Editing London Corresponding Society (section)

== Organisation and membership ==
===Democratic structure===
From the beginning, the LCS was viewed with suspicion by the British government, and was infiltrated by spies on the government payroll. In addition to domestic subversion, the state authorities feared collaboration with French agents, against whose entry and circulation within the country they had introduced the [[Aliens Act 1793]].<ref>{{Cite web|title = The 1905 Aliens Act {{!}} History Today|url = http://www.historytoday.com/anne-kershen/1905-aliens-act|website = www.historytoday.com|access-date = 2015-12-18}}</ref> Partly in response to the surveillance, and in express "imitation of the societies in and about [[Sheffield]]" whose cutlers had repudiated deference to Whig constitutionalists,<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |last=William |first=Gwyn A. |title=Artisans and San-Culottes: Popular Movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution |publisher=Edward Arnold |year=1968 |isbn=0713154179 |location=London |pages=58–59}}</ref> the society adopted a decentralised, democratic structure. The LCS organised in "divisions"<ref name=":0" /> each comprising neighbourhood "tithings" of not more than ten members. Each division met twice a week to conduct business and discuss historical and political texts.<ref>{{Cite news|title = Divided We Grow|url = http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n11/john-barrell/divided-we-grow|newspaper = London Review of Books|date = 2003-06-05|access-date = 2015-12-12|issn = 0260-9592|pages = 8–11|first = John|last = Barrell}}</ref>  

In contrast to some of Whig-establishment reform clubs, the organisation allowed all subscribers to participate in open debate, and to elect members to leadership positions such as tithing-man, divisional secretary, sub-delegate, or delegate.<ref name=":0">Hunt, Jocelyn B.&nbsp;''[https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/handle/10012/7273/Hunt_Jocelyn.pdf?sequence=1 Understanding the London Corresponding Society a Balancing Act between Adversaries Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke]''. Thesis. University of Waterloo, 2013. pp. 1–13</ref> Rules also ensured that discussion was not monopolised. [[Francis Place]] recalled that "no one could speak a second time [on a subject] until every one who chose had spoken once".<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|last=Place|first=Francis|title=The Autobiography of Francis Place: 1771–1854|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1972|isbn=9780521083997|location=Cambridge|pages=131, 180–181}}</ref>

The LCS issued its first public statement in April 1792.<ref>Williams (1968), p. 68</ref> In addition to Sheffield (the "[[Faubourg Saint-Antoine|Faubourg Saint Antoine]] to an English Revolution")<ref name=":6" /> sister societies existed, or by 1793 had sprung to life, in [[Manchester]], [[Norwich]], and [[Stockport]].<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal |last=Smith |first=A. W. |date=1955 |title=Irish Rebels and English Radicals 1798-1820 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/650175 |journal=Past & Present |issue=7 |pages=78–85 |issn=0031-2746}}</ref>

===Social composition===
By May 1792 the LCS comprised nine separate divisions, each with a minimum of thirty members. The height of its popularity in late 1795 it may have had between 3,500 and 5000 member organised in 79 divisions<ref name=Monk263>Iain Hampsher-Monk, ''The Impact of the French Revolution: Texts from Britain in the 1790s''. Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 263.</ref><ref name="Davis 2008" /> In contrast to the SCI with its annual 4 [[Guinea (coin)|guinea]] subscription, in levying just a [[penny]] a week the LCS opened its proceedings to workers of almost every condition. Those, however, who as independent tradesmen were not subject to the political disapproval of employers took the leading role.<ref>''Selections From The Papers Of The London Corresponding Society'', Cambridge University Press 1983, p. xix {{ISBN|9780521089876}}</ref> They were the committeemen.<blockquote>[John] Ashley, a shoemaker, [John] Baxter, a journeyman silvermith; [[John Binns (journalist)|[John] Binns]], a plumber, John Boyne, a Holborn bookseller, Alexander Galloway, a mathematical machine- maker . . ., [[Thomas Evans (conspirator)|Thomas Evans]], a colourer of prints and (later) a patent brace-maker, Richard Hodgson, a master hatter, John Lovett, a hairdresser, [John] Luffman, a goldsmith, [John] Oxlade, a master book-binder ... <ref>{{cite book |last1=Thompson |first1=E. P. |title=The Making of the English Working Class |publisher=Penguin, Pelican Books |year=1968 |isbn=9780140210002 |location=Harmondsworth |pages=171}}</ref></blockquote>While the LCS remained primarily a forum for "a politically conscious and articulate artisan population",<ref name="Davis 2008">{{cite ODNB |last1=Davis |first1=Michael |title=London Corresponding Society |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-42297 |year=2004 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/42297 |isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 |access-date=6 December 2020}}</ref> men of a more prominent social and professional standing did join, drawn in many cases from existing debating societies.<ref name="Thale 1989">{{cite journal |last1=Thale |first1=Mary |title=London Debating Societies in the 1790s |journal=The Historical Journal |date=1989 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=57–86 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00015302 |jstor=2639817 |s2cid=162874936 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639817 |access-date=8 December 2020}}</ref> They brought with them important political connections and skills. Barristers such as [[Felix Vaughan]] and attorneys like [[Joseph Gerrald]] (who had practiced law in [[Philadelphia]], and there associated with Paine) were especially useful given near continuous entanglement of members in court proceedings. Among the physicians were SCI member [[James Parkinson]], a prolific propagandist, and [[John Gale Jones]], an accomplished orator. But the Society's egalitarian constitution accorded them no definitive preference. Hardy in particular was wary of placing them in positions of authority lest ordinary members be discouraged from "exerting themselves in their own cause".<ref name="Davis 2008" />

=== Male fraternity ===
Women participated in some of popular debating societies from which the LCS recruited. For short periods they created their own, bringing to public notice demands for equal education, equal rights and protection of female occupations.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Thale|first=Mary|date=1995|title=Women in London Debating Societies in 1780|url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0424.1995.tb00011.x|journal=Gender & History|language=en|volume=7|issue=1|pages=5–24|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0424.1995.tb00011.x}}</ref> While it counted among its members men like [[Thomas Spence]] and Dr William Hodgson (''The Female Citizen'') <ref name=":4">{{Cite DNB |wstitle= Hodgson, William (1745–1851) |volume= 27 |last= Cooper |first= Thompson  |author-link= Thompson Cooper |pages = 72–73 |short=1}}</ref> who did advocate political rights and equality for women, the LCS appears to have been a male fraternity. The venues in which its divisions met – taverns and coffee houses – were predominantly male spaces, and reference to women in records of their proceedings are few.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Boyce|first=Lucienne|date=2019|title='A Reformer's Wife ought to be a heroine': Women in the London Corresponding Society|url=https://francesca-scriblerus.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-reformers-wife-ought-to-be-heroine.html}}</ref>

In August 1793, the Society's General Committee approved a motion calling for the formation of a female Society of Patriots. By September, a government spy reported that there was a Society of Women meeting in Southwark. The LCS arranged to send two of its delegates to instruct them. But it does not appear that female patriots were ever admitted as members to the LCS itself. Women did turn out for major LCS demonstrations.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Thale|first=Mary|title=Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society 1792–1799|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1983|isbn=9780521243636|pages=80, 83}}</ref>

===Noted members===
The society had an early celebrity recruit, the ex-slave, free [[West Indies|West-Indian]] black and [[abolitionism|abolitionist]], [[Olaudah Equiano]]. In 1791–92, Equiano was touring the British Isles with his autobiography, ''[[The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano]], or Gustavus Vassa the African''. Drawing on abolitionist networks he brokered connections for the LCS, including what may have been the society's first contacts with the [[Society of United Irishmen|United Irishmen]].<ref name="Featherstone">{{cite journal |last1=Featherstone |first1=David |title='We will have equality and liberty in Ireland': The Contested Geographies of Irish Democratic Political Cultures in the 1790s |journal=Historical Geography |date=2013 |volume=41 |pages=124–126}}</ref> In [[Belfast]] (where civic outrage had defeated plans to commission vessels for the [[Middle Passage]]) Equiano was hosted by the leading United Irishman, publisher of their Painite newspaper the [[Northern Star (newspaper of the Society of United Irishmen)|''Northern Star'']], [[Samuel Neilson]].<ref name="Rodgers">{{cite journal |last1=Rodgers |first1=Nini |title=Equiano in Belfast: A study of the Anti-Slavery Ethos in a Northern Town |journal=Slavery and Abolition |date=1997 |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=73–89|doi=10.1080/01440399708575211 }}</ref>

Paine subscribed to the Society; as did the radical poet [[William Blake]]; [[Joseph Ritson]] the noted antiquarian and founder of modern vegetarianism; and [[Basil William Douglas]], Lord Daer, who held concurrent membership of the Society for Constitutional Information and the Scottish Association of the Friends of the People.

===London's sans-culottes===
Despite such notables, the government were assured by their most trusted informer, "'Citizen' Groves", that the real body of the club was made of "the very lowest order of society".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Birley |first1=Sir Robert |title=The English Jacobins 1789–1802 |date=1924 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=London |page=9}}</ref> They took little persuading that within the LCS English [[Jacobins]] were leading on the equivalent to the [[sans-culottes]] of the [[Revolutionary sections of Paris|revolutionary Paris sections]]. Some of the working class membership did take the republican doctrines of Paine to their extreme, posing the claims of an absolute political democracy against those of monarchy and aristocracy.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thompson |first1=E. P. |title=The Making of the English Working Class |date=1964 |publisher=Pantheon |location=New York |isbn=9780394703220 |pages=156–157}}</ref>

Of these radical democrats, the most renowned was [[Thomas Spence]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Worrall|first=David|title=Radical CultureDiscourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790–1820|publisher=Wayne State University Press|year=1992|isbn=0814324525}}</ref> Originally from [[Newcastle upon Tyne|Newcastle]], where he had protested the [[enclosure]] of [[common land|commons]], Spence re-issued as ''The Real Rights of Man'' a penny pamphlet he had produced in 1775, ''Property in Land Every One's Right''.<ref>{{Citation|last=Spence|first=Thomas|title=Property in Land Every One's Right|date=1775|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/england/britdem/people/spence/property/property.htm|publisher=Thomas Spence|language=en|access-date=2021-02-27}}</ref> His vision was of a society based on common ownership of land administered democratically, by men and women alike, at the parish level. In 1797, in response to [[Thomas Paine]]'s ''Agrarian Justice,'' he wrote ''The Rights of Infants'' which, in the course of vindicating the right of children to freedom from want and abuse, proposed an [[Unconditional basic income|unconditional and universal basic income]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Thomas Spence|url=https://www.marxists.org/history/england/britdem/people/spence/index.htm|access-date=2021-02-27|website=www.marxists.org}}</ref>