Charles Bradlaugh: a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2). Bonner Hypatia Bradlaugh
to the slander. The municipal elections were about to take place, and the cry of "infidel" had been raised against one of the candidates for the West Ward. Hence, on the Sunday immediately before the election, Mr Jones preached a sermon against "infidels" and "infidelity," and, as an "apt illustration of his subject," he charged Mr Bradlaugh with the watch episode. When this came to the ears of the Huddersfield Secular Society, they lost no time in writing to ask Mr Jones whether he had indeed made such a statement concerning Mr Bradlaugh. This, said the Huddersfield Examiner, the reverend gentleman had not "the manliness to admit … nor even the courtesy to acknowledge the receipt of the secretary's letter." The Committee of the local Secular Society waited for seven days, and then appointed a deputation to wait upon the Rev. Mr Jones. The editor of the Examiner observed that the explanation then given by that gentleman was "not very satisfactory, and I do not wonder he was so tardy about making it. He had heard the absurd story some years ago, but the person who told it to him had left Huddersfield; and on such slender authority as this he brought a charge of using senseless and blasphemous words against Mr Bradlaugh." The Rev. P. R. Jones, M.A., in the course of his duties must have preached obedience to the ninth commandment, but he evidently did not always enforce his teachings by a personal example.
Just about the same time another clergyman, the Rev. Dr Harrison of St James's Church, Latchford, in a sermon preached upon that favourite but not very polite text, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God," was reported31 to have told the story, with a slight variation, of some unnamed person.
"What did they think of a man at Manchester," he asked, "standing up at a public assembly and opening the Bible in the presence of the people, and saying if the Bible was true he hoped God would strike him dead? That was in the newspapers not long ago. A creature, a worm, a being dependent upon the Almighty, raising his puny arm against the Deity, asking God to strike him dead if the Bible were true. It would not have been a wonder if God had struck him dead; the wonder was that God should be so merciful as to let him live."
When the Rev. Dr Harrison was challenged as to the name of the man, the time, and place of the occurrence, and the names of the newspapers which reported it, he could of course give no satisfactory authority for his statements.
In the summer of 1870 the Christian, in a tirade against infidelity, stated that "the well-known Atheist Bradlaugh, at a public meeting in London, is reported to have taken out his watch, with these words, 'If there be a God in heaven, I give Him five minutes to strike me dead.'" Upon this being brought under his notice, my father said that he was "really weary with contradicting this monstrous lie."
The Liverpool Porcupine in the same year gave a startling variation on the ordinary version. A certain unnamed person – by implication, Mr Bradlaugh – "called on the Almighty, if he had any existence, to strike dead some relative, and thus prove his power." The Porcupine forgot that it is the Christian creed which teaches the doctrine of the scapegoat, and even the sacrifice of a relative. It forms no part whatever of Atheistic teachings.
The Rev. R. S. Cathcart, agent to the Religious Tract Society, in addressing a meeting in the Corn Exchange, Gloucester, in the autumn of 1871, lamented the spread of infidelity in the north of England, where, he said, it was encouraged by a "blatant orator, Bradlaugh, from London." He added that there was even "one poor benighted woman" who "had actually produced her watch and challenged God, if, she said, there be one, to appear before them on the platform at a given time." Mr Cathcart, on being asked as to the when, and where, and the woman, failed to make reply.
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.
In the following year the Rev. Mr Cripps, of the Primitive Methodist Chapel, Thetford, started a new variation on the old theme. At the end of one of Mr Bradlaugh's lectures, a smith "fresh from work," induced him to go down on one knee (the narrator was extremely precise in unimportant details) and proposed that they should pray to God to "strike him dead in five minutes." This proposal seems to have somewhat disturbed Mr Bradlaugh, for according to Mr Cripps, he "jumped up, picked up his hat, and rushed out of the building." The Rev. Mr Cripps, on being challenged by Mr Bradlaugh, referred him to another minister as his authority – the Rev. M. Normandale, of Downham Market, Norfolk; and, moreover, refusing to accept Mr Bradlaugh's "unsupported denial," adhered to his statement.
The next person to repeat the watch story – but without naming the "infidel" – was, I deeply regret to say, the Rev. Basil Wilberforce, at Southampton. The local Freethinkers were justly indignant, and Mr J. F. Rayner, the Secretary of the Southampton Secular Society, at once flatly contradicted the tale. The only reparation Mr Wilberforce thought it necessary to make was to say that he was "glad to hear it was not true," and this offhand mode of disposing of the matter did not do much to soothe the irritated feeling of the Southampton Freethinkers. The liberality and kindly-heartedness of the late Rev. C. E. Steward, Vicar of St Peter's, in great measure disarmed their anger; and later on Canon Wilberforce himself learned to hold the Freethinkers of the district, as well as Mr Bradlaugh, in respect, and in consequence taught them in turn to respect him.
A man at Longton in 1876, whose name I do not know, brought the story to a finer point. Hitherto it had always been told on the authority of some second person, but this man appears to have deliberately stated that he saw Mr Bradlaugh pull out his watch, and heard him defy God to strike him dead. This manner of telling the tale in the first person soon found favour, for only a few months later a phrenologist, calling himself Professor Pasquil, was reported to have said that he was present at Huddersfield when Mr Bradlaugh went through the performance before