Edward Truelove Explained

Edward Truelove
Birth Date:29 October 1809
Resting Place:Highgate Cemetery
Nationality:British
Occupation:Publisher and Bookseller
Known For:Radical publishing
Credits:, which produces label "Notable credit(s)"; or by
Works:, which produces label "Works"; or by
Label Name:, which produces label "Label(s)" -->
Office:may be used as an alternative when the label is better rendered as "Office" (e.g. public office or appointments) -->
Movement:Chartisim and Owenisim
Boards:John Street Institution
Spouse:Harriett Potbory
Children:Harriett,Maurice H, and Edward Mazaninni
Parents:John and Sara Truelove
Relatives:Louisa Truelove Baldwin (nee Mosley)- Grand Niece

Edward Truelove (29 October 1809 – 21 April 1899) was an English radical publisher and freethinker.[1]

Life

A long-term Owenite, Truelove spent time from 1844 to 1845 at the Queenwood community in Hampshire. He went to New Harmony, Indiana for a year, returning to London in 1846. He then acted as secretary of the John Street Institution, a Chartist base in London, for nine years. In 1871 he was secretary of the last London festival of Owenites.[2] [3] [4] John Stuart Mill noted in On Liberty that both Truelove and George Jacob Holyoake were rejected as jurymen at the Old Bailey in 1857, for their statements of lack of religious belief.[5]

Truelove edited the Reformer's Library series of cheap works. He acted also as publisher for the International Workingmen's Association.[6] In July 1877 he was one of the founders of the Malthusian League.[7] As were others involved in setting it up, he was also a member of the National Secular Society. He became one of the core members of the League who attended regularly, until it stopped meeting formally around 1899, with Thomas Owen Bonser, J. K. Page and William Hammond Reynolds.[8]

In 1847 Truelove was selling Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and other works from John Street, London.[9] From 1852 to 1867 he published from 240 Strand, London;[10] in 1874 he was at 256 High Holborn.[11] The High Holborn address was that of the First International office, from about 1870.[12]

The Book-Hunter in London (1895) described Truelove as "agnostic", and as having retired from the High Holborn shop, to which he moved from the Strand, a few years earlier.[13] His personal library was sold after his death, with a catalogue published.[14] He is buried with his wife and daughter on the east side of Highgate Cemetery.

Prosecutions

Truelove encountered legal trouble with both political and birth control publications.

Tyrannicide pamphlet

In 1858 he was prosecuted in the wake of the Orsini affair, for publishing Tyrannicide: Is it justifiable? by William Edwin Adams.[15] The prosecution was on grounds of seditious libel; a charge of blasphemy was dropped. After six months Truelove was cautioned by the judge, Lord Chief Justice Campbell, and the matter was closed.[16] [17]

Obscenity charge

In 1878 Truelove was tried for publishing an edition of Robert Dale Owen's work Moral Physiology, and spent four months in Coldbath Fields Prison.[18] [19] [20] Prosecuted in 1877, at the instigation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, Truelove had his trial postponed to allow the higher-profile contraception case involving Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, and the publication of Charles Knowlton's The Fruits of Philosophy,[21] to come to court first. A first trial of Truelove in February 1878 led to the jury not being able to come to a verdict. He was convicted after a second trial.[22] [23] [24]

In legal terms, prosecutions brought during the 1870s, and prompted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, turned on the application of the Obscene Publications Act 1857. A series of cases had been sought by Charles Hastings Collette, Secretary of the Society. It became a one-man campaign, ending in 1880 when the Society closed down.[25] Truelove had displayed Moral Physiology in his shop window, in High Holborn.[26] Witnesses for Truelove's defence were John Morrison Davidson and W. A. Hunger of the English Dialectical Society. The judge for the first trial was Lord Chief Justice Cockburn; for the second, Baron Pollock.[27]

Publications on contraception

The background in birth control was that Truelove had first published George Drysdale's The Elements of Social Science; or Physical, Sexual and Natural Religion, an influential pseudonymous text on contraception, in 1855, after Drysdale had had trouble finding a publisher; he also sold contraceptive devices.[28] [29] The book, cheaply produced, had reached a 14th edition by 1876;[30] in all there were 35 editions, to 1905.

Bradlaugh was accused of writing Drysdale's work; he did not know the true author, and Truelove successfully maintained Drysdale's secret.[31] Drysdale's authorship only came out in 1904, after his death.[32]

Owen's Moral Physiology was an earlier birth control book from 1830, first published in the United States.[33] Under the title Individual, Family, and National Poverty, a pamphlet version of Drysdale's work was part of the case against Truelove.[34]

Family

Truelove married Harriett Potbory, from Sidmouth, Devon, in 1840. Both his wife and daughter, also called Harriett, were later suffragists.[35] They also had a son, Maurice H.[36] and in 1849 it was reported that he had named a young son "Mazzini", after Giuseppe Mazzini; this took place at a secular baptism on 11 November, blessing by George Jacob Holyoake, at the John Street Institution. Later in life Edward, his wife and daughter Harriet are shown to have raised their grand-niece Louisa.[37] [38]

Harriett Truelove was on good terms with Florence Nightingale, and corresponded with her.[39] Nightingale sometimes visited the bookshop in the later 1840s, when it was next to the John Street Institution.

External links

Notes and References

  1. Book: S. Chandrasekhar . Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant . 1 January 2002 . Transaction Publishers . 978-1-4128-3310-3 . 77.
  2. Book: John Harrison . Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (Routledge Revivals): The Quest for the New Moral World . 10 September 2009 . Routledge . 978-1-135-19140-5 . 215 and note 3.
  3. Book: John Harrison . Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (Routledge Revivals): The Quest for the New Moral World . 10 September 2009 . Routledge . 978-1-135-19140-5 . 215 note 3.
  4. Book: Mark Bostridge . Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend . 26 February 2015 . Penguin Books Limited . 978-0-14-193080-0 . clvi.
  5. [s:Page:On Liberty (4th Edition).djvu/55]
  6. Book: Margot C. Finn . After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics 1848-1874 . Cambridge University Press . 2003 . 978-0-521-52598-5 . 116.
  7. F. D'Arcy, The Malthusian League and the Resistance to Birth Control Propaganda in Late Victorian Britain, Population StudiesVol. 31, No. 3 (Nov., 1977), pp. 429–448, at p. 429. Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Population Investigation Committee DOI: 10.2307/2173367 Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2173367
  8. Book: Rosanna Ledbetter . A history of the Malthusian League, 1877-1927 . Ohio State University . 1976 . 978-0-8142-0257-9 . 65 . registration.
  9. Book: James A. Secord . James A. Secord . Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation . 20 September 2003 . University of Chicago Press . 978-0-226-15825-9 . 306.
  10. Book: Edward Royle . Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium: The Harmony Community at Queenwood Farm, Hampshire, 1839-1845 . 15 July 1998 . Manchester University Press . 978-0-7190-5426-6 . 231 note 47.
  11. Book: Annie Wood Besant . Annie Besant: An Autobiography . 10 March 2011 . Cambridge University Press . 978-1-108-02731-1 . 134.
  12. Book: Henryk Katz . The Emancipation of Labor: A History of the First International . Greenwood Press . 1992 . 978-0-313-27447-3 . 41.
  13. Web site: The Book-Hunter in London: Historical and other studies of collectors and collecting . Roberts . William . 1895 . . E. Stock . London . 200 . 22 December 2015.
  14. Book: Catalogue of Books, Pamphlets, Tracts, Etc., Chiefly Political and Controversial: From the Library of the Late Edward Truelove. To be Sold by His Executors . 1900.
  15. Book: Christine Lattek . Revolutionary Refugees: German Socialism in Britain, 1840-1860 . Psychology Press . 2006 . 978-0-7146-5100-2 . 183.
  16. Book: John Stuart Mill . On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays . 19 June 2015 . Oxford University Press . 978-0-19-967080-2 . 509 note 30.
  17. Book: Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner . Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work, Volume I (Illustrated) . John M. Robertson . 29 March 2014 . Lulu.com . 978-1-304-99178-2 . 89 .
  18. Book: Edward Royle . Robert Owen and the Commencement of the Millennium: The Harmony Community at Queenwood Farm, Hampshire, 1839-1845 . 15 July 1998 . Manchester University Press . 978-0-7190-5426-6 . 153 note 77.
  19. Book: Donald E. Pitzer . America's Communal Utopias . January 1997 . Univ of North Carolina Press . 978-0-8078-4609-4 . 132 note 95.
  20. F. H. Amphlett Micklewright. “The Rise and Decline of English Neo-malthusianism”. Population Studies 15.1 (1961): 32–51, at p. 41. Stable URL https://www.jstor.org/stable/217296
  21. Book: Knowlton . Charles . Fruits of philosophy: a treatise on the population question . October 1891 . Reader's Library . Besant . Annie . Annie Besant . San Francisco . 626706770 . Charles Knowlton . 1840 . Bradlaugh . Charles . Charles Bradlaugh. View original copy.
  22. Book: Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner . Charles Bradlaugh: A Record of His Life and Work, Volume I I (Illustrated) . John M. Robertson . 29 March 2014 . Lulu.com . 978-1-304-99179-9 . 29.
  23. Book: Norman St. John-Stevas . Life, Death and the Law: Law and Christian Morals in England and the United States . 1 January 2002 . Beard Books . 978-1-58798-113-5 . 53 note 1.
  24. Book: Margaret Sanger . The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic . Michael W. Perry . H. G. Wells . September 2003 . Inkling Books . 978-1-58742-008-5 . 293 note 14.
  25. Book: David Bradshaw . Prudes on the Prowl: Fiction and Obscenity in England, 1850 to the Present Day . Rachel Potter . 26 September 2013 . OUP Oxford . 978-0-19-969756-4 . 26–28.
  26. Book: Robert Jütte . Contraception: A History . 12 May 2008 . Polity . 978-0-7456-3271-1 . 128.
  27. Book: Rosanna Ledbetter . A History of the Malthusian League, 1877-1927 . Ohio State University . 1976 . 978-0-8142-0257-9 . 38 . registration.
  28. Book: Vern L. Bullough . Encyclopedia of Birth Control . 1 January 2001 . ABC-CLIO . 978-1-57607-181-6 . 100–1.
  29. Book: Martha Vicinus . A Widening Sphere (Routledge Revivals): Changing Roles of Victorian Women . 8 October 2013 . Routledge . 978-1-135-04389-6 . 212.
  30. Book: Sally Mitchell . The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class, and Women's Reading, 1835-1880 . 1 January 1981 . Popular Press . 978-0-87972-155-8 . 177 . registration.
  31. 39447. J. Miriam. Benn. Drysdale, George.
  32. Book: Rosanna Ledbetter . A History of the Malthusian League, 1877-1927 . Ohio State University . 1976 . 978-0-8142-0257-9 . 38 . registration.
  33. Book: V. C. Medvei . The History of Clinical Endocrinology: A Comprehensive Account of Endocrinology from Earliest Times to the Present Day . 15 January 1993 . CRC Press . 978-1-85070-427-0 . 196.
  34. Book: Annie Besant . Annie Besant . Autobiographical Sketches . 13 July 2009 . Broadview Press . 978-1-77048-041-4 . 211 note.
  35. Book: Elizabeth Crawford . The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey . 15 April 2013 . Routledge . 978-1-136-01062-0 . 172.
  36. Book: George Howell . A History of the Working Men's Association from 1836 to 1850 . David John Rowe . Graham . 1972 . 14. 9780900409684.
  37. Book: Margot C. Finn . After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics 1848-1874 . Cambridge University Press . 2003 . 978-0-521-52598-5 . 129.
  38. Book: George Jacob Holyoake . The Reasoner . Holyoake . 1850 . 305.
  39. Book: Lynn McDonald . Florence Nightingale's Suggestions for Thought: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale . 11 December 2008 . Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press . 978-1-55458-252-5 . 11.

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