Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh

by G. W. Foote

Till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity.

On the morning of April 10, 1883, I put on my own clothes and was driven in a four-wheeler from Holloway Gaol to the Law Courts, in company with Warder Smith, who superintended the wing of the prison in which a grateful country lodged and boarded me at its own expense. It was lovely spring weather, and I felt like a man new-born.

Inside the court where the great Blasphemy case was to be tried I found Mr. Bradlaugh with his usual load of law books. The court was crowded with friends of the defendants and legal gentlemen anxious to witness the performance.

Mr. Bradlaugh applied for a separate trial, on the ground that as there was no charge of conspiracy it was unjust to prejudice his case by evidence admitted against his co-defendants; and Lord Coleridge, who obviously meant to see fair play, granted the application.

Mr. Bradlaugh's position was, in one sense, the most perilous he had ever stood in. Just as his long litigation with respect to his seat in Parliament was drawing to a close, and as he believed to a successful close, he had to defend himself against a charge which, if he were proved guilty, would entail upon him the penalty of imprisonment. Of course it would not have been such imprisonment as I was suffering, for Queen's Bench prisoners are generally sent to the civil side of Holloway Gaol. But any imprisonment at such a moment gravely imperilled his prospects of success in the mighty struggle with wealth, bigotry, and political prejudice. A sense of this fact weighed heavily upon him, but it did not impair his energy or intellectual alertness; indeed, he was one of those rare men whose faculties are sharpened by danger.

I need not dwell upon the evidence of the prosecution. It was most unsatisfactory, and failed to connect Mr. Bradlaugh with the Freethinker. Sir Hardinge Giffard, therefore, almost entirely confined himself to playing upon the prejudices of the jury.

Mr. Bradlaugh was perfection itself in examining and cross-examining, and was soon on the windward side of the judge, but his address to the jury was too boisterous. He felt too much. His adversary was not under this disadvantage, and Sir Hardinge Giffard's address to the jury, considered merely as a tactical display, was better than Mr. Bradlaugh's.

On the second day of the trial (it lasted for three days) there occurred a curious episode. Just before the adjournment for luncheon Mr. Bradlaugh intimated that when the Court re-assembled he would call his co-defendants as witnesses. Lord Coleridge replied in a low, suggestive tone, "Do you think it necessary?" Mr. Bradlaugh rose and for the first time I saw him tremble. "My lord," he said, "you put upon me a grave responsibility." "I put no responsibility upon you," said Lord Coleridge, "it is for you to decide." And the stately judge glided away in his robes of office.

If Mr. Bradlaugh put his co-defendants in the witness-box, one of two things might happen. They might decline to give evidence, as every answer would tend to criminate themselves; or they might exculpate Mr. Bradlaugh and procure their own damnation.

I do not blame Lord Coleridge for looking at the matter in this way. But I naturally looked at it in a different light Mr. Bradlaugh was my general, and I was his lieutenant, and it was clearly my duty to sacrifice myself. I could release him from danger with half a dozen words, and why should I hesitate to say them or he to exact them? I was already in prison, and another conviction could add little to my misfortune, whereas he was still free, and his continued freedom was just then absolutely indispensable to our common cause. For my part, I had not a moment's hesitation. But Lord Coleridge's words sank into Mr. Bradlaugh's mind, and after luncheon he announced that he would not call his co-defendants. His lordship looked pleased, but how he frowned when Sir Hardinge Giffard complained that he was deprived of an opportunity! Lord Coleridge did not say, but he looked—"Have you no sense of decency?" Sir Hardinge Giffard, however, was thick-skinned. He relied on Mr. Bradlaugh's sense of honor, and made it the basis of an artificial grievance. He even pretended that Mr. Bradlaugh was afraid to call his co-defendants. But he overreached himself by this hypocrisy, and obliged Mr. Bradlaugh to put his co-defendants into the witness-box. We were formally tendered as witnesses, Mr. Bradlaugh going no further, and leaving Sir Hardinge Giffard to do as he would. Of course he was obliged to interrogate us, or look foolish after his braggadocio, and in doing so he ruined his own case by giving us the opportunity! of declaring that Mr. Bradlaugh was never in any way connected with the Freethinker.