Kingcraft, Priestcraft and its Critics: Dan Chatterton and his 'Scorcher'

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Of all the Victorian-era critics who commented on what they saw as a corrupt political system, Dan Chatterton was among the most outspoken. Andrew Whitehead looks at Chatterton’s unorthodox political career stretching from the Chartist movement of the 1840s to the anarchist milieus of the 1890s. A fierce and uncompromising orator and pamphleteer, he was also the publisher of the remarkable 'Chatterton's Commune: The Atheistic Communistic Scorcher' which included a regular feature on the ‘shams and swindles’ of the age. His writings are notable not simply for their anger and militancy - railing against kingcraft and priestcraft and many other perceived ills - but also for their championing of women's rights and of contraception.

Andrew Whitehead is an editor of History Workshop Journal in which he has published an article about Dan Chatterton. He has researched and written on popular radicalism in late Victorian Clerkenwell and is currently working on a project about representations of London in fiction.

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