A reader: “You’re from that Northampton? Explains a lot.”
Bradlaugh was a great favorite with Northamptonians, who are a radical lot. The town’s only modern riot, in 1874 I think, was on his behalf. The Mayor read the riot act, but the crowd wouldn’t disperse until troops arrived & fired warning shots. There’s a statue of Bradlaugh in one of the town squares.
Northampton’s had an interesting crop of Members of Parliament. One of them was the only British Prime Minister to suffer assassination.
The M.P. for the town when I was growing up there was Reggie (which is to say, Reginald Thomas Guy Des Voeux) Paget, later Baron Paget of Northampton. A prosperous gent from a family of country squires, Reggie was educated at Eton, Britain’s toniest private boys’ school. He was a keen fox-hunter—Master of Hounds, in later years, I believe. He was, of course, a socialist.