Forest Gate-unemployed champion
by John Walker
CHARLES
Mowbray (1856 - 1910) can lay claim to fame to be one of Forest Gate's
most controversial political figures. He was an anarchist, who mixed
with the Who's Who of the British political left in the last two decades
of the nineteenth century and married the daughter of a Paris
communard. He was imprisoned for inciting riots and spent some time politically agitating in America, from where he was deported. He ended up in Forest Gate, with his third wife and children, working on Tariff Reform for the Tory party. This is his story.
Charles Wilfred Mowbray was born at Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham in late 1856 and as a young man served in the Durham Light Infantry. He worked most of his life as a tailor. He married Mary, with whom he had five children (Charles, John, Richard, Grace and Frederick) in 1878. Mary Mowbray turns out to be a minor political celebrity, being the daughter of the French Communist Joseph Benoit, who'd been active in both the 1848 revolution and the 1871 Paris Commune. She ended up with a huge funeral, locally at Manor Park cemetery - see later.
Charles Mowbray didn't leave much record of his first contacts with revolutionary ideas, although his obituary in the Shoreditch Observer in December 1910 sheds some light. It described him as:
Once a sinewy, athletic black-haired determined man with the blazing eyes of a fanatic and a tempestuous eloquence that stirred many an open-air meeting. He became a socialist nearly thirty years ago, and joined the Socialist League.He read widely and moved to London, living in the notorious Boundary Street (the Old Nicol) slum in Whitechapel, in the 1880's. It is there his revolutionary politics began to flourish, as he came into contact with socialists, anarchists and communists living in the area, greatly politicised by many of the Jewish immigrants who had fled the pogroms in Russia and were determined to organise politically - from afar.
As his obituary mentions, he joined the Socialist League at its foundation in 1884 - the organisation most closely associated with Walthamstow-born William Morris - and he described himself as an "anarchist/communist". He became a prominent street corner speaker/political agitator, calling for rent strikes and fairer treatment of workers. He was popular with fellow tailors in the area, and has been called: "One of the greatest working class orators who ever spoke in public".
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| Walthamstow's William Morris, with whom Mowbray joined political forces with in the 1880's |
On 20 September, following this meeting, he was beaten by the police there and arrested for obstruction along with other speakers.
William Morris felt that Mowbray "had done the most" but he was set free. The publicity and outrage created by the arrests meant that 50,000 people turned out in support at Dod Street the following Sunday.
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| A court sketch of Mowbray, at one of his trials |
For more go to: www.E7-NowAndThen.org, @E7_NowAndThen
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