Carliles

Background on Charles Bradlaugh

I’ve been looking over a lot of information I’ve accumulated over the years, about British radical Charles Bradlaugh.  When Charle was thrown out of his house onto the streets of East London at age 16, for admitting to his parents he was an atheist, he found shelter for a while with the Eliza Sharples Carlile, the widow of radical freethinker Richard Carlile, and her three children.

The Carliles are really an interesting family, when you think about it.  I’ll have more to say about them later -- in the meantime, here are a couple of portraits from the “Bradlaugh papers”.  The first is Richard Carlile, the second is his daughter Hypatia.  

Yes, Charles Bradlaugh kept a portrait of Hypatia and it survived his death, 50 years after he had apparently been in love with her on Warner Street in East London.  So maybe there was more to that story than his daughter (whom he named Hypatia and who wrote a 2-volume biography of Bradlaugh after his death) wanted to tell.