[61] One at the Shoreditch Town Hall in May 1884, on behalf of the Hackney United Radical Club, realised as much as £40. The hall was packed in every corner, and hundreds were unable to gain admittance.
[62] Mr Bradlaugh asked for it to be closed on 26th September.
[63] This I think has been recognised by most people. In December 1884 the Weekly Dispatch spoke of the "great strain" put upon Mr Bradlaugh, "under which a man less vigorous in mind and body would long ere this have broken down."
[64] The doctors would not allow Mr Bradlaugh to remain in his bedroom; one of them told him indignantly—albeit with some exaggeration—that he would have better accommodation in the workhouse!
[65] Wednesday, 10th December. This was the last lecture Mr Bradlaugh ever delivered. The subject was "The Evidence for the Gospels," in criticism of Dr Watkin's Bampton lectures.
[66] A person writing in the Swansea Journal for 7th February 1891 said that some time previously Mr Bradlaugh had told him of his sufferings from angina pectoris. This is utterly untrue; my father never suffered from this complaint, nor until his fatal illness was he ever conscious that he had anything wrong with his heart. In a private letter to a friend written on the 14th—almost the last written with his own hand—he says distinctly, "I have never suffered from heart or lungs before." The mania for invention is extraordinary.
[67] This was exactly in accordance with Mr Bradlaugh's wishes. In a will dated 1884 he said: "I direct that my body shall be buried as cheaply as possible, and that no speeches be permitted at my funeral." His last will, which consisted of a few lines only, contained no directions on this matter.
[68] The library included some 7000 volumes, in addition to about 3000 Blue Books, and a large number of unbound pamphlets. The books were sold by post from the catalogue, and went to all parts of the world. They realised £550 after all expenses were paid, and about 1000 volumes remained unsold.
[69] Through the generosity of "Edna Lyall," I was able to buy these for myself.
[70] This is all that can be pleaded in favour of the deliberate representation of Voltaire as an Atheist by the late Archbishop Thomson, at the Church Congress of 1881. But the ignorance of the upper English clergy in general on such matters is amazing. In January 1881, Archdeacon (then Canon) Farrar, preaching in Westminster Abbey, represented Robespierre's Reign of Terror as a "reign of avowed Atheism;" identified the Deistic cult of the "Supreme Being" with that of the "goddess of Reason;" and accounted for the fall of Robespierre by the statement that, "God awoke once more, and with one thunderclap smote the sanhedrim of the insurrection, prostrated the apostate race." This orator once expressed horror at the thought that Disestablishment might enable Bradlaugh to speak in St Paul's. Bradlaugh might have remarked on what the Establishment permitted at Westminster Abbey.