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3 unusual facts about Richard Carlile


Blackfriars Rotunda

In May or June 1830 Richard Carlile took over the Rotunda, and it became a centre for radical lectures and meetings.

Richard Carlile

To make political texts such as Paine's books The Rights of Man and the Principles of Government available to the poor he split them into sections which he sold as small pamphlets, similarly publishing The Age of Reason and Principles of Nature.

While he was in jail he continued to write articles for The Republican which was now published by Carlile's wife Jane, and thanks to the publicity it now outsold pro-government newspapers such as The Times.


James De Ville

De Ville examined an enormous number of heads including those of many well-known figures including John Elliotson, Hermann Prince of Pückler-Muskau, Harriet Martineau, Charles Bray, George Eliot, William Blake, Richard Dale Owen, Richard Carlile, the Duke of Wellington and Prince Albert.

Robert Aspland

On his recovery in 1819, he brought about the formation of the Association for protecting the Civil Rights of Unitarians; and that being the year of the conviction of Richard Carlile for publishing Tom Paine's The Age of Reason, Aspland was engaged in controversy on the subject in the columns of The Times.


see also