ABSTRACT
There is more to be known of the long and contrastive history of self-titled 'Weaver boy' and 'Radical', Samuel Bamford, than can easily be encompassed. At the age of seven he became a ‘poor motherless boy’ when his family was devastated by a malignant smallpox epidemic. Bamford is now best known for two volumes of autobiography, Early Days and Passages in the Life of a Radical, in which he exhibits his narrative vigour and skilled political rhetoric. Bamford’s pacifism was complete, and he upheld his version of radicalism with the conviction and the courage of a true conscientious objector: ready to risk imprisonment, prepared, if necessary, to die, but never to kill. But Bamford earned the bitter contempt of militant Chartists and the loom-breakers of South Lancashire, whose operations he helped to curb.
