fact, ‘the very chief of conspiracy’.

I confess that I knew something of the planning and the weaponry that would be needed but how I could have been considered to have been chief of a conspiracy when I knew nothing of the ‘number of loaded pistols, pikes, daggers, spearheads, and swords … iron breast plates … gun powder, shot and tow-balls’ that were discovered at the Orange Tree is still a mystery to me.

But I do know that I argued that any planned metropolitan uprising was doomed to failure – and emphasised that there was no guarantee that the midlands and northern industrial towns and cities would join us on the day of 16th of August, the day chosen for our so-called uprising.

The trial was predictable.

Mary was evicted from the proceedings.

The press, of course, called it the Orange Tree Plot. We called it the Powell Plot. It was Powell who had continuously promoted ideas of the most sanguinary nature. The Northern Star spoke of us as entrapped and honest martyrs. Which is what, in short, we were. Raffles were held and various other fund raisings and subscriptions to enable us to defend ourselves and support our wives and families.

In contrast, The Times continued with its previous tone: ‘Cuffey is half a nigger.’ My appearance – remember my deformity and height - was described as ‘perfectly ridiculous’: ‘a dark African sort of countenance’. The Illustrated London News differed none: ‘the comic Cuffey … nigger humour which might be expected from one of his alleged parentage’, while The Standard described me as ‘the little wretched black and white delegate to the Chartist Convention’.

But this was not the reason why I loudly and proudly exclaimed at my trial, after I had studiedly regarded the jury: ‘I demand trial by my peers according to the principles of Magna Charta’. It was because of their class, of course, nothing to do with skin pigmentation: ‘I wish it to be understood that I do object, to this jury. They are not my equals – I am only a journeyman mechanic.’

I was sentenced to transportation on the evidence of spies and agents-provocateurs; convicted ‘for levying war on our Queen.’ The Times said that it was ‘a severe sentence, but a most just one’. The Northern Star replied: ‘In a great measure, Cuffay owes his destruction to the Press gang. But his manly and admirable conduct on his trial affords his enemies no opportunity either to sneer at or abuse him …

His protest from first to last against the mockery of being tried by a Jury animated by class resentments and party-hatred, showed him to be a much better respecter of “the constitution” than either the Attorney-General or the judges on the bench. Cuffay’s last words should be treasured up by the people.’

There’s some I can recall, I think: ‘My lords, I say you ought not to sentence me, first although this has been a long and important trial, it has not been a fair trial, and my request was not complied with to have a jury of my equals … The next reason that I ought not to be sentenced is on account of the great prejudice that has been raised against me in particular for months past … I have been taunted by the press, and it has tried to smother me with ridicule, and it has done everything in its power to crush me. I crave not pity. I ask no mercy.’

‘I know my cause is good, and I have a self-approving conscience that will bear me up against anything, and that would bear me up even to the scaffold; therefore I think I can endure any punishment proudly.’

I also can recall the words of the Reasoner: ‘loved by his own order, who knew him and appreciated his virtues, ridiculed and denounced by a press that knew him not, and had no sympathy with his class, and banished by a government that feared him … Whilst integrity in the midst of poverty, whilst honour in the midst of temptation are admired and venerated, so long will the name of William Cuffay, a scion of Affric’s oppressed race, be preserved from oblivion.’

The voyage lasted over three long months, but the Adelaide had reasonable winds and we reached Tasmania in the November of 1849. Thirteen thousand miles now separated me from my dear wife and my political associates. However, I worked hard at my trade and spoke for my class again. What is the point in sitting on your hands? In the meantime, Mary had ended up in the workhouse in Chatham where she petitioned that she might be allowed to join me, and so the clock tick-tocked its way to reunion.

In short, my wife joined me three and a half years later and I received a pardon three years after that. The same year as the Newport heroes were pardoned, I think.

But to finish my tale, I’ve been a wage earner over here whenever possible, and I’ve tried to carry on the campaigns of home to some degree, after my pardon, whenever possible, too. I am proud to say that I was instrumental in the amendment of the unjust, unfair and repressive Masters and Servant and proud to say that I received this encomium: ‘a fluent and an effective speaker … always popular with the working classes … took a prominent part in election matters, and went in strongly for the individual rights of working men.’

But the last words of mine that I recall from a public platform: ‘I’m old, I’m poor. I’m out of work, I’m in debt, and therefore I have cause to complain.’ I haven’t lost my sense of humour.

And I think that I shall conclude my recollections with that emphatic iteration: ‘I’m old, I’m poor. I’m out of work, I’m in debt, and therefore I have cause to complain.’ I can still make ‘em laugh. I can still give ‘em a song. Or a poem.’

Addendum:

‘William died in the ward some eight months later in July 1870. I conclude this post-script with the words of the workhouse superintendent: ‘a quiet man, and an inveterate reader. His grave was specially marked ‘in case friendly sympathisers should hereafter desire to place a memorial on the spot.’

I deposited a copy of this manuscript in an urn on William’s grave as such a memorial. I know William would cherish such an action on the anniversary of the Newport Rising.

James Rochester

November 4th 1872’

The following words of mine were not included in the manuscript that I deposited.

I found in the workhouse library some volumes that William had marked with leaves of eucalyptus – I opened the pages and discovered the reasons why.

There, in William Thackeray’s The Three Christmas Waits from 1848, a sad lampoon of William: ‘the bold Cuffee; the ‘pore old blackymore rogue’. But there in Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke, I was pleased to see that the vile police spy, Powell, is excoriated as a ‘shameless wretch’; Kingsley speaks well of William and his ‘earnestness’, but when he describes William at the 1848 Kennington Common meeting, he is damned with faint praise: ‘the honestest, if not the wisest speaker’.

There were also a few mouldering copies of the Northern Star which had been sent out to William. And there I saw these words written by Thomas Martin Wheeler, who knew William well. Thomas spoke of William’s ‘high intellectual forehead’ and ‘Though the son of a West Indian and the grandson of an African slave, he spoke the English tongue pure and grammatical, and with a degree of ease and felicity … Possessed of attainments superior to the majority of working men, he had filled, with honour, the highest offices of his trade society … In the hour of danger no man could be more depended on than William Cuffay … yet in his social circle no man was more polite, good humoured and affable, which caused his company to be much admired and earnestly sought for … Yes, Cuffay, should these lines ever meet thine eyes in thy far-distant home, yes, my friend, though thou hast fallen – though hast fallen with the great and noble of the earth … Faint not, mine old companion, the darkness of the present time will but render more intense the glowing light of the future.’

I cried and dampened the manuscript with my flow of tears.

Who could not?

Fare thee well, William.

Sources used:

William Cuffay Black Chartist, Past Tense reprinted from Staying Power: the History of Black People in Britain by Peter Fryer

William Cuffay The Life and Times of a Chartist Leader Martin Hoyles Hansib Publications

Places and Sites to Visit

The Political and Scientific Institute, 55, Old Bailey,

Where William sang at a Chartist fund-raising concert;

The Literary and Scientific Institution, Tottenham Court Road,

Where William sang, chaired, spoke, toasted and led a soiree,

409 Strand, where the Cuffays lived in the early forties,

Alongside a newsagent and a baker,

Right next to the Adelphi Theatre;

12 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden

(At the back of the Adelphi),

Where the Cuffays lived from about 1846-48,

Just by what is now the Nell Gwynne Tavern, Bull Inn Court,

The Standard Theatre, Shoreditch,

Where William performed the Laughing Song,

Bonner’s Fields, Bethnal Green,

Where a mass meeting was planned for 12th June 1848;

Cartwright’s Coffee House in Redcross Street,

Where William met (and was observed by the spy, Powell)

With the Ulterior Committee of Chartists and Irish Confederates;

Breedon’s Beershop, Marylebone,

Where William was elected secretary,

The Orange Tree, near Red Lion Square, and the Angel tavern in Southwark,

Where arrests were made in August of 1848,

11 Holles Street, Wardour Street, Soho,

Where William was arrested.

Places and Sites to visit with a Chartist History

Derived from a reading of London Chartism by David Goodway

The Bell Inn, Old Bailey, where in April 1839,

Plans for a General Metropolitan Charter Association were debated,

And the Turk’s Head, King Street, Holborn,

Where one week later,

‘Some blows passed’ as discussions continued from the week before,

White Conduit House (‘We’d rise – we’d rise! We’d fight!)

And Clerkenwell Green,

Where some 8,000 met in support of the Charter in 1839,

And then 10,000 at Stepney Green,

7,000 in the street outside the George, Commercial Road,

Speakers appearing at an open window,

The Royal Standard, Waterloo Town, Bethnal Green,

Where numbers were so large for the meeting,

That the contiguous skittle-ground was needed,

The George and Dragon, Blackheath Hill,

The Rockingham Assembly Rooms, New Kent Road,

The Duchess of Clarence, Vauxhall Road,

Chesney’s Rooms, Foley Street, Marylebone,

Thomas Attwood’s house in Panton Street,

Where the MP accepted the first petition,

For him to take to present to the Commons,

Hall of Science, City Road,

Crown and Anchor, Strand,

Ship Yard, Temple Bar,

Harper’s Fields, Paddington,

Kennington Common,

But enthusiasm had waned by the autumn of 1839,

And the failure of the Newport Rising stimulated little

Apart from Samuel Waddington’s handbill for Smithfield:

‘Men of London! Assemble in Smithfield on Sunday, the 10th of November,

at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Wales is in a state of insurrection;

justice calls aloud that the people’s grievances should be redressed!

Ye lovers of life, property and religion, attend this great and solemn meeting,

to petition the Queen to dismiss from her councils her present weak

and wicked ministers, and save our country from a civil war!

– Parents keep your children at home,

and may God preside at the councils of the people!’

That was another damp squib,

But the death sentences for the ‘Welsh Martyrs’,

Stimulated mass meetings in the capital,

And a petition collected 100,000 signatures

In just seventy-two hours;

In January 1840, a 600 strong meeting,

At the Trade’s Hall, Abbey Street, Bethnal Green,

Was disturbed by arrests and a police discovery of weaponry

(Rumours abounded of an uprising in the capital and the North),

Chartist meetings were also held in the Crown, Broad Street, Golden Square,

The Bay Malton, Clipstone Street, Portland Road,

The Warwick Arms, Warwick Street, Golden Square,

The Bricklayer’s Arms, King Street,

Highbury Barn and the National Hall, Holborn,

The Craven Head, Drury Lane,

Lincoln Inn Fields,

In the streets by the Pin Factory, Borough Road,

The Parthenium, St Martin’s Lane,

But what of 1842, the year of the second petition?

A meeting of 40,000 at Kennington Common,

Where ‘There was no warning given,

The staffs of the constables were used without mercy’;

While 10,000 met outside Paddington Station,

And a three-hour fight ensued between police and Chartists,

Or as The Times reported:

‘stones and brickbats were thrown at the police by the mob,

who hissed and yelled at them repeatedly …

until late in the evening the police repeatedly charged the mob …’;

Of course, Chartism had its temperance and teetotal strands,

Here Thomas Clark complain at the 1846 Chartist Convention:

‘He had seen the evils at meetings held in public houses;

they had halls if they would only unite and support them,

instead of meeting in public houses,

where they sat and smoked their pipes and drank their ale’;

Thomas Wheeler replied:

‘He had always been opposed to public house meetings,

but he thought it unfair that the men of London

should alone be singled out for complaint …

had it not been for meeting in a public house,

some of their localities would have been entirely broken up’;

David Goodway commented upon this interchange:

‘It is indeed a striking feature of London Chartism that the localities met in pubs rather than coffee houses or halls … it became a commonplace for a locality to become known not by its district but by the sign of the hostelry at which it met:

the Whittington and Cat locality,

King of Prussia, Brassfounders' Arms, Globe and Friends, and so on.'

Irish reformers, repealers, and revolutionaries,

Collaborated with London Chartists,

Meeting in clubs and coffee houses:

Cartwright' Coffee House, Redcross Street,

The Davis Club, Dean Street, Soho,

The Curran Club, Berwick Street, Soho,

Carteret Street, Broadway,

Honest Jack Lawless Club, Westminster,

Newenham Street,

Daniel O'Connell Club, Edgeware Road,

Greenwich,Wapping,

United Irish Club, Orchard Place, Portman Square,

Vere Street, Lincoln Inn's Fields,

The Rose Inn, Farringdon Street,

Where two squadrons of the 1st Life Guards were stationed -

Trafalgar Square saw mass meeting and riots,

In 1848 when London was on high alert,

And when you pass the Bank of England,

See in your mind's eye, the spring of 1848:

'sandbags, with loopholes for muskets and small guns ...

The line of road from the Strand to the new Houses of Parliament

has all the appearance of a thoroughfare in a besieged capital ...

Notices from the Police Commissioners ...

patrols of mounted police, and of single files of soldiers

in the usually quiet street, is ominous and alarming';

CHARTIST

DEMONSTRATION!!

PEACE and ORDER” is our MOTTO!

TO THE WORKING MEN OF LONDON

Fellow Men, - The Press having misrepresented and vilified us and our intentions, the Demonstration Committee therefore consider it to be their duty to state that the grievances of us (the Working Classes) are deep and our demands just. We and our families are pining in misery, want and starvation! We demand a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work! We are the slaves of capital – we demand protection to our labour. We are political serfs – we demand to be free. We therefore invite all well disposed to join in our peaceful procession

MONDAY NEXT, April 10th,

As it is for the good of all that we seek to remove the evils under which we groan.

The following are the places of Meeting of

THE CHARTISTS, THE TRADES, THE IRISH CONFEDERATE & REPEAL BODIES:

East Division on Stepney Green at 8 o’clock;

City and Finsbury Division on Clerkenwell Green at 9 o’clock;

West Division in Russell Square at 9 o’clock;

And the South Division in Peckham Fields at 9 o’clock,


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