Theophilus Salmon, 1785 – 1849
Theophilus Salmon was one of countless working-class men who worked for the Chartist cause. A ticket porter by trade, he served as secretary to both the City of London Chartist Association and to the Scientific and Political Institute.
Theophilus Salmon was born to Robert and Rachael Salmon at Ferring in West Sussex and baptised on 5 June 1785. Aged 20, on 23 August 1805 he married Ann Goodman at the church of St Nicholas Cole Abbey on what is now Queen Victoria Street in the City of London.
Two years later, Theophilus was witness to the horrific Old Bailey Disaster of 1807, when a huge crowd that had gathered outside Newgate Prison to watch a triple hanging was destabilised by the collapse of a wooden cart, leading to a panic in which as many as thirty people were trampled and crushed to death1.
Then staying at the King of Denmark public house (otherwise known as the Magpie and Stump) immediately opposite the prison2, Theophilus was called by the coroner to give evidence. He said he had been watching from a first-floor window when he saw ‘a general motion’ in the crowd after the call ‘hats off’ as the first of those to be hanged ascended the scaffold. He saw several people fall, and others forced to step on and over them to avoid falling themselves. Other accounts say that it took an hour to clear the crowd. Theophilus told the coroner that by the time he was able to leave the building, ‘a cart was employed in carrying away the dead; and several that were maimed were conveyed on shutters or doors to the Hospital, as he supposed’ (General Evening Post, 26 February 1807, p1).
Ticket porter on the streets of the capital
Theophilus and Ann may have decided to leave the capital, as the next sighting of them is in Oxford, where their son William was baptised on 26 March 1824. Theophilus gave his occupation as bookkeeper. But they must have moved back to London when William was still a young child. By 1827, when Theophilus was called on to give evidence in a court case at the Old Bailey, he was working as a ticket-porter. Men like Theophilus were a common sight on the streets of the city, where they could be relied on to carry goods, documents or messages across town in accordance with a fixed scale of charges. Licensed and regulated by the City of London Corporation, ticket-porters typically wore a distinctive white apron and wore a pewter badge carrying the City’s arms. Many worked from a regular spot on the city’s streets.
Perhaps the most famous London ticket porter is the fictional Toby Veck, the poor but good-hearted and hard-working character at the centre of Charles Dickens’ 1844 Christmas story The Chimes.
In the real world, and in evidence before the magistrates in 1824, Theophilus said that on 14 August he had been at Fleet Market. At quarter to five in the morning, he had left five baskets of apples while he unloaded other goods at the top of the market when he heard an alarm3. Realising that a basket was missing, ‘I looked up Ludgate-hill, and saw the prisoners carrying it away – it contained about three pecks; each had hold of a handle, and had got about one hundred yards. I overtook them at the corner of St. Martin’s-court – they said they had paid 6s. 6d. for it, but it was not for sale.’ Elizabeth King and Ann Lane admitted to stealing a basket, value 2s 3d, and three pecks of apples, value 4s, both of which belonged to Theophilus, and were gaoled for a month.
There is no obvious record of Ann Salmon’s death, but Theophilus married for a second time on 6 September 1828 at St George, Hanover Square, this time to Sarah Lewis. Their daughter, Sarah Rachel Salmon, was baptised at St Martin in the Fields, on 6 June 1830. Theophilus now described himself as a ‘merchant’s clerk’.
Chartism and the Scientific and Political Institute
Clearly there were Chartists in the City of London from the very start. The radical printer and publisher John Cleave had premises just off Fleet Street and was actively involved in the local as well as the national movement for some years. But there is no mention in the Northern Star of a Chartist association there before January 1840 (NS, 25 January 1840, p5). Theophilus must have been involved in the locality from its early days. In the spring of 1841, the City Chartists set up a Scientific and Political Institute at least in part to manage their new meeting place at 55 Old Bailey; Theophilus was its co-secretary, serving alongside George Wyatt, and with John Cleave as treasurer. Later, when John Campbell, the secretary of the National Charter Association, provided a list of nearly 300 localities, he named both Salmon and Wyatt as secretary to the City Chartists (24 December 1841). Both now and for some months to come, Salmon gave 15 Harp-Alley, Farringdon-street as his home address (see, for example, NS, 22 January 1842, p5). He was living there at the time of the 1841 census, taken on 6 June, with his wife Sarah, son William and younger daughters Sarah and Isabella. In all, fifteen people lived in the building, which was shared with several other families.
By the end of the year, they had moved to 5 New-court, Farringdon-street. But Theophilus continued to serve as secretary (NS, 24 December 1842, p3).
William Salmon shared his father’s politics. The two are frequently to be found in reports of the City of London Chartist Association’s meetings seconding one another’s resolutions. And in the autumn of 1841, seventeen-year-old William as secretary and Charles Westry as chairman issued an ‘address of the youths of the National Charter Association, residing in the City of London, to their brethren of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales’ in which they urged ‘all you who have arrived at the age of fourteen (the age of discretion)’ to come forward and join the Chartist cause (NS, 23 October 1841, p6).
For the most part, Theophilus is mentioned in the Northern Star carrying out his administrative responsibilities: sending in money on behalf of the City locality to the various funds set up to support the Chartist prisoners and their families, to help pay for Chartist conferences. Some contributions, including subscriptions to the National Land Company, may have been his own money.
In the summer of 1842, Theophilus was called on to chair a meeting of the London Delegate Council called to wind up the accounts of that year’s national convention (23 July 1842, p7). He must also have been kept busy at Christmas 1842 when the Scientific and Political Institute took new rooms at Turnagain Lane. There was a great deal of work to be done in raising the necessary money, negotiating the lease and fitting up the rooms so that they could be used for meetings and social events, and to house a coffee shop and library. Managing the building, which was used extensively for public meetings called by Chartist and other groups, would also have been time-consuming and demanding.
In recognition of the work involved, the Institute agreed to pay its secretary 30 shillings a week (NS, 20 May 1843, p1). But Theophilus stood down from the post in favour of Thomas Martin Wheeler, who was also reluctant to take the job, but agreed to do it until someone else could be found. After this date it becomes difficult to distinguish in newspaper reports between Theophilus and William, though from the occasions on which William is named as ‘Mr Salmon jun’, it seems to be the case that both men remained politically active in the years to come. By 1848, however, they were part of the Finsbury locality. Theophilus Salmon was in the chair when that body met at the Star coffee house in Old Street to elect delegates for the district council, and William was one of those elected (NS, 24 June 1848, p1).
Theophilus died at his home, 32 Duke Street, South St Giles, on 29 July 1849. William was present and reported the death. Theophilus’s death certificate records that he was 64 years old, a porter by trade, and had been suffering from ‘organic disease of the heart’ for the past nine months. He was buried at St Giles in the Fields on 3 August 1849.
Notes and sources
Unlikely though it sounds, there appear to have been two men named Theophilus Salmon in London at this time. A Theophilus Salmon married at Godstone in Surrey, kept a public house called the Red Lion in Southwark, and in 1810 paid 40 shillings to join the Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers and become a freeman of the City of London. Conflating the two would require the Chartist Theophilus to fit in an extra marriage while his first wife was still alive, to be occasionally in two places at once, and to be working as a porter while also running a pub. I have tried to separate out the two men’s lives, but it is conceivable that parts of Chartist Theophilus’s life have been omitted from this account and, hopefully less likely, that some facts relating to the non-Chartist Theophilus have been included.
All newspapers referenced in the text above are taken from the British Newspaper Library. After the first mention, the Northern Star is cited as NS with the relevant publication date.
Birth, baptism, marriage, census, death and burial records are taken from Ancestry UK and FindMyPast.
1. ‘1807: The execution of Holloway and Haggerty: tragedy upon tragedy’, by Naomi Clifford on naomiclifford.com. Accessed here, 11 March 2025.
2. ‘The hanging pub’, by Mike Paterson for the London Historians’ Blog. Accessed here, 11 March 2025.
3. Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 9.0) September 1827. Trial of ELIZABETH KING , ANN LANE (t18270913-331). Accessed here, 11 March 2025).