Carlisle Female Radical Association
Angered by a New Poor Law workhouse system which threatened to pull families apart, Carlisle’s impoverished handloom weavers swiftly took up the cause of Chartism, and in 1838 the city’s female radicals were at the heart of the movement.
On 25 October 1838, the people of Carlisle and the surrounding villages thronged in their thousands to join a great Chartist demonstration in the city. With flags and banners flying and bands playing, they made their way in procession, led by an open carriage carrying Joseph Rayner Stephens, Feargus O’Connor and other leading Chartists, to a hustings on the Sands where both national and local leaders spoke at length to great cheering and hat-waving
Though the crowd was overwhelmingly male, and only men got to speak from the platform, Carlisle’s female radicals had been at the heart of the procession. The Chartist Northern Star (27 October 1838, p5) reported that ‘366 of the women of Carlisle, gaily dressed, five abreast’ had marched behind their own silk flag. The Carlisle Journal (27 October 1838, p3) added: ‘On one side of this flag was a representation of a woman and three children, and a Poor Law Commissioner directing the children to be separated from the mother. Motto – “Tyrants! Beware! Think ye a mother’s love is not stronger than your laws?” On the other side a representation of a man and wife being separated by a Poor Law Commissioner. Motto – “What God has joined together let not man put asunder”.’
Opposition to the New Poor Law
Carlisle was a small city, with little over 50,000 inhabitants, and it was a long way from the great population centres of Glasgow and Manchester. But situated on the main North-South road from England to Scotland, it was an important stopping-off point, and radical politicians on speaking tours frequently made a point of holding meetings here. It was also home to a large community of impoverished handloom weavers, many of them migrants from Ireland and Scotland, whose wages of just four or five shillings a week could barely sustain a family, and whose fears about the New Poor Law and its switch from outdoor to indoor poor relief were graphically illustrated in the women’s banner.
The October demonstration was not O’Connor’s first. He had visited as recently as July; and the launch of the new Carlisle Radical Association with some 2,000 members had taken place a matter of weeks later (NS, 25 August 1838, p3). Within a week, there was a ‘very large meeting of females’ at the Beaming Machine-room in Willow-Holm, where, with Mrs Catharine Moore in the chair, the women present unanimously adopted a petition to the Queen asking her to advise Ministers to repeal the Poor Law Amendment Act (Carlisle Journal, 1 September 1838, p3). They went on to collect £3 to buy a flag, which it was agreed should be white with a green fringe, and elected a committee to decide on the motto. Much thought and work must have gone into the flag by the time it got its first outing the following month.
A few weeks later, a ‘very crowded meeting of females’ took place ‘in a large room in Water Lane’ and with Mrs Moore once more in the chair, the meeting agreed to form a Carlisle Female Radical Association (Carlisle Journal, 6 October 1838, p3) which would ‘act in conjunction with the Female Radical Association of Birmingham, in petitioning parliament to pass the “people’s charter”.’ The meeting went on to elect an eleven-strong committee to draw up rules ‘and to write to the Birmingham Association for instructions’.
The precedent of Peterloo
Though the female radical association was new, radicalism had deep roots in Carlisle, and female radicals had also been prominent in the protests that followed the Peterloo massacre nearly twenty years earlier. At a demonstration in the city in 1819, a body of twelve or thirteen members of the Female Reform Society dressed in black gowns with red shawls and green veils had marched behind a green flag ‘ornamented with a figure of Britannia, and inscribed “Britannia weepeth”,’ before ascending the speakers’ platform and bringing the meeting to a temporary halt. Mrs Elizabeth Cowper, on behalf of the female reformers’ society, had then presented the chairman with a cap of liberty, ‘decorated with a gold band, and a silver band and tassels’, declaring that ‘by placing it at the head of your banner you will confer an everlasting obligation on the Female Reformers of the city of Carlisle’ (Carlisle Journal, 16 October 1819, p4; Carlisle Patriot, 16 October 1819, p4; Carlisle Patriot, 6 November 1819, p4).
Nothing more is known of Mrs Cowper or her Peterloo-era committee members. The names of a surprisingly large number of Carlisle’s female Chartists, however, are known because of the diligence with which rival local newspapers recorded their meetings and decisions, and something of their lives can be uncovered with some certainty thanks to the 1841 and later census records.
Members of the Female Radical Association
Among the eighteen women identified as members of the female radical association’s elected committee or reported to have moved and seconded resolutions at its meetings are Catharine Moore, the association’s president, who had been born in Ireland in around 1798 and who lived in the Willow Holme area of the city with her husband John, a weaver; Margaret Cooper, who had been born in Scotland in 1810 and was also married to a cotton weaver and lived in Caldewgate; and Margaret Hall, who had been born locally in 1816 and was married to William Hall, a letter-press printer who was himself a leading local radical. Both Willow Holme and Caldewgate were to the west of the River Caldew, an area largely cut off from the city and home to the poorest immigrant communities.
Elsewhere, it was often the case that the Chartist women whose names are known were related through birth or marriage to leading local Chartist men. This was the case, for example, at Elland in Yorkshire, where married couples made up the core of the local radical movement at this time. Among the eighteen Carlisle women, however, only three can be definitely linked to Chartist men on the committee of the male radical society or the body set up to raise funds for the imprisoned Joseph Rayner Stephens. This is especially surprising as, unlike the younger, single women who made up the City of London Female Charter Association, all but two of the Carlisle women appear to be married, and many have young families.
The female radical association appears to have remained in existence well into the following year and probably beyond. At the start of December 1838, the association adopted an address pledging its support to Feargus O’Connor which was signed by Catharine Moore, and by two women whose names had not appeared among the original committee members: Mary Galloy as treasurer, and Margaret Catrel as secretary (NS, 22 December 1838, p2).
Activism: exclusive dealing and the national rent
Later that same month, a public meeting held ‘at Mr Sinclair’s Beaming Machine’, with Mrs Moore once again in the chair, pledged itself to exclusive dealing, the practice of buying goods only from shopkeepers who were sympathetic to the charter, declaring that ‘we will spend our earnings with none but those who are willing to be co-workers with us in the great work of national redemption, and are willing to contribute their mite towards the support of the same’ (NS, 22 December 1838, p8).

They turned out again for Feargus O’Connor when he next visited Carlisle in the New Year. As he recorded in an account of his travels: ‘About 200 well dressed females were present, who did me the honour to present me with a very beautiful scarf, of their own manufacture, and tastily embroidered with their own hands’ (NS, 19 January 1839, p4). The following week, the Northern Star wrote approvingly of the Carlisle radicals, noting that they were ‘generally excessively poor, a great portion being handloom weavers’ who earned no more than six shillings a week for working fourteen-hour days, and yet had contributed to the National Rent intended to support delegates to the National Convention, paid their subscriptions, and were even then raising funds for Joseph Rayner Stephens.
Figures published soon afterwards showed that Carlisle and the neighbouring village of Dalston had contributed no less than £40 to the National Rent, £5 of which had come specifically from the female radical association (NS, 23 March 1839). Of the £21/5 shillings sent from Carlisle and Dalston to the fund for Stephens, £3 /10 shillings was contributed by the female Chartists. These sums were not, however, entirely raised from among the Chartist faithful. In Carlisle as in other towns, Chartists visited shops and other businesses to collect for the cause. From the Home Secretary down, the authorities saw this practice as intimidation and attempted to stamp it out.
The sacred month

In London, the first great Chartist petition for the vote was taken to Parliament on 7 May. As talk of the ‘ulterior measures’ that might be needed if Parliament rejected it turned to general strikes and of arming, many middle-class reformers broke with the main Chartist body. On 13 May, the Convention relocated from London to Birmingham. Across the industrial north, great meetings took place, such as that at Hartshead Moor in West Yorkshire, and in Newcastle. In Carlisle, Dr John Taylor and George Julian Harney, the city’s delegates to the Convention, and among the most radical of those elected, spoke at a great public meeting at the Sands on 21 June. The Northern Star estimated the numbers of those present at between eight and ten thousand. That same evening, Taylor and Harney addressed ‘the females and others’ in a theatre ‘crowded to suffocation’, with many unable to get in (NS, 25 June 1839, p8).
The arrest of both Taylor and Harney that summer fuelled the febrile political state in Carlisle. Soon, O’Connor was back in town as preparations began for the proposed ‘sacred month’ or general strike. The Carlisle Journal reported that whole plantations of trees had been chopped down to make pike shafts. Carlisle magistrates swore in nine hundred special constables, and yeomanry cavalry and two troops of dragoons were stationed in the city.
Misery, distress and starvation wages
There is little mention of the female radical association throughout the summer and into the winter of 1839-40, though in the wake of the failed Newport Rising, Chartists in the city were said to be waiting for the word to begin an insurrection. Many Chartist women must have been aware of the plan, but they may have been forced to forsake meetings for the desperate challenge of feeding their families.
The Northern Star (1 February 1840, p8) reported of Carlisle: ‘There have been great reductions in the wages of the work people – and it is said that some of the cotton mills are again about to go on short time. The suffering and misery which pervades the weaving class of the community are indeed truly awful. We have no hesitation ins saying that hundreds of families are in a state actually approaching to starvation – living almost on potatoes, and the very coarsest sort of food; while the weekly meetings of the Board of Guardians are completely inundated by hundreds of hungry applicants, whose half clad and emaciated appearance “would kill the humane, and touch the heart of cruelty herself with pity”.’
With little relief forthcoming, a few weeks later between six and seven hundred handloom weavers ‘men, women and children’ went en masse to a meeting of the Poor Law Guardians where a small delegation presented an address (NS, 11 April 1840, p2, p5). ‘Their pale, emaciated countenances and tattered garbs presented a picture of misery and distress such as we have never before witnessed.’
Return to political activity
Despite their desperate state, Carlisle’s radical women still managed to send 11s 3½d to help Mary Frost obtain a pardon for her husband, the Newport Chartist leader John Frost (NS, 25 April 1840, p3). And there are continuing glimpses of Chartist women after this date. The Carlisle Journal (7 November 1840, p3) ‘observed a number of female Chartists’ at a meeting. The following year, when the Chartist movement organised a national petition to demand the release of political prisoners, the Carlisle radical leader James Arthur reported that local Chartists had collected the signatures of 6,862 men and 2,288 women (NS, 15 May 1841, p8). There may even have been a revival of Chartist women’s organisation the following year, when in the wake of Feargus O’Connor’s release from York Castle, ‘the greatest exertions have been made in re-organising the male and female Chartist Associations’ (NS, 18 September 1841, p2).
There are, however, no further reports from female Chartist meetings in the city. By 1842, the only mention of Chartist women in Carlisle is as fundraisers – collecting to support the National Convention when it met that year, and being commended for their activities on behalf of Chartist prisoners (NS, 22 October 1842, p2). As the Northern Star reported: ‘As we anticipated, the females are doing their work zealously and well’ (NS, 29 October 1842). ‘A Mrs Hartness of Carlisle, who has taken a most active part in supporting the Chartist cause’ by sending five shillings to the Defence Fund, was the only woman to be mentioned by name (NS, 5 November 1842, p6).
Many women must have continued to actively work for the Chartist cause after this time. Who they were and what they did, however, went unrecorded.
Committee of the Carlisle Female Radical Association
Mrs Catharine Moore. Lived at Willow Holme. She was President of the Carlisle Female Radical Association, and chaired both its business and public meetings. Born in Ireland in around 1798, Catherine Moor (as her name also appears in the record) was married to a handloom gingham weaver named John, also from Ireland. They were already in Carlisle in 1822, when their first daughter was born, so Catharine either left Ireland as a child or possibly soon after marrying John. It is intriguing to think that she may have been among the crowd for the meeting after Peterloo in which an earlier generation of Carlisle’s women radicals took part. Catharine and John still lived at Willow Holme in 1841, with their five children, and at an address in Newfield when the census was taken a decade later. Catharine died on Christmas Eve 1851.
Mrs Margaret Hall. Lived at Cummersdale. Born Margaret Maria Foster at Brampton, nine miles from Carlisle in 1816, she married William Hall, a letter-press printer in the city on 4 June 1838. William was an active Chartist, chairing local radical meetings and moving a resolution at a huge demonstration in Carlisle in October 1838. Margaret was some fourteen years younger than her husband, whose first wife had died in 1837, and at the time of the 1851 census their household also included her stepson and two younger children of her own. William died before the 1871 census, in which Margaret is listed as a straw-bonnet maker.
Mrs Jane Hurst. Lived at Backhouse’s Walk. Born at Cummersdale on the southern edge of Carlisle in 1815, Mary was married to William Hurst, a print colour mixer in the calico trade, who had come to the town from Middleton in Lancashire. They would have been among the better-off working-class families involved in Chartism: in 1851, with three children under the age of five, they were able to afford a live-in servant – 13-year-old Ann Reyley. Jane died in the first quarter of 1888.
Mrs Frances Johnston. Lived at English Damside. Born in Carlisle in 1813, Frances was married to John Johnstone, an earthenware dealer, eight years older than her, but also from the city. By 1841, the couple had moved to 14 Surtees Lane, Botchergate with their two young children. Frances died in the second quarter of 1886.
Mrs Margaret Cooper. Lived at The Bog or Bogg. Born in Scotland in 1810, Margaret and her husband Joseph, a cotton-weaver, had three children by 1841.
Mrs Margaret Smith. Lived at English Damside. Married to a handloom, weaver named James, and with one son at home, Margaret had been born in Scotland in 1810, her husband in Cumberland six years earlier.
Mrs Catharine Cooper. Lived at The Bog. Born in 1799 in Scotland, Catharine appears to have been the oldest member of the committee. The 1841 census records Catharine and her four children at home at The Bog, with the 1851 census adding details of her husband William, a Carlisle-born weaver. It is possible that Joseph and William Cooper were brothers.
Mrs Sarah Elliot. Lived at Tarraby. It has not been possible to identify Sarah Elliot. Tarraby is a hamlet to the west of Carlisle, but there are several women by that name in census records.
Mrs Ellen Hodgson. Lived at The Bog. It has not been possible to identify Ellen Hodgson with certainty. She may be the 25-year-old Ellen Hodgson living at Calder Brow in 1841 and recorded in the census as an agricultural labourer. However, that Ellen appears not to be married.
Mrs Sarah Hanson. Lived at Botchergate. It has not been possible to identify Sarah Hanson in the records. However, Joseph Hanson, a weaver, was a leading figure in Carlisle radical, trades and Chartist activities for many years. Though not married, they may have been related.
Mrs Margaret Dobson. Lived at John Street. Margaret was born in Cumberland 1810, and was married to John, an agricultural labourer. He is likely to be the John Dobson who served on the committee of the Carlisle Radical Association in 1838.
Others named in reports but not identified in other records are Mrs McIlwy, Mrs Gilesm Mrs Grahame, Mrs Wilson and Mrs Railton, all of whom are reported to have moved or seconded resolutions at female radical association meetings in 1838; Margaret Catrel, who wrote the report of a female radical association meeting for the Northern Star and signed herself as the association’s secretary (NS, 22 December 1838, p8).; and Mrs Galloy, the association’s treasurer (NS, 22 December 1838, p2).
Notes and further reading
The names and addresses of the Carlisle Female Radical Association committee are taken from the Carlisle Journal of 6 October 1838. Additional biographical details are from census and other records held by Ancestry and FindMyPast.
Newspapers referenced in the text are in the British Newspaper Archive. After the first mention, the Northern Star is given as NS.
Barnes, J. C F. (2015). The Men of the North: the Chartist Movement in Carlisle 1838-1850. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society 15 (series 3). Vol 15, pp. 195-209. Open Access (accessed 12 October 2024).
Scott, A.J. (2021). . Work and LIfe in the Early Industrial City: Social Economy of Cotton Production, Carlisle, 1838–1861. Northern History. Available on ResearchGate.
Female Chartist Organisations, on this website.
Below: Carlisle Journal of 6 October 1838, p3.


