'A Keen and Courageous Reformer' - The Campaigns of John Baxter Langley (1819-1892); a Middle-Class Radical

Abstract

John Baxter Langley is a neglected but important figure in the history of nineteenth-century radicalism. From a respectable and religious upbringing he defied expectations of an ecclesiastical career and chose to study medicine. From this beginning he became active in adult education through the founding of the Blackburn Mechanics' Institute, the Manchester Athenaeum and through his own education lecturing. He was also a journalist, editor and owner of several newspapers. He was prominent in the National Reform League, opposed the Contagious Diseases Acts and oppressive Sabbath legislation, and did much to assist the Miners' Provident Society and the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. He campaigned for prison reform and for an end to public executions, and took a practical role in the provision of improved housing for working people in London. Among other causes, he condemned the Second Opium War, exposed British brutality in India and opposed cotton tariffs, and worked covertly for Lincoln's administration by spying on the progress of Confederate shipbuilding orders in England and Scotland. He aspired to a seat in parliament but stood aside to allow Gladstone to stand in the Greenwich constituency. It is his failure to become a 'parliamentary radical' that has seen him neglected and overlooked in historical accounts of the period.