Samuel Bamford, 1788-1872

Poole, Robert ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9613-6401 (2004) Samuel Bamford, 1788-1872. In: Gildart, Keith and Howell, David, (eds.) Dictionary of labour biography. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK. Item availability may be restricted.

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Abstract

Samuel Bamford is best known for his political autobiography, Passages in the Life of a Radical, regarded by the late E. P. Thompson as “essential reading for any Englishman”. He was also a journalist, poet, and diarist of distinction, and one of the longest-lived and best-documented working men of his age. Samuel Bamford was born in 1788 in the Lancashire weaving village of Middleton, six miles north of Manchester. His father was an artisan weaver and a Methodist, and sometime Governor of the poorhouse in Salford, where half the family, including Samuel’s mother, died of fever; young Samuel himself nearly followed them. He received an intermittent formal education, including spells at the grammar schools in Middleton and Manchester, and then held a succession of jobs ranging from east coast sailor to Manchester warehouseman. He also enlisted for a time in the local Volunteer force. He married his childhood sweetheart, Jemima in 1810, soon after the birth of their only child Ann. He was in Manchester at the time of the Luddite disturbances in Middleton in April 1812, and was back weaving in Middleton as the post-war movement for a radical reform of parliament took off.

Item Type:	Book Section
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN:	9780333968734
Departments:	Academic Departments > Institute of Arts (IOA) > Humanities
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	01 Nov 2017 17:07
Last Modified:	11 Jan 2024 17:00
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/3376