The poor policeman then consulted with those about him, and finding bullying of no avail, at length retired, leaving Iconoclast and his audience in possession of the field. It can hardly be called "undisturbed" possession however, for the Christians, having been unsuccessful in the matter of police interference, hired a drum and other noise-creating instruments, and posted them on some adjacent private ground; but even in this way they failed to break up the meeting, as they counted without Mr Bradlaugh's powerful voice and tenacity of purpose. He persisted to the end, and delivered his lecture to a most orderly audience of some 800 persons. He visited Shaw several times during the next twelve months; but although he was still unable to get a room to speak in, the manners of his Christian opponents improved on each occasion.
When Mr Bradlaugh was unknown, he often had difficulty in finding a chairman to preside at his meetings. Sometimes he would proceed without one, and sometimes one would be elected by the audience. A chairman so elected, however, would occasionally have comical ideas as to the duties of his position, and regard the chair merely as a privileged place, from which he might make hostile comments upon the methods and manner of the lecturer. In such a case the harmony of the meeting was better preserved without the assistance of a chairman.
But if it was difficult to get a chairman to preside over the meeting, it was even more difficult in many places to get a hall in which the meeting could be held. At Sunderland the hall was refused to Mr Bradlaugh because it could not be let for "such damnable doctrines." In Rochdale the Public Hall, although let for week-day lectures, was refused for Sunday discourses. The Rochdale Freethinkers therefore hired the theatre; but the police authorities, whose functions seemed to include "the cure of souls," intimated to the lessee that if he kept to his contract his licence would be in danger. When this was explained to Mr Bradlaugh, he gave way, and delivered his lectures in the open air; in the morning on the Butts to about 3000 persons, in the evening in a large field near Roebuck to a still larger audience. The only result, therefore, of this endeavour to shut him out of Rochdale on the Sunday, was really to procure for him larger and more interested audiences. In January 1861, Mr Bradlaugh went to Leigh, in Lancashire, where no Freethought speaker had been for twenty years. The thermometer was below freezing, and the roads like ice. A menagerie, with real wild beasts who roared and a real elephant who walked the streets, occupied the thoughts of the town. But worse than new place, icy weather, or wonderful menagerie, was the bellman of Leigh. This bellman, wrote my father sorrowfully, was not "a teetotaller, and had offered up considerable sacrifices to Bacchus. This course of conduct sadly interfered with the clearness of his articulation, and to fill the cup of my misery he had also to announce the loss of a donkey. The two announcements were so jumbled together that little was distinguishable except the donkey."[67]
From Leigh Mr Bradlaugh went in the freezing weather to Warrington, another place in which no Freethought speaker had raised his voice for a score or more of years, but where the editor of the Warrington Guardian had been trying to fan some warmth of hate into the townsfolk. In the issue for January 5th, the editor announced that there was to be "a most ribald, ignorant, and virulent attack upon the Holy Scriptures," adding further that Mr Bradlaugh had been lecturing in the neighbourhood
"in such a blasphemous manner that the local papers have been utterly unable to report his sayings. Surely Warrington has enough of temptations to ungodliness without any assistance from stipendiary peripatetics, or pickers up of a lazy living, who cover with their slime, like noxious reptiles, what they want sense or taste to admire."
It was by such attack upon an as yet unheard man that this Christian thought to serve the Omnipotent. From insulting Mr Bradlaugh he went on to abuse the lessee of the Warrington theatre, who had let the theatre for the lecture, and here his attack proved successful; for in consequence of the pressure put upon him, the "unfortunate lessee," as my father magnanimously called him, felt compelled to close the theatre. The Guardian triumphantly announced that the lectures would not be held, but this was somewhat premature. Mr Bradlaugh succeeded in getting a small room in a back street, and fresh placards were issued, although it was so late as the night before the lecture. After delivering two lectures to small but attentive audiences, he left Warrington between two and three a.m. for Dumfries, with the thermometer standing at eighteen degrees. There he remained three days, lecturing each evening, and had fair audiences and a pleasant time, notwithstanding that this was the first time within the memory of the "oldest inhabitant" that a Freethought speaker had been to Dumfries.[68]
When his adversaries could find nothing better to say, they would taunt him with earning money by his lectures, and this sneer was repeated in every variety of elegant language.[69]
No sort of insult was too gross for such people to condescend to for "the honour of our God." In November 1860, Mr Bradlaugh remarked[70] that "some one who signs himself 'Z' in the Glossop Record, but who is not a wise head, says I have come 'to raise the wind.' He is right. It will probably blow a severe gale in the Gospel vineyard in Glossop before we have done with it."
In the spring of 1861, Mr Bradlaugh spent two days at Burnley. As here again no hall could be obtained, his lectures had to be delivered in the open air, with the usual result, that instead of having an audience of a few hundred persons, thousands came to listen to his voice.