Metropolitan Political Union
The Rotunda radicals, known at the time as Rotundists or Rotundanists, were a diverse group of social, political and religious radical reformers who gathered around the Blackfriars Rotunda, London, between 1830 and 1832, while it was under the management of Richard Carlile. During this period almost every well-known radical in London spoke there at meetings which were often rowdy. The Home Office regarded the Rotunda as a centre of violence, sedition and blasphemy, and regularly spied on its meetings. Carlile's occupancy When Carlile took over its lease in May 1830 the building was in a poor state of repair. He announced that the Rotunda would regain the prestige it had in its days as the Surrey Institution, where Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt had spoken, and would become a forum of free speech against political and religious despotism. Using money from wealthy radical patrons such as William Devonshire Saull and Julian Hibbert, he spent £1300 on refurbishments an ...
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Blackfriars Rotunda
The Blackfriars Rotunda was a building in Southwark, near the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge across the River Thames in London, that existed from 1787 to 1958 in various forms. It initially housed the collection of the Leverian Museum after it had been disposed of by lottery. For a period it was home to the Surrey Institution. In the early 1830s it notoriously was the centre for the activities of the Rotunda radicals. Its subsequent existence was long but less remarkable. James Parkinson and the Leverian collection James Parkinson came into possession of the collection of Sir Ashton Lever quite by chance: Lever put it up as a lottery prize, Parkinson's wife bought two tickets, gave one away, and died before the time the lottery draw was carried out. Construction of the Rotunda After trying to run the museum in its old location in Leicester Square, but finding the rent too much, Parkinson with other investors put up the Rotunda Building; it was of his own design (along w ...
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