Charles Southwell

Charles Southwell (1814 – 7 August 1860) was a radical English journalist, freethinker and colonial advocate.

Early life

Charles Southwell was born in London, the youngest of 33 children in a poor family. His father, William, was a piano maker who had married three times. His mother, Fanny (William's third wife), was William's ex-servant, and at least three decades younger than him. Charles was Fanny's only child. A difficult pupil, but well-read, Southwell left school at the age of twelve (his father died in 1825 or 1826) and got work in a piano factory. It was while working at Broadwood and Sons that Southwell, encouraged by a Christian colleague, read the Sermons of Timothy Dwight and began thinking seriously about religion, only to reject it (as had his father).

Radical career

In 1830, Southwell set up as a radical bookseller in Westminster, London, and joined the radical lecture circuit.

Southwell married Mary Seaton in 1832, but the relationship was a troubled one. On Mary's death (c. 1835), Southwell witnessed the surgical removal of her heart to ensure she was dead, as Mary had requested.

In 1835 he fought as a volunteer with the British Legion during the First Carlist War. Returning in poverty-stricken state a couple of years later, he again found employment at Broadwoods. But he also became more involved in radicalism.

Although he had been a radical bookseller, it was not until Southwell's return from Spain that he became more deeply involved in Robert Owen's socialist movement. He was confirmed as an Owenite "socialist missionary" by the Association of All Classes of All Nations in 1840, and worked in that capacity in London and Birmingham.