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A friend in Sheffield has lent me the report of the discussion, printed at the time by Mr Leader of the Sheffield Independent, and which both disputants agreed was a very fair representation of what was said. According to the arranged terms, Mr Bradlaugh led the first night, and the Rev. Brewin Grant on each succeeding evening. The proposition to be affirmed by "Iconoclast" on the first evening was: "The God of the Bible, revengeful, inconstant, unmerciful, and unjust. His attributes proven to be contradicted by the book which is professed to reveal them." His opening speech was made in clear, concise language, was directly to the point, and was listened to with the utmost attention. He drew the picture of the Deity who, reviewing his creation, pronounced everything that he had made "very good" (Gen. i. 31); "yet in a short period the same Deity looks round and declares that man is so bad that he repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart [Gen. vi. 6]; and in consequence God, to relieve himself from this source of grief, determined to destroy every living thing, and he did destroy them by deluge, for it repented him that he had made them, because man was so very wicked." He dwelt upon this at some length; then passed on to the selection of Noah and his family, "part of the old stock of mankind having personal acquaintance with all pre-existing evil," to re-people the earth; and concluded his first half-hour by asking where was the love, where the justice towards the Amalek, against whom "the Lord hath sworn" to have war "from generation to generation"? It was now the turn of the Rev. Brewin Grant to reply to this terrible indictment against the Deity whose professed servant he was; and it is interesting to mark the manner in which he set about his task. He commenced by unburdening himself of a few minor personalities against my father, and when a few of these petty sneers – the only possible object of which could be to provoke ill feeling – were off his mind, he indulged his overwhelming passion for raising a laugh. For this he made an opportunity in dealing with the causes which led to "the Flood," asking whether "Iconoclast imagines that, because God knew of these sins before they were committed, he should have drowned men before they were created." This, of course, provoked the desired merriment, and, temporarily satisfied, Mr Grant proceeded to his argument with acuteness and ability. Unfortunately, his peculiar temperament would not allow him to keep this up for very long; and while still in his first half-hour speech he drew a comparison of God's repentance with that of a merchant who repents him of engaging a certain clerk, and made the merchant say, "Wherein can you find fault? Am I a Secularist that I should lie, or an infidel committee-man that I should violate a ratified agreement?" "Iconoclast" is once more taunted with blindness and ignorance; and "infidels" with amusing "auditors in holes of progress;" and so the reverend (never was a title more meaningless) gentleman's speech came to a conclusion. It would have been small wonder if a young, hotly enthusiastic man as my father then was, had been roused to angry retaliation, and so turned aside from the real points in dispute; but he did not so soon lose the coolness with which he had started. He made a few short answers to the personalities, and proceeded at once to deal with the arguments urged by Mr Grant; and, these disposed of, continued to build up his own position. The greater part of Brewin Grant's next speech was argumentative, but not all; he made an opportunity to tell his antagonist that his strength lay "not in his logic, but in his lungs;" that one of his objections was "too foolish," but he (Grant) "condescended to notice it;" and further, that "no class of men with which I am acquainted has had all honesty so thoroughly eaten out by trickery and falsehood as the infidel class." The next quarter of an hour fell to my father, who hardly noticed Mr Grant's gibes; but when the latter made his speech, the final one of the evening, he still interlarded it with innuendoes against the "infidel." The propositions affirmed by Mr Grant on the succeeding nights were shortly as follows: The Creation story consistent with itself and with science; the Deluge story consistent with itself and physically possible; and finally, "Iconoclast" as a commentator on the Bible, "deficient in learning, logic, and fairness." But the story of the first night was merely repeated on the later evenings; as feeling grew a little warmer, or there was something more than usually offensive in Mr Grant's personalities, Mr Bradlaugh was once or twice evidently roused to anger; but after reading the debate I only wonder that he had the patience to carry it through to the end.

I have dwelt upon this debate much longer, as I am well aware, than it really deserves; but I have done so for two reasons: (1) That being the first set debate, formally arranged and fairly reported, it should have a special interest, inasmuch as we should expect it to show to a certain extent the measure of Mr Bradlaugh's debating powers at the age of twenty-six; and (2) because the idea has been so diligently spread abroad, and possibly received with credence by those who were not personally acquainted with either disputant, that Mr Bradlaugh found in the Rev. Brewin Grant a powerful opponent. By my father's testimony, Mr Grant was a man of ability; by his own – as shown by quotations I have here given – he was an unscrupulous slanderer. He had a power, it is true, and that power consisted in his willingness to weary and disgust his antagonist and his audience (friends as well as foes) by low jests and scandalous personalities. In the course of this debate he scornfully told his audience that he was not speaking to them but to the thousands outside: by those thousands, if perchance he has so many readers, will he be judged and condemned.

In March 1859 a debate between Mr Bradlaugh and Mr John Bowes was arranged at Northampton. My father describes Mr Bowes as "a rather heavy but well-meaning old gentleman, utterly unfitted for platform controversy." The Northampton Herald, which professed to give an "outline" of this debate, announced that the "mighty champion" of the Secularists was "a young man of the name of Bradlaugh, who endeavoured to impose upon the credulity of the multitude by arrogating to himself the high-sounding title of 'Iconoclast.'" Mr John Bowes the Herald put forward as a "gentleman well known for his contests with the Socialists and the Mormonites." The Herald's outline-report was reprinted in the Investigator, with a few additions in parentheses; but a note is appended that it is very imperfect, and my father having by this time fallen ill with rheumatic fever, he was unable to revise it. There is just one passage in Mr Bradlaugh's opening speech which is given fairly fully, and which it is desirable to repeat here, for in it he lays down his position as an Atheist, a position to which he adhered until his last hour.

"He did not deny that there was 'a God,' because to deny that which was unknown was as absurd as to affirm it. As an Atheist he denied the God of the Bible, of the Koran, of the Vedas, but he could not deny that of which he had no knowledge."

This statement Mr Bradlaugh made, in varying words, over and over again, and yet over and over again religious writers and speakers have described, and probably they always will describe, the Atheist as "one who denies God."

In the years 1859 and 1860, despite the fact that in the former year he lay for many weeks very seriously ill, discussions, as he himself says, grew on him "thick and fast." "At Sheffield I debated with a Reverend Dr Mensor, who styled himself a Jewish Rabbi. He was then in the process of gaining admission to the Church of England, and had been put forward to show my want of scholarship. We both scrawled Hebrew characters for four nights on a black board, to the delight and mystification of the audience, who gave me credit for erudition because I chalked the square letter characters with tolerable rapidity and clearness. At Glasgow I debated with a Mr Court, representing the Glasgow Protestant Association, a glib-tongued missionary, who has since gone to the bad; at Paisley with a Mr Smart, a very gentlemanly antagonist; and at Halifax with the Rev. T. D. Matthias, a Welsh Baptist minister, unquestionably very sincere."

I have not been able to get a report of the debate with Dr Mensor, and indeed I do not think one was ever printed. The discussion with the Rev. T. D. Matthias was for many years on sale with other Freethought publications, and has doubtless been read by many. The subject of the debate was "The Credibility and Morality of the Four Gospels," and it was continued for five successive nights – October 31st, November 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 1859. It grew, as we have already seen, out of lectures delivered in Halifax by Mr Bradlaugh, and was with one or two exceptions conducted with such calmness, courtesy, and good feeling, that at the conclusion each gentleman expressed his appreciation of the other. The Court debate was not held until 1860, and was a four nights' debate, terminating on March 20. The use of the City Hall was refused on the ground "that such meetings tend to riot and disorder," and the discussions were therefore held in the Trades' Hall, which on each evening was crowded to the door. The chair was taken by the late Alexander Campbell, whom Mr Bradlaugh speaks of as "a generous, kindly-hearted old Socialist missionary, who, at a time when others were hostile, spoke encouragingly to me, and afterwards worked with me for a long time on the National Reformer." Mr Campbell edited the Glasgow Sentinel, and in the issue of March 17, 1860, there is an allusion to the debate then being carried on between "Iconoclast" and Mr Court, of "The Protestant Layman's Association." Says the Sentinel, "Few Scottish clergymen are fit for the platform. The pulpit, indeed, unfits for logical debate, but the Protestant community ought to feel well pleased that in Mr Court … they have a skillful and redoubtable champion of Christianity." The Glasgow Daily Bulletin, giving a few words to the final night, says that "the speaking during the evening was excellent and occasionally excited, but the conduct of the audience was orderly in the extreme. Mr Bradlaugh was animated and forcible, and exhibited many of the traits of a great speaker. Mr Court's university career is evidently polishing and improving him." The audience passed a resolution of censure upon the authorities who refused the City Hall, regarding it as involving a slander upon the community of Glasgow. A friend, after much searching, came across and sent to me a fragment of the published debate; but as it contains only one complete speech from each disputant and parts of two others, one cannot say much about it. Mr Court seems to have been unusually smart, and the Daily Bulletin's reference to his "university career" accounts for the numerous literary quotations which adorned his speech.

The Paisley Journal gives a short notice of the debate with Mr John Smart of the Neilson Institute, which was held for two successive nights in the Paisley Exchange Rooms in March 1860. Speaking of the first night's audience, it says it "was the largest we ever saw in the Exchange Rooms, the whole area, gallery, and passages being crowded;" on the second night the audience was estimated at between 1100 and 1200. The discussion for the first night was upon the four Gospels; and the editor remarks: "Of course, there will be differences of opinion as to which of the debaters had the best of the argument; but those who could clear their minds of partisanship will perhaps be of opinion that Mr Bradlaugh's speeches displayed boldness and vigour, with great information on the subjects at issue; that Mr Smart showed himself as an accomplished scholar, with a mass of knowledge ever ready to bring up in illustration of his views; and that each had a foeman worthy of his steel." The subject for the second night was a consideration of the teachings of Christ. The Journal thought that "both speakers brought their best arguments and greatest powers of intellect into the subject." Mr Bradlaugh enforced his objections "in powerful voice and vigorous language, and with telling effect. In his own quiet scholarly way – closely, tersely, and clearly, Mr Smart took up most of the objections and discussed them seriatim." It will be seen that the Paisley Journal, at least, tried to clear its mind of "partisanship," and to hold the scales evenly.

CHAPTER X
HARD TIMES

The question will probably have presented itself to many minds, If Mr Bradlaugh was giving up so much time to public work, to lecturing, reform meetings, debating, etc., how was he living the while? what was his home life, and in what way was he earning his bread? It will be remembered that, after leaving the army in 1853, he was before the year was out in the employ of Mr Rogers, solicitor, of 70 Fenchurch Street, first as "errand boy" at 10s. a week, and then as clerk at a slowly increasing salary. After a few months at Warner Place, he and my mother went to live in a little four-roomed house at No. 4 West Street, Cambridge Heath, where my sister Alice was born. In the previous January my father had had a very troublesome piece of litigation to conduct for his firm at Manchester. Often and often has he told us the story of it, and he used to work us up into a state of excitement by his graphic account of his capture of two men at night from a common lodging house in one of the low parts of Manchester; of his interview at the Albion Hotel with Mr Holland, a surgeon implicated in the case, who, when my father rose to ring the bell for some lemonade, mistaking the intent, rose in alarm, and cried, "For God's sake, don't!" These and other episodes in the case remained clearly enough in my memory, but when I wished to retell the story in a connected form, I found myself altogether at a loss. First of all, I could not remember that my father ever mentioned the date of these legal adventures, and without the date I could do little in the way of searching for press reports. However, I found a clue to this in the following letter, which was amongst those papers of my mother's which, as I have said, I looked through quite recently for the first time: —

"North Camp, Aldershot,"

29th January 1856.

"Madam, – Mr Bradlaugh has been kind enough to send me, during the last few days, some Manchester newspapers containing reports relative to the case of suspected poisoning. Not knowing where to address him now, I take the liberty of writing to you. Will you be so kind as to convey to him my thanks for the papers, and my hearty congratulations on his having obtained the management of the prosecution; it is an opportunity of distinguished service. With his wonderful acuteness and energy (Mr Bradlaugh and myself are such old and close friends that we do not mince words in speaking of or to each other) he will surely distinguish himself, and thus, as I suppose and hope, begin a fair way for promotion, as we phrase it. Watching the case with great interest, I thought his cross-examination of Mr Holland, the surgeon, extremely good and well conducted; but as this is merely an unprofessional opinion, he will not care much for it, although so favourable.

"Trusting that yourself and the other members of the family are enjoying good health, I have the honour to be, Madam, yours most respectfully,

Jas. Thomson, Schoolmaster."Depôt. 1st Rifles.

"Mrs C. Bradlaugh."

Apart from the subject, this letter has in itself a special interest to personal admirers of "B. V.": the handwriting – the earliest specimen in my possession – is singularly unlike Mr Thomson's writing of later years, so unlike that it was not until I had looked at the signature that I realised who was the writer, although I am so familiar with his writing that I should not have thought it possible that I could hesitate in recognising it.

The poisoning case must have aroused considerable attention in Manchester at the time. It arose in this way: – An insurance company called The Diadem Life Insurance Company had reason to believe that frauds were being practised upon them in Manchester through their agent, and consequently instructed their solicitor to investigate one case which they deemed unusually suspicious. The solicitor happened to be Mr Rogers, and he sent his clerk, Mr Bradlaugh, to Manchester to conduct the proceedings there. A man named John Monahan, a waterproof worker, had become insured in the Diadem Office for £300; and after paying the premiums he died, leaving a will securing the £300 to his son James Monahan. Certain facts had been kept back from the Insurance Company at the time of taking out the policy, and the man's age had also been wrongly given. Investigations led, first, to the belief that the will had not been written until three weeks after the testator's death – and this was subsequently sworn to by witnesses, one of whom wrote out the will – and finally, to the possibility that the old man, John Monahan, had been poisoned. Two men implicated in the matter Mr Bradlaugh himself captured and handed over to the police in the middle of the night, and, in consequence of the evidence sworn to, an order was made for the exhumation of the body of Monahan. As there was no record of the place of burial, the details of the exhumation were revolting in the extreme. For four days a gang of men were employed in digging up bodies in an almost haphazard manner under the vague directions, first, of the sexton and next of a niece of the deceased. Mr Bradlaugh, after consulting with the coroner, contracted with a Mr Sturges to undertake the work with more system. Sixty or more bodies were dug up, and at length one of these was identified as that of Monahan. Under the circumstances one cannot believe that the identification was very precise; the body had been lying in a common grave for between five and six months, and no one's memory seems to have been clear enough even to point out the spot where the old man was buried. Mr Bradlaugh was always of opinion that they did not get the right body after all, although in the body found there were traces of poison. These traces the medical evidence did not judge sufficient to justify a charge of poisoning, and this count therefore fell to the ground. The counsel engaged on behalf of the accused son, James Monahan, was very indignant that my father should be allowed to conduct the prosecution; he protested that heretofore the rule in that court was that no one should be allowed to practise in that court unless an attorney, or solicitor, or barrister. On the last occasion, the counsel went on, as the prisoners had been apprehended only the night before, and therefore, as there was not perhaps time to instruct a professional man, Mr Bradlaugh had been allowed to appear. Other clerks had been refused to appear, and he could not see why a different rule should be adopted in this case. To expedite the business, he suggested that the case should, according to ordinary practice, be conducted by a solicitor or barrister. Mr Bradlaugh said he had appeared to conduct cases for his employer in London police courts, and this was a matter entirely within the discretion of the Court. He urged that he alone was in possession of all the facts of the case, and that he could not communicate his knowledge to any other person. Mr Maude (the magistrate) remarked that it had been the general rule in that court that parties should be represented either by counsel or solicitor, but there was no rule without an exception, and looking at the peculiarity of this case, he thought it would be very inconvenient now not to allow Mr Bradlaugh to elicit the facts.

At a later stage of the proceedings a Mr Bent, who was watching the case on behalf of another of the prisoners, objected, on the part of the solicitors practising in the court, to Mr Bradlaugh, an attorney's clerk, being allowed to appear, but the Bench overruled his objection. In consequence of the medical evidence as to the condition of the exhumed body, the charge of poisoning had, of course, to be entirely abandoned, but in the March following James Monahan and two others were charged with having, on 3rd August 1855, "feloniously forged a will purporting to be the last will and testament of John Monahan, and with having uttered the same, knowing it to be forged," and another was charged with having feloniously been an accessory after the fact. The jury found Monahan guilty, but acquitted the others. Keefe, the fourth man, was then charged with having taken a false oath, and to this he pleaded guilty.

In September 1857 my father moved from West Street to 3 Hedgers Terrace, Cassland Road, Hackney, where I was born in the March of the following year. He now began to think it was quite time to take some definite steps towards the advancement of his position in life, and with that object in view he wrote the following letter to Mr Rogers: —

"Dear Sir, – I have been in your employ above four years, and am now twenty-five years of age. I have a wife and child, beside mother and sisters, looking to me for support; under these circumstances it is absolutely necessary that I should make the best position I can for myself. My object in now addressing you is to ascertain if there is any probability of my obtaining my articles from you, and if so, at what period? You must not be offended with me for this, because we are in the position of two traders. I have my brains for sale, you buy them. I naturally try to get the best price – you perhaps may think I sell too high. I have already this year refused three situations offered to me. The first (although it was £160 a year) I refused because it came just after my last increase of salary; the second because it did not involve the articles; and the third because it was made to me immediately prior to the death of Mr Rogers, and I thought it would be indelicate then to trouble you. My question to you now is, Do you feel willing to give me my articles? Of course, I need not say that I have not the means to pay for the stamp, and the matter therefore involves the question of an advance of £80. I would, however, gladly serve you for the five years at the salary I now receive, and I would enter into any bond, however stringent, to prevent loss of practice to you in the future. If you feel inclined to do this, name your own time within six months: if, on the contrary, you think I set too high a value on my capabilities, or have determined not to give articles to any clerk, I shall be obliged by an early reply.

"Whatever may be the result of this application, I trust you will believe that I am grateful for the many past kindnesses you have shown me, and that the good feeling at present existing may not be lessened between us. I have my way in life to make – yours to a great extent is smooth and easy; but as you have struggled yourself, I am willing to hope you will not blame me for trying hard to make a step in life. – Yours very respectfully,

"(Signed) Chas. Bradlaugh.

"Thos. Rogers, Esq."

This letter is undated and without address; and it will be noted as a curious point of interest, in one so very business-like and practical, that Mr Bradlaugh rarely did put his address or date on the letters he wrote with his own hand. If the address happened to be stamped on the paper, well and good, if not, he rarely wrote it; and his nearest approach to dating his letters was to put upon them the day of the week. I do not, of course, say that he never went through the customary form of putting the date or address, but that he more often than not omitted it. This habit, contracted early in life, he retained until his death, and in fact the very last letter entirely written with his own hand was merely dated with the day of the week.

The precise reply to this appeal I do not know; that it must have been in the negative, and that my father had to seek for some one else who would give him his articles on the terms indicated in his letter is clear. This person he thought he had found in Mr Thomas Harvey, solicitor, of 36 Moorgate Street, and he quitted Mr Rogers in order to be articled to him. The draft of the articles of agreement found amongst my father's papers bears the date November 16th, 1858. This connection proved to be a most unfortunate one for my father; for Mr Harvey shortly afterwards fell into money difficulties, in which Mr Bradlaugh also became involved. My father's troubles – as troubles ever seem to do – came, not singly, but in battalions; he was now not only without regular employment and in serious pecuniary difficulties, but rheumatic fever seized upon him, and laid him for many weeks in the spring and early summer of 1859 on his couch in his little room at Cassland Road. In August, still weak, poor, and full of care, he was, as I have said, obliged to stop the Investigator, and give up for the time his cherished project of editing a Freethought journal.

When poor people are ill, necessity compels them to curtail the period of convalescence, so before my father was able to go out he strove to do writing work at home, although the rheumatism lingering in his right hand rendered the use of the pen painful and difficult. As soon as he could get about again he began once more lecturing and debating (as we have seen) with renewed energy. Anyhow the stories are legion of the fortunes he made upon the platform and through his publications, though a few small incidents will show the amount of truth there is in these oft-repeated tales.

Just before the birth of my brother Charles, on the 14th September 1859, we moved from Hackney to a little house at Park, near Tottenham, called Elysium Villa; and while we lived here, when my father had to make a journey to the North he was obliged to start from Wood Green station, a distance of about three and a half miles from our house. The only way to get there was to walk – omnibuses there were none, and a cab was out of the question on the score of expense. Mr Bradlaugh had no portmanteau in those days; his books and his clothes were packed in a square tin box, which to the "curious observer" – to use a phrase much favoured by novelists – would have given a hint of his profession, inasmuch as it was uncommonly like a deed box. The maid Kate, assisted by someone else, carried this box from home to the station at Wood Green over night, and my father would get up early in the morning and walk the three and a-half miles to catch the first train to the North. It must be borne in mind that my father did not, like many young men, like walking for walking's sake, and the long walk, followed by a still longer train ride in one of the old comfortless third-class compartments in a slow train, finishing up with a lecture or debate, made a fairly heavy day's work.

Before going farther I must stay to say a word about Kate, because I want to give some idea of the devotion my father inspired at home as well as in the hearts of men who could only judge him by his public acts. Kate came to us from the country, a girl of sixteen, when I was but a few months old; she stayed with us until our home was broken up and my brother died, in 1870. Many a time her wages were perforce in arrears; and in 1870 she would, as she had done before, have patiently waited for better times and shared with us, had we not been compelled to do without her. Her loyalty was absolute. When we three children were babies she cheerfully bore poverty with us; and well do I remember – as a picture it stands out in my mind, one of my earliest recollections – the carpetless floor and scantily furnished room. In the days when there was arrest for debt she kept the door against the sheriff's officer: when one of Mr Thomson's sad periods of intemperance overwhelmed him, she, with my mother, searched the purlieus of London for him, found him in some poor den, and brought him home to be nursed and cared for. Kate lives to-day, and with unabated loyalty never allows an opportunity to pass of saying a word in praise, or in defence, of her dead but much-loved master.

A letter to my mother (undated, but certainly written early in the sixties) giving some description of one of my father's journeys to Yarmouth, reminds us that the old-fashioned windowless third-class carriage left many things to be desired, and in these days of luxurious travelling such hardships would be thought unendurable: —

"I am safely landed here²⁵ with sevenpence in my pocket. It has snowed nearly all the journey, and if it continues I expect all the bloaters will be turned into whitings. The ride was a cold one, for the E. C. R.²⁶ parliamentary carriage combined the advantage of ventilation with that of a travelling bath, wind, rain, and snow gaining admission and accompanying us without payment – which was not fair.

"You asked me to write, and I will therefore describe the incidents of the journey. Park to Broxbourne: carriage full, darkness prevailed; Broxbourne: spent 1d. on Daily Telegraph, which read to myself lying on the broad of my back, the carriage being more empty; the view was mist in the clouds of snow. Cambridge: bought 3d. of biscuits and a [Morning] Star, ate one and read the other till I arrived at Ely, with an occasional glance at Buckle on Civilisation. Ely to Norwich: cold, and discontented with my lot in life; Norwich: met Adams and Roberts, talked sweet things about confectionery for ten minutes, then straight on here, where I fulfil my promise of writing you."

The letter is ornamented with several drawings of himself under the different circumstances indicated in his letter.

The story he also relates in his "Autobiography," "for the encouragement of young propagandists," is a forcible example of the little profit his lectures often brought, and the difficulties his poverty sometimes forced upon him.