The next carrier of the slander was an important one. The Financial Reformer for the December of the same year (1871) described Mr Bradlaugh as "the superenlightened gentleman who pulled out his watch at an open-air meeting and challenged Almighty God to strike him dead within five minutes, if God there were." My father was becoming somewhat accustomed to having this accusation made by persons who wished to make out a case against the "infidel," but to find it in the Financial Reformer was an unexpected blow. He wrote a courteous letter to the editor, but the editor made no reply; he wrote to Mr Robertson Gladstone, the president of the council publishing the paper, but Mr Robertson Gladstone left the letter without notice. At length, thoroughly angry, he wrote to the printers, threatening legal proceedings. A proof of an "apology" already in type was sent him, but it was not such as he felt he could accept, and he wrote to the printer to that effect. The apology was then somewhat amended, and with the copy of the Financial Reformer containing it the editor sent a letter to Mr Bradlaugh, conveying a frank and full expression of his regret. Upon receiving this my father forgave not only the offence, but the tardiness of the acknowledgment, and, moreover, expressed his sense of indebtedness to the editor for his apology.
The Stourbridge Observer of about the same date also repeated the watch story of "Bradlaugh," and, with incredible coarseness, added that "he has been known on another occasion to stop a lame man in the streets, and tell him that he would spit upon such a God as his that would allow him to remain in that deplorable condition." Mr Bradlaugh, at the request of his Stourbridge friends, specifically contradicted both these stories; but, he added, it was too much to expect him to continually contradict every scandalous calumny to which the press gave ready circulation against him.
One of the next places in which the story appeared was Dudley, where, in the winter of 1873, during my father's absence in America, it was related by the Rev. B. M. Kitson, who apparently introduced it into a speech for the benefit of the Additional Curates' Aid Society. He located the episode at the Hall of Science in Old Street, City Road. As soon as Mr Bradlaugh could obtain the reverend gentleman's address after his return to England, he wrote requesting Mr Kitson to retract, or to furnish him with the name of his solicitor. Mr Kitson retracted the statement, and expressed his regret for having made it.
In the spring of 1874, the Rev. Mr Herring related the tale to some school children at a school near Goswell Road, and in the following August the Rev. Edgar N. Thwaites, of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, carried it to Salisbury.
A month later, the Weekly News, in referring to the Northampton election, remarked that Northampton was specially prominent, "because Mr Bradlaugh, the Radical orator who challenged the Almighty to strike him dead, has appeared in person." Anything is fair in war or elections, some people seem to think.