Chartist children: radical naming practices and a thousand boys and girls called Feargus
Chartists often named their children after their Chartist heroes, including Feargus O’Connor, William Lovett, John Frost, Henry Vincent and James Bronterre O’Brien.
In the summer of 1840, James and Maria Coombs of Tewkesbury became parents for the first time. But when, on 14 August, the proud father went to register the birth, he found that the registrar was not enamoured with the name he and his wife had chosen for their son. ‘The officer enquired the name, and was answered, “Feargus O’Connor Coombs.” “Oh!” said the official, “won’t some other name do; that’s an Irish name.” (Northern Star, 28 November 1840, p8). James, a 25-year-old framework knitter, stood firm, and the name duly appeared on the baby’s birth certificate, making him one of hundreds of children to be given the name of the then imprisoned Chartist leader.
James was probably not alone in facing the disapproval of officialdom in this way, but as others discovered, the attitude of the Established Church could be still more hostile, as Samuel Hallowell, a Halifax boot and shoemaker, told the Northern Star later that same year.
Samuel had asked the Rev William Howie Bull, the incumbent of St George’s, Sowerby, to baptise their son Feargus O’Connor Vincent Bronterre Hallowell, but was ‘anxiously desired by the minister to make choice of some other name’ (NS, 12 December 1840, p8). Bull declared that ‘he would not have a child of his christened by the name of Feargus O’Connor for £1,000, exclaiming, “A man like him, agitating the country, and exciting the people to insurrection and rebellion, and himself incarcerated at the present; now do (he said, with a great emphasis,) change the name, will you?”’
Samuel stood his ground. ‘”No,” the father said; “it has been registered in that name some time, and when it is baptised it shall be baptised in that name.” The father would have vindicated the conduct of Mr. O’Connor, but the minister refused him an opportunity. After the baptismal ceremony was performed, he retained the child in his arms, and petitioned the throne of divine grace to preserve it from those principles devised and promulgated by Feargus O’Connor.’
By the end of the 1840s, more than 1,500 children in England and Wales had been given the first or middle name of Feargus. More were named after other prominent Chartists, most notably the Newport Chartist leader John Frost, the orator and ‘missionary’ Henry Vincent, the writer James Bronterre O’Brien, and the author of the People’s Charter, William Lovett.
Yet it is the use of the name Feargus that stands out – both for the sheer numbers involved, and because the name was almost unknown in England before the start of the Chartist period. The civil registration of births began only in 1837, but a search of the 1851 census reveals barely a single Feargus born in England and without obvious Irish connections from before that time. As the Tewkesbury registrar noted, Feargus was ‘an Irish name’, but for those now adopting it for their children, it was first and foremost a Chartist name.
The Chartists were not the first generation of radicals to name their children after their political heroes. In 1822, John and Mary Frost had their son christened Henry Hunt in honour of the most significant radical leader of their day. Hundreds named their children after the utopian socialist and co-operator Robert Owen, and the practice continued well into the 1840s and beyond.
But the Chartists were among the most enthusiastic practitioners of radical naming, deploying it to show their admiration and allegiance to the leaders of the movement, and their aspirations to instil Chartist values into their children’s upbringing. This was also, however, a time when naming conventions were changing more generally.
Family historians often find that parents name a first son after their paternal grandfather, a second son after their maternal grandfather, a third son after their father, a fourth son after their father’s eldest brother and a fifth son after their mother’s eldest brother, with the same pattern mirrored for daughters.
However, one academic study noted that by the 1840s the British upper middle class was more prepared to innovate when naming its children and looked increasingly to print culture and to medieval and celtic revivalism rather than to royalty and religion for inspiration. The Chartist naming practices explored here suggest that politically aware working-class men and women were also moving away from family names and looking to their own cultural resources for ideas.
The People’s Charter appeared over the summer of 1838 and began to gather popular support that autumn. So it is no surprise to discover that the first few children in England to be registered with Feargus as a given name do not appear in the record until second half of 1838, around a year after civil registration began on 1 July 1837.
Over the following twelve months, the practice remained uncommon. And then in 1840 it took off. An analysis of civil registration data on Ancestry shows that there were no fewer than 120 children with the given name combination ‘Feargus O’Connor’, and hundreds more called Feargus. With the arrest and transportation of the leaders of the Newport Rising, others were given the name John Frost.
The flood of Chartist children continued in 1841, when 128 children were given the name combination ‘Feargus O’Connor’ and though numbers fell after this date, the name Feargus and the name combination ‘Feargus O’Connor’ were still in use into the 1850s.
Most of those named for the Chartist leader lived in the Chartist strongholds of West Yorkshire, Manchester and the Lancashire mill towns, although Fearguses were to be found all over England, from Cornwall to Carlisle, as the map here of 1,115 children registered with the name Feargus in England between 1838 and 1855 shows.
The name was not confined to boys. Among the many girls named for the Chartist leader were: Sarah Feargus O’Connor Pinniton (Burnley, July 1840); Alice Feargus O’Connor Isherwood (Bury, October 1840); Jane Feargus O’Connor Sinclair (Carlisle, October 1840); Mary Ann Feargus O’Connor Frost Wild (Birmingham, October 1840); Emma Lydia Hunt Feargus O’Connor Lawson (Halifax, January 1841); and Priscilla Feargus O’Connor Toy (Leeds, January 1842).
Occasionally, Chartists would take more abstract inspiration, among them the parents of George Chartist Nattrass (Durham, July 1839), and Charter Jackson Smith (Leeds, July 1841).
The practice was celebrated in the Chartist press. One account from the Northern Star of 5 September 1840 recorded some of those named after Feargus O’Connor:
BRIGHTON—Last Sunday was a day that will not be forgot in Brighton for a long time; a new light has sprung upon the men and women of Brighton. Young O’Connors we shall have in the South as well as the North. On that day the baptising of an infant by the name of Agnes O’Connor Hawkins, took place; it was the first, we believe, but it will not be the last. The humming and buzzing was great at the mention of the name of the noble O’Connor, and even the minister partook of the general feeling, seeming rather “agitated” at the name, even to the questioning the mother whether that was the Christian or surname, or whether she meant Feargus. No! she said, I mean Agnes O’Connor, not Feargus; Feargus is a man’s name. This not only shows that the aristocracy dread the name of O’Connor; but it further shows that there is a love, a respect, for the name of O’Connor among the working classes of the South, even in the Royal Town of Brighton. O’Connor attended our first Chartist meeting, and he never will be forgotten by the men of Brighton.
The Northern Star soon took to listing its weekly roundup of Chartist babies under the standard heading ‘More Young Patriots’. One such column (NS, 12 September 1840, p2) appears to suggest that it was O’Connor himself who instigated the practice. It begins:
MORE FEARGUSSES.—In obedience to the wish of our brave leader, the “caged lion” of York Castle, two of the members of the Norwich Charter Association have each had a child named Feargus—one a boy; the other a girl. We hope that the people will take care that the names of our incarcerated leaders and patriots shall, by this means, be held in everlasting remembrance. Richly do they deserve it!’
The same report also records that:
James Munn, weaver, of Irvine, has a daughter, born to him on the 9th of September, christened Abigail M’Douall.
Allen Macdonald, weaver, of the same place, has named his infant daughter, Mary Frost.
Jane Valens, wife of Thomas Valens, Pen Court, Kenyon-street, Birmingham, was on Friday, September the 4th, safely delivered of a son, who, on the Saturday following, was duly registered Feargus O’Connor Valens.
John Slayter, of Clitheroe, had a son registered Feargus Stephens Hunt Slayter, about the middle of June, 1839.
Perhaps the most all-encompassing Chartist name was that given to Elizabeth Feargus Bronterre Benbow Chartist Wheeler (Manchester, July 1840). In addition to O’Connor, her name references James Bronterre O’Brien, the writer and organiser known as the schoolmaster of Chartism, and William Benbow, a Manchester nonconformist preacher and advocate of the ‘grand national holiday’ or general strike as a means of forcing political change.
The baroque nature of some Chartist names has not gone unnoticed. In his book Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford (Macmillan, 1995), the historian Paul A Pickering writes:
‘Many chartist historians have taken the opportunity of making a light-hearted reference to the onerous burden placed on youngsters who were given names such as Feargus O’Connor Frost O’Brien McDouall Hunt Taylor and John Frost Feargus Bronterre Paine Smith, without going on to afford the practice much detailed attention. The Chartists themselves undoubtedly saw the humorous side of radical naming. The Brown Street Chartists, for example, wrote to Queen Victoria recommending that she name her new-born child after Feargus O’Connor, and when she did not reply two branch members named their child Regina Feargus Smith.’
But there is also a more sobering side to researching the children named for their parents’ Chartist heroes. Infant mortality was horrendous. One in four babies (267.72 per 1,000) born in 1840 would not live to see their fifth birthday, and the number for working-class children was higher still.
Of those named above, the young Feargus Coombs, whose christening in the summer of 1840 begins this article, was dead by Christmas aged just five months. John Frost Feargus Bronterre Paine Smith did not make it past eighteen months. Elizabeth Feargus Bronterre Benbow Chartist Wheeler died just short of her third birthday. There would have been many more who did not make it to adulthood.
On the slightly brighter side, the Feargus Stephens Hunt Slayter, born in the middle of June 1839 but not recorded by the Northern Star until the following September (see above), grew up, married and in 1865 emigrated with his family to New Jersey. He died there in May 1901. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Stafford Township, Ocean County, New Jersey.
A Chartist childhood
Growing up in a Chartist household was no guarantee of future radicalism, but it must have left its mark on many children. As an aside, my own great, great grandfather, Benjamin Grassby (1836-96) spent his childhood in a strongly active radical milieu. His father was James Grassby, an active Chartist throughout the 1840s and ultimately general secretary of the National Charter Association. Benjamin became a staunch member of Dorchester Conservative Club, he named his first two sons Ernest (possibly, though it is now impossible to say, after Ernest Jones) and Garibaldi (rather more clearly after the hero of the popular radical cause of Italian unification).
A better documented Chartist childhood is that of W E Adams, born in Cheltenham in 1832, who grew up to be an advocate of radical causes (though hostile to late 19th century socialism) throughout his long life, and who served 36 years as editor of the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle. Soon after retirement in 1900, Adams wrote a series of recollections for his old paper, and these were republished in 1903 as two volumes under the title Memoirs of a Social Atom. In these volumes, Adams recalls meeting the great Chartist leaders while still only nine or ten years old, and of himself becoming active in Cheltenham’s Chartist organisation at the age of 16.
Set out below is the chapter of these memoirs (taken from the 1968 reprint published by Augustus M Kelley in New York in 1968, with an introduction by John Saville) in which Adams recounts his childhood introduction to Chartism and youthful activism.
Young Chartists and Old, by W E Adams
Few men now living, I fancy, had an earlier introduction to Chartism than I had. My people, though there wasn’t a man among them, were all Chartists, or at least all interested in the Chartist movement. If they did not keep the “sacred month,” it was because they thought the suspension of labour on the part of a few poor washerwomen would have no effect on the policy of the country. But they did for a time abstain from the use of excisable commodities. There were other indications of their tendencies. We had a dog called Rodney. My grandmother disliked the name because she had a curious sort of notion that Admiral Rodney, having been elevated to the peerage, had been hostile to the people. The old lady, too, was careful to explain to me that Cobbett and Cobden were two different persons – that Cobbett was the hero, and that Cobden was just a middle-class advocate. One of the pictures that I longest remember – it stood alongside samplers and stencilled drawings and not far from a china statuette of George Washington – was a portrait of John Frost. A line at the top of the picture indicated that it belonged to a series called the Portrait Gallery of People’s Friends. Above the head was a laurel wreath, while below was a representation of Mr Frost appealing to Justice on behalf of a group of ragged and wretched outcasts. I have been familiar with the picture since childhood, and cherish it as a memento of stirring times.
Another early recollection is that of a Sunday morning gathering in a humble kitchen. The most constant of our visitors was a crippled shoemaker, whose legs were of little use except to enable him to hop or hobble about on a pair of crutches. Larry – we called him Larry because his Christian name was Laurence, and we knew no other – made his appearance every Sunday morning, as regular as clockwork, with a copy of the Northern Star, damp from the press, for the purpose of hearing some member of our household read out to him and others “Feargus’s letter.” The paper had first to be dried before the fire, and then carefully and evenly cut, so as not to damage a single line of the almost sacred production. This done, Larry, placidly smoking his cutty pipe, which he occasionally thrust into the grate for a light, settled himself to listen with all the rapture of a devotee in a tabernacle to the message of the great Feargus, watching and now and then turning the little joint as it hung and twirled before the kitchen fire, and interjecting occasional chuckles of approval as some particularly emphatic sentiment was read aloud. But Larry had other gods besides Feargus. One was William Cobbett. Among his cherished possessions were two little volumes of Coibbett’s works – the “Legacy to Parsons” and the “Legacy to Labourers.” These volumes, I recollect (for Larry, though I was but a lad, loaned them to be as a special and particular favour), were preserved in wash-leather cases, each made to fit so exactly and close so tightly that no spot or stain of any sort should reach the precious pages within. Poor old Larry had a brave and wholesome heart in a most misshapen frame. Dead for fifty years, he lives yet in at least one loving memory.
The humble shoemaker, though he longed for the emancipation of his class, and made what sacrifice he could to achieve it, turned his modest circumstances to the best account. No pot-house politician he. Larry and his wife were as cheerful a couple as could be found in the town. Riches are not necessary to produce the blessings and comforts of home. A bright fireside is not incompatible with poverty, or at least with the very humblest of means. This was demonstrated in Larry’s cottage. It consisted of just two rooms – a kitchen and a loft – though it had what are almost unknown advantages in large towns: a plot of ground for flowers in front and a bigger plot for fruits and vegetables at the back. But it is Larry’s kitchen – at once his parlour and his workshop – that lives in my recollection. To say that it was as “clean as a new pin” is to give but a faint idea of the spotless brightness of everything in it. The very floor, brick though it was, was better scrubbed than many a dining table I have seen since. The pots and pannikins, the cans and canisters, those simple tin or pewter ornaments of the mantelshelf, shone like silver. All else about the apartment, where there was a place for everything and everything was in its place, was equally conspicuous for the polish that was given to it. Larry’s cottage, as the result of the industry of Larry’s wife, was a veritable palace for cleanliness and comfort. Even the old cripple’s low shoes were a wonder; for they shone so brilliantly that a cat, seeing her reflection in them, as in the pictorial advertisements of Day and Martin’s blacking of that time, would have almost arched her back for a conflict with her counterpart. And the venerable couple, in spite of their penury, were probably as happy a couple as any in the kingdom. If all Chartist homes had been as well kept as Larry’s, there might have been less discontent in the country, but there would have been more force and vitality in the movement to which the masses of the people gave their sanction. As a striking example of devotion to political ideals among the poor, the lame old shoemaker retains a treasured place in the recollection of the days that are gone.
While I was still a boy, though even then interested in political affairs, our town was visited by two of the Chartist chiefs. One was Feargus O’Connor, the other Henry Vincent. Some excitement was caused by the intimation that the former gentleman was expected to arrive by a certain route at a certain time. I joined a party of elder people to go out and meet him. We went to a neighbouring village, sat on a bridge, and waited. Our visitor did not come – at least, not our route. That night or the next night, I have a faint recollection of seeing an orator in his shirtsleeves addressing a crowd in the markets. It was Feargus. He was expected again in the first month of 1848, when a procession of carts and wagons passed through the town on the way to Snig’s End, one of the estates which had been purchased under the Land Scheme. This time, however, he did not come at all. Vincent’s visit occurred about 1841. It was after the “young Demosthenes,” as he was called, had suffered two periods of imprisonment – first in Monmouth Gaol, and afterwards at Millbank and Oakham. The meetings he addressed were held in a stable or coach-house – at any rate the room or building was in a livery stable yard. I recollect the locality well, though not a word that was said there. What I do recollect also is the suspicions that were expressed in our household as to the cause of the change of tone observable in Vincent’s utterances before and after imprisonment. The fiery and reckless orator of 1839 had become sober and restrained. The simple people of that day could only account for the change on the ground that the Government had somehow found means to influence or corrupt him. When Vincent next appeared in the town, it was as the spokesman of the Peace Society, not of the Chartist Association.
Chartism had interested me as any other stirring movement with which my friends and relatives were connected would have done. But the time soon arrived when I became interested in it on my own account. The local leader of the party was a blacksmith – J.P. Glenister. Others with whom I became associated – all much older than myself – were shoemakers, tailors, gardeners, stonemasons, cabinetmakers, the members of the first-named craft greatly predominating. There had been an earlier leader of the name of Millsom, a plasterer; but he, I think, was then dead. Next to Glenister’s the names I best remember among my old associates – all forgotten now save by a very few – were those of Hemmin, Sharland, Glover, Hiscox, Knight, Ryder, and Winters. They were earnest and reputable people – much above the average in intelligence. Glenister was probably the least educated among them. But he had one qualification which the others had not – he could make a speech. Not much of a speech, perhaps, though the speaker generally contrived to make his audience understand what he wanted to say. The old blacksmith usually, in virtue of his standing among us, presided over our meetings. One night, while he was so presiding, somebody spoke of Tom Paine. Up jumped the chairman. “I will not sit in the chair,” he cried in great wrath,” and hear that great man reviled. Bear in mind he was not a prize-fighter. There is no such person as Tom Paine. Mister Thomas Paine, if you please.” Glenister soon afterwards emigrated with his family to Australia, and one heard of him occasionally as doing well in his new home – which, being an honest and industrious man, he was every way likely to do.
It came to pass that the insignificant atom who writes this narrative, having all the effrontery of youth, took a somewhat prominent part in the Chartist affairs of the town. The first important business in which he was concerned was the National Petition for the Charter which was set afloat immediately after the French Revolution of 1848. It was alleged to have received 5,700,000 signatures; but the number was subsequently reduced to 2,000,000, which included many fictitious names – the work of knaves and enemies in order to bring discredit on the document. The animated scenes at our meetings where the petition lay for signature are still fresh in the memory. Then came active operations for getting the Chartist leaders to the town.
Thomas Cooper was a rather frequent visitor. Two impressions remain – one, that he recited Satan’s speech from Milton with magnificent effect; the other, that he had a most irritable temper. I had been concerned with another youth in organising a lecture at the Montpellier Rotunda. We had occasion to whisper to each other about some matter of business while the lecture was being delivered. Cooper caught sight of us, stopped, and then covered us with confusion as he solemnly assured the company that he would only resume his discourse “when these two young men have finished their conversation.” The matter of business, whether it suffered from the delay or not, had to stand over till the close of the meeting.
Cooper’s visit happened in March 1851. Three months later came Ernest Jones. Our gathering, in default of a better place, was held in a market garden. It was not a large gathering – only 150 or 200 present, the result, probably of showery weather. Jones had been in prison the year before for uttering seditious language. The treatment he had suffered was abominable. Petitions for inquiry were promoted; a select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate; a blue book containing the evidence was printed; and there, I think, the matter ended. As chairman of one of the meetings, I had some correspondence with Mr Grenville Berkeley, then member for Cheltenham. The hon. Gentleman was courteous in his replies, sent me a copy of the blue book, but could not, or at any rate did not, do anything else.
Our next Chartist visitor, I recollect, was Mr R G Gammage, the author of a sketch of the history of Chartism, who subsequently studied medicine under great difficulties, and settled down as a practitioner in Sunderland. Gammage’s visit coincided with the occurrence of the General Election of 1852. We therefore got him nominated so that he might have an opportunity of making a speech from the hustings. This was all we wanted, for of course it would have been utterly useless to go to the poll in the then state of the franchise. Suffice to say that Gammage made what we all thought a capital speech for the Charter.
There will be other occasions for describing the old electoral methods. But I may perhaps be excused for referring in this place to an affair preliminary to the contest of 1852 in which I bore a small part. The Chartists, even though they had few votes, were at that time numerous enough to make their favour worth cultivating. The agents of the Whig party therefore organised an open-air meeting of the working classes in the Montpellier Gardens. It was attended by about 2,000 persons. The resolutions were ingeniously framed to propitiate the Chartists and at the same time assist the candidature of the Whig nominee. Having, I suppose, made myself conspicuous at some of our meetings, I was invited to take part with Glenister in this gathering of working men. One of my aunts happened to be passing the Gardens, heard the cheers and saw the crowd, and so went to see what was the matter. Great was her astonishment to observe her precocious nephew on the platform proclaiming at the top of his voice the inalienable right of every man to the suffrage! The agents of Mr Craven Berkeleyu, then the Whig candidate for the town, turned the meeting to good account, advertising in all the local papers the resolutions that had been adopted, with the names of the working men and others who had proposed and seconded them. I was told I had done well on the occasion. If so, it was the only time I ever did well in like circumstances. But I had an uneasy consciousness that we had been “used” by the party wirepullers; as, indeed, we no doubt had been. Used or not, however, we had the satisfaction a few weeks later of hearing our own candidate propound the true doctrine from the hustings.
Notes and sources
All newspaper reports cited here can be found in the British Newspaper Archive. After the first mention, the Northern Star is given as NS.
I used both the FreeBMD and Ancestry websites to track down and count the registration of Chartist children. Although both are based on essentially the same database compiled by FreeBMD, differences in the way the search tools work are better fitted to different tasks. A search for the given name ‘Feargus’ on FreeBMD typically returns only those whose first name is Feargus, missing out on the huge number of children who have Feargus as a middle name and the many variations or errors in the spelling of Feargus. It does, however, provide the results in chronological format. The same search on Ancestry returns all those with Feargus as a middle name and includes variants. It is, however, impossible to sort the results and there is no download, so the only way to use the data is to copy and paste page after page of results into a spreadsheet and then try to weed out the many which are clearly not relevant.
Entries in the civil register for deaths and from the census can be found on Ancestry.
For the generally accepted pattern of family naming practices see, for example, English Naming Traditions on the English Ancestors website. Available at https://englishancestors.blog/2020/04/01/english-naming-traditions/ (Accessed: 4 January 2026). For changes in naming practices in the nineteenth century see: Amy J. Hasford (2016). New Influences on Naming Patterns in Victorian Britain. MA Thesis. Illinois State University. Available at https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1507&context=etd (Accessed: 4 January 2026).
Child mortality rate (under five years old) in the United Kingdom from 1800 to 2020. Available on the Statista website at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041714/united-kingdom-all-time-child-mortality-rate/?srsltid=AfmBOoqSKExBaC-w73-v3qxdOiMBIzXD3_PlZMhZ6OONcoAfYa9PcIR7 (Accessed 4 January 2026).
This article, published in January 2026, replaces an earlier version from April 2004 for which I searched the FreeBMD database. That found 54 boys clearly named for Feargus O’Connor and a further 19 for William Lovett. When the exercise was repeated in November 2007, there were 111 Feargus O’Connors and 26 William Lovetts. By far the most common Chartist name, however, was Henry Vincent, nearly 700 of whom can be found in the index. Vincent broke with the mainstream of Chartism in the early 1840s, however, and subsequently found a measure of fame as a travelling lecturer and preacher, and this may account for a significant number of those named after him. A further 263 children were named for Ernest Jones, leader of the later Chartist movement, while some 230 took their name from John Frost, the transported leader of the Newport uprising. A list of 1,643 children named after O’Connor, Lovett, Frost, Vincent and Jones can be found in the Chartist Ancestors Databank.