Encyclopedias: Spartacus Educational: Reform of Parliament: Spencean Philanthropist Society

Description: Abstract: Thomas Spence a schoolteacher from Newcastle-upon-Tyne arrived in London in December 1792. Soon after arriving he was arrested for selling Rights of Man by Tom Paine. For the next twenty years of his life Spence spent long periods in prison for selling Radical books, pamphlets, newspapers and broadsheets. He died in September 1814. He was buried by "forty disciples" who pledged that they would keep his ideas alive. They did this by forming the Society of Spencean Philanthropists.