Chapman Cohen

Chapman Cohen (1 September 1868 – 4 February 1954) was an English freethinker, atheist, and secularist writer and lecturer.

Life

Chapman Cohen (known by his contemporaries as CC) was the elder son of Enoch Cohen, a confectioner, and his wife, Deborah (née Barnett). He was born in Leicester, although the family moved to London in 1889. He attended a local elementary school but was otherwise self-educated. He had read Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and Plato by the time he was eighteen. He was a bibliophile and avidly collected books all his life.

Cohen recalled that he had "little religion at home and none at school", as he was withdrawn from Religious Instruction classes. He described his own attitude to religion as being characterised by "easy-going contempt".

Cohen and his wife, Celia, had two children; a son, Raymond, who entered the medical profession, and a daughter, Daisy, who died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis.

Secularist activism

Cohen moved to London in 1889, and soon became involved in the secularist movement. Cohen commented that,

My introduction to the platform of the National Secular Society was quite accidental. I had heard none of its speakers, read none of its publications, except an occasional glance at Bradlaugh's National Reformer. I knew there was a Freethought movement afoot, but that was about all.

Cohen (1940, p. 61) relates that in the Summer of 1889 he was walking in Victoria Park when he came across a crowd listening to a Christian speaker:

the speaker was opposed by an old gentleman – at least he seemed old to me – who suffered from an impediment in his speech. The lecturer in replying spent part of his time in mimicking the old gentleman's speech. After he had "replied," the lecturer asked for more opposition. Mainly because of his treatment of the old man I accepted the invitation.