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William Thompson, bankruptcy and the west Cork estate, 1808–34

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Fintan Lane
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Extract

Historians of socialist thought have rated the Irish political philosopher and radical economist William Thompson (1778–1833) as the most influential theorist to emerge from the Owenite movement in early nineteenth-century Britain. Indeed, Gregory Claeys has judged him to be that movement's ‘most analytical and original thinker ... and a writer whose subsequent influence upon the history of socialist economic thought has been long established’. Furthermore, stressing Thompson's democratic values, Claeys insists that the Irishman ‘may rightfully be considered the founder of a more traditionally republican form of British democratic socialism’. While Robert Owen is remembered for his ambitious co-operative experiments, he was not a theoretical or deeply reflective writer and his intellectual legacy was minimal. The Corkborn Thompson, on the other hand, wrote assiduously on the theory and practice of early socialism, reputedly influenced Karl Marx and became a key figure in the history of feminism; nonetheless, our knowledge of this important Irish intellectual remains deficient.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 153 , May 2014 , pp. 24 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2014

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References

1 Harrison, J.F.C. , Quest for the new moral world: Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (New York, 1969), p. 64;Google Scholar Claeys, Gregory, Machinery, money and the millennium: from moral economy to socialism, 1815–1860 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 107.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 90.

3 Claeys, Gregory, Citizens and saints: politics and anti-politics in early British socialism (Cambridge, 1989), p. 172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Lane, Fintan, ‘William Thompson, class and his Irish context, 1775–1833’ in Lane, Fintan (ed.), Politics, society and the middle class in modern Ireland (Basingstoke, 2010), pp 21–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Thompson’s, principal writings are Practical education for the south of Ireland (Cork, 1818);Google Scholar An inquiry into the principles of the distribution of wealth most conducive to human happiness (London, 1824); Appeal of one half the human race, women, against the pretensions of the other half, men, to retain them in political, and thence in civil and domestic slavery (London, 1825); Labor rewarded: the claims of labor and capital conciliated; or, how to secure to labor the whole products of its exertions (London, 1827); and Practical directions for the speedy and economical establishment of communities on the principles of mutual co-operation, united possessions and equality of exertions and the means of enjoyments (London, 1830).

6 See, for example, Dooley, Dolores, Equality in community: sexual equality in the writings of William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler (Cork, 1996);Google Scholar Eagleton, Terry, ‘The radicalism of William Thompson’ in Irish Review, 16 (Autumn, 2000), pp 80–8;Google Scholar and Duddy, Thomas, A history of Irish thought (London, 2002), pp 226–32.Google Scholar

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9 Southern Reporter, 8, 11 Aug. 1818; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 22 Aug. 1818.

10 Index/digest to corporation books of Cork with alphabetical list of freemen [1710–1841] (Cork Archives Institute (C.A.I.), U11); Lane, , ‘William Thompson’, pp 26–7; Hibernian Chronicle, 2 Jan., 6 Feb. 1797.Google Scholar

11 Cork Evening Post, 28 Apr. 1777; Hibernian Chronicle, 7 May 1795; Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 3, 5 May 1802, 3 June 1808, 28 Apr. 1809.

12 Dickson, David, Old world colony: Cork and south Munster, 1630–1830 (Cork, 2005), pp 143–7.Google Scholar

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14 Southern Reporter, 11 Aug. 1818; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 22 Aug. 1818.

15 Wells, Roger, ‘The Irish famine of 1799-1801: market culture, moral economies and social protest’ in Charlesworth, Andrew and Randall, Adrian (eds), Markets, market culture and popular protest in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996), pp 163–93;Google Scholar Lane, ‘William Thompson’, pp 30–2.

16 Finn’s Leinster Journal, 22 Aug. 1818. For John Thompson’s continued involvement with mercantile life see, for example, Butter Market, Cork, Committee of Merchants minute book, 10 Nov. 1812 (C.A.I., U401) and Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 3 June 1808.Google Scholar

17 Ffolliott, Rosemary, The Pooles of Mayfield; and other Irish families (Dublin, 1958), pp 68–9.Google Scholar The estate consisted of Clounkeen House and 1,350 acres in the townlands of Clounkeen, Carhoogariff, Tullig, Corran and Cooladereen, 750 acres of which were rented to tenant-farmers (see Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 9 Feb. 1818).

18 Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 23 May 1808; Southern Reporter, 11 Aug. 1818; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 22 Aug. 1818. It was stated during the 1818 legal proceedings that the bankruptcy occurred in 1809, but it is clear from the contemporary press that it happened in 1808.

19 Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 23 May 1808. The description of Thompson as a ‘chapman’ almost certainly meant that he was a broker or middleman (and not that he dealt in chapbooks).

20 The Crisis, 24 May 1834. (The Crisis was a leading newspaper of the English co¬operative movement.)

21 For the building costs of Thompson’s premises on South Mall, see Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 10 May 1809.

22 The Crisis, 24 May 1834; Southern Reporter, 11 Aug. 1818.

23 Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 14 Apr. 1809.

24 Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 10, 31 May 1809.

25 Southern Reporter, 11 Aug. 1818; Cork Advertiser, 22 Mar. 1814; The Freeholder, 24 Mar. 1814.

26 Cork Advertiser, 22 Mar. 1814.

27 Limerick Evening Post, 27 May 1812. On Russell, see Lunney, Linde, ‘Russell, John Norris’ in D.I.B. Google Scholar

28 Montgomery-Massingberd, Hugh (ed.), Burke’s Irish family records (London, 1976), p. 376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dorman was sheriff of the city in 1791–2 and mayor in 1811–12.

29 Southern Reporter, 3 Feb. 1818.

30 Southern Reporter, 11 Aug. 1818.

31 Freeman’s Journal, 20 Dec. 1821; letter from William Preston White requesting to be appointed a magistrate, 17 Dec. 1821 ( N.A.I., CSO/RP/SC/1821/1707); letter from Major Samson Carter, County Cork, reporting details of the arrest of murder suspects in Cork city, 20 Dec. 1821 (N.A.I., CSO/RP/SC/1821/341). On the killing of Collis, see Donnelly, James S., Captain Rock: the Irish agrarian rebellion of1821–1824 (Cork, 2009), pp 248–9.Google Scholar

32 Minutes of evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Cork city election petition; together with the proceedings of the committee, pp 51–5, 70, 75–8, 95–7, 117–19, 132–4, 151, 154, 245, 270, 283, 287, 291, H.C. 1852–53 (528) xi.

33 Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 17 Dec. 1817, 14 Jan., 2, 4, 8, 9 Feb. 1818; Southern Reporter, 1, 15, 24 Jan., 3 Feb. 1818. This second and uncommon bankruptcy sale in 1817-18 previously misled me into assuming that Thompson’s bankruptcy occurred at that time, whereas it is now clear that it happened many years before (see Lane, ‘William Thompson’, p. 33).

34 Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 9 Feb. 1818.

35 Cotter and Kellett’s bank in Cork collapsed in 1809.

36 Southern Reporter, 3 Feb. 1818. Mrs Kift’s was a boarding house at 44 Grand Parade, Cork.

37 Southern Reporter, 8 Aug. 1818.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Southern Reporter, 8, 11 Aug. 1818; Finn’s Leinster Journal, 22 Aug. 1818.

41 Southern Reporter, 8 Aug. 1818. For discussions of this controversy, see Pankhurst, William Thompson, pp 10–13, Dooley, Equality in community, pp 15–21, and Eileen O’Carroll, ‘William Thompson’s Practical education for the south of Ireland’ in Fiona Dukelow and Orla O’Donovan (eds), Mobilising classics: reading radical writing in Ireland (Manchester, 2010), pp 21–37.

42 Southern Reporter, 16, 19, 23, 26, 28 May, 13, 18, 25, 27 June, 18 July, 8 Aug., 8 Oct., 5 Nov. 1818.

43 Cork Magazine, 9 July 1819.

44 Freeman’s Journal, 6 Dec. 1820.

45 The Crisis, 24 May 1834.

46 See letter from Thompson, dated 20 January 1830, in Co-operative Magazine and Monthly Herald, 1 Mar. 1830.

47 The Crisis, 24 May 1834.

48 Ibid.

49 Wyse, Thomas, Historical sketch of the late Catholic Association of Ireland (2 vols, London, 1829), ii, appendix xxxi, p. 227;Google Scholar Lane, Fintan, In search of Thomas Sheahan: radical politics in Cork, 1824–1836 (Dublin, 2001), pp 20–22.Google Scholar

50 Craig, E.T., An Irish commune: the experiment at Ralahine, County Clare, 1831–1833 (Dublin, 1983), pp 123–6.Google Scholar

51 See, for example, Southern Reporter, 26, 31 Aug. 1826; and Thompson, William, ‘Prospectus of the Cork co-operative community (distance not to exceed 15 miles from Cork)’ in Co-operative Magazine and Monthly Herald, Oct. 1826.Google Scholar

52 In 1826–7, he adverted to this dependence since his father's death when he commented that for ‘about the last twelve years of my life I have been living on what is called rent’; see Thompson, Labor rewarded, p. 1.

53 Pankhurst, William Thompson, p. 193; Jacob Holyoake, George, The history of co¬operation in England: its literature and advocates (London, 1875), vol. 1, pp 278–9.Google Scholar

54 Wheeler to Hampden, 13 May 1833, in Morgan, Hampden, p. 325.

55 The Crisis, 14 Sept. 1833.

56 The Crisis, 24 May 1834.

57 William Pare to secretary, London Co-operative Society, 30 Aug. 1833 in The Crisis, 14 Sept. 1833.

58 The Crisis, 8 Mar. 1834.

59 The Crisis, 24 May 1834.

60 Pare, William, Co-operative agriculture: a solution of the land question as exemplified in the history of the Ralahine co-operative agricultural association, County Clare, Ireland (London, 1870), p. 123.Google Scholar

61 The Crisis, 24 May 1834.

62 Pankhurst, William Thompson, p. 220.

63 Thompson, Inquiry, p. 378.

64 Thompson, Appeal, p. 51.

65 Thompson, Inquiry, p. 600.

66 The Crisis, 24 May 1834.