TOM POOLEY'S FATEFUL YEAR, LISKEARD, 1857.

I have been enjoying myself trying to create an account of Tom Pooley's adventures in  the  year 1857 as he  himself might have written of them had his mind not been quite so excitable and his vision not quite so passionate.  He certainly wanted the world to remember him and he wanted the many letters, which he wrote to the Fleet Street offices of George Jacob Holyoake's  'Reasoner' from 1858 onwatds to be published to the world viz: "I hope the Friends of Truth and Goodwill with Honest Laws will be so kind as to place these writings in Print and let them be handed down in History for they will come handy when Truth will be looked for and one day, after I am in the Grave, the World will say:  Tom Pooley was right." 

In the event, unsurprisingly, his letters were not published but, surprisingly, neither were they put in the waste paper basket. They were preserved, with other records of "The Reasoner" and today are to be found in The Hoyoake Collection at Holyoake House, Hanover Street, Manchester. I don't think many people have looked at them.

What I have put together, I can hardly say I have written it, for so much of it ,and all of the vituperation, is verbatim-Pooley. This story is neither 'academic', nor 'history' but I hope it is heuristic and that others will learn something from the Pooley Year and I fondly hope it sheds the light on this poor man's life which he craved. I also hope these 16000 words read like a novella, for Tom Pooley is so dramatic that he constantly makes one, me at least, think of literary characters. Pooley is Quixote, Alice in Wonderland, Holden Caulfield, The Good Soldier Svejk... I could go on!

So, who was Tom Pooley? He was an eccentric, Cornish, general labourer who decided to take on the Victorian Christian Establishment single-handed. He campaigned against 'Bible Tyranny' by writing rude things about 'Christians' on gates and walls. It was the nearest he could get to 'hate-mail'! In 1857 he was convicted of blasphemy and his sentence was reported in the papers and the justice or injustice of it was much discussed.

But you can read his story, Tom Pooley's Fateful Year, by pasting the link above or by googling waylandwordsmith3. N.B. Not for the woke!