Golden Dawn members: WILLIAM RANSTEAD, his life-by-dates 1891 to end 1895

with some preamble about his wife; early socialism; and his employer.

THE LAYOUT BELOW which I pioneered with Isabel de Steiger many years ago. I hope it isn’t too difficult to follow: what William was doing, will be in italics. My comments, and the sources, appear in my usual Times New Roman.

SOME HELPFUL INFORMATION BEFORE WE START: I often refer to William’s entry in the New Zealand DNB: it’s at

https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3r3/ranstead-william

WILLIAM’S WIFE MARGARET who doesn’t appear in the information below nearly as much as I would like.

William’s ancestors on his father’s side were Scottish; his father, John, had been born near Edinburgh. Though living and working in Liverpool and in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s, John Ranstead still had brothers and sisters in Scotland and visited them often. is son William married a Scottish second-cousin, Margaret Lyon Loch; they were related through William’s grandmother Margaret Lyon. Engineering ran in both families – John Ranstead was a marine engineer, Margaret’s father, William Loch, worked with steam engines. William Loch had married Elizabeth Kirk and Margaret was their second daughter, born in 1858 in Inveresk, part of Musselburgh to the east of Edinburgh. William and Margaret called several of the houses they lived in ‘Inveresk’ after Margaret’s birth-place.

By 1881 Margaret was working and had left Scotland, never to live there again. On the day of the 1881 census she was employed as a school teacher in Roydon, Norfolk and lodging at 24 Church Lane with a local farmer and his family. She and William were married, in Scotland, in 1883.

Sources: William’s entry in the NZ DNB; censuses for Scotland and England 1861-1881 though I couldn’t find the Loch family on 1871. Ancestry.com. Geni.com entry for John Ranstead.

SOCIALISM

William and Margaret were involved in socialism in London and then in Lancashire.

Comments by Sally Davis: according to William’s descendants, he joined the Fabian Society in 1884; and both of them were in the Socialist League, founded by a breakaway group who left the Social Democratic Foundation. In the 1880s and 1890s socialism was in its very early stages - the word ‘socialism’ was a new word and people in general didn’t know what it meant; what socialism might consist of was still being formulated; and until 1893 no political party espoused what became its aims.

Sources:

For the Fabian Society in 1884: William’s NZ DNB entry.

For the Fabian Society in 1896: see the second file in this life-by-dates sequence.

For the Socialist League, founded in December 1884: generally on the SL: there’s a wiki page on it.

The Slow-Burning Fuse: The Lost History of British Anarchists, by John Quail. London, Toronto, Sydney, New York: Paladin: Granada Publishing 1978 reprint 2019. Most of the book is now online at //libcom.org/library

For William and Margaret as members of the Socialist League: information from one of their great-granddaughters, Gillian Ranstead, quoted in The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation by Richard Shaw. Massey University Press 2024. I found the reference on google so there are no page numbers. Some archives of the early Socialist League are now at the Institute of Social History; that’s in Amsterdam so I haven’t been able to search the papers for references to the Ransteads.

LIVERPUDLIAN MAURICE GANDY whose life – and death – was important to the Ransteads in the 1880s and 1890s.

In the 1870s Maurice Gandy invented a way of using cotton to make transmission belts, conveyor belts and ropes for pulleys. He patented several designs in the UK and USA in the 1870s, and had a factory and offices in a building near the Albert Dock in Liverpool; and a depot at 130 Queen Victoria Street, near Blackfriars in the City of London. In the early years Maurice and various American partners also owned a firm, the Gandy Belting Co, in Baltimore. However, the Baltimore enterprise was forced into liquidation in 1886 owing $50,000. Though Maurice Gandy still owned the patents, the Gandy Belting Company was sold to its main creditor and the Gandy family were never able to get it back. To prevent the Baltimore disaster repeating itself in England, and to raise some capital, in 1886 Gandy turned his English business into a limited company, the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Company Ltd.

William Ranstead joined the Liverpool firm around 1881/82, to work in its offices. His energy and abilities soon brought him promotion and more responsibility - in 1883 Gandy sent him to London to run the firm’s depot. William and Margaret started their married life in London. I’m not sure exactly when William went back to Merseyside to work in Gandy’s main office, but the Ransteads were living in Wallasey by April 1891.

Sources for Gandy’s:

Maurice Gandy’s factory was in Ansdell Street. The street doesn’t exist now but at //justme.org.uk there are street maps of Liverpool from around 1900 so you can see where it was. I think it was probably on the corner where Ansdell Street met Mersey Street. Mersey Street ran parallel to Wapping Street (which ran where the Strand is now) and Ansdell Street was very short, running from the south side of Mersey Street towards the Salthouse Dock.

At www.gracesguide.co.uk there’s a page about the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co, with links to other information and photos of adverts placed by the firm. It continued as an independent business until the 1970s and moved with the times to make vehicle brake and clutch linings among other things. Information at gracesguide suggests Maurice Gandy was in business in Liverpool by 1873. Patent information from the US (see below) suggests he got started rather later there: 1877.

Kelly’s Directory of the Leather Trades 1880 p543 list for England, Scotland and Wales: Maurice Gandy of Ansdell Streeet Liverpool making Gandy’s Patent American Cotton Belting.

Problems with patents in the US:

Official Gazette of the US Patent Office issue of 7 August 1883 p500 has M Gandy with a patent application filed May 1883 giving addresses in Liverpool but also Baltimore.

The 1883 application wasn’t granted:

House of Representatives 40^th Congress 1^st Session Report number 839 detailed a petition made by Maurice Gandy in 1886 to be allowed to make a new patent application within the statutory period after an application had failed. This would require a Bill to be put through Congress. Gandy was appealing against a refusal to grant a patent application that he had submitted without the proper paperwork. Now that he had lost control of his business in Baltimore, the need for new patents on his designs was very urgent.

Gandy was able to obtain his American patents: Annual Report of the US Patent Office 1888. Its Index of Patents filed in the last financial year p116 has 5 patents all with “assignor” Maurice Gandy of New Brighton (his home address) and Liverpool. However, he was unable to enforce payment of royalties on them – the new owner of the Baltimore firm didn’t pay any royalties between 1886 and 1894.

Liverpool: The Engineer 27 August 1886 p177 in a list of new companies though it was noted that Gandy’s firm was already in business in Liverpool and London. Seven shareholders were named. All were businessmen in Liverpool, some with premises very close to Gandy’s own.

The Machinery Market issue of 1 August 1890 p272 in a page highlighting machinery being shown at the Edinburgh Exhibition: items exhibited by Gandy Belt Manufacturing Company Ltd – that is, the English firm.

Kelly’s PO Directory of London 1891 commercial directory p983 has Gandy Belt Manufacturing Company at 130 Queen Victoria Street EC. It’s not clear from the entry whether it’s a works or a depot or a shop or a combination of them.

On Ebay and elsewhere there’s a photo taken from the air of the later Wheatland Works at Seacombe on the Wirral. Not sure of the date of the photo.

Baltimore:

Deford was the man who bought the American Gandy Belting Company from the liquidator in 1894; MacWatty was Maurice Gandy’s partner in the Baltimore firm until its liquidation, though he didn’t own any of the patents.

Maurice Gandy’s private life: there’s much online about his legal separation from his wife Elizabeth. There’s a very long account in The Law Times volume XLVI NS issue of 1 July 1882 Gandy v Gandy, beginning p607, of the case Elizabeth was bringing, demanding more alimony than the court had allowed. She had left Maurice after he had refused to end his affair with Ann Kelly. The court had awarded custody of the only son, Maurice Hood Gandy (born 1863) to his father.

LIFE-BY-DATES FOR WILLIAM AND MARGARET RANSTEAD 1889 to end 1895

BY LAST QUARTER 1889

William and Margaret had been living in east London in the mid-1880s, including a spell in Whitechapel when William did voluntary work at Toynbee Hall. They moved to Sutton in Surrey, probably late in 1888. Their third son, Thomas,was born there.

Sources:

The Ransteads living in Whitechapel: birth registration Bessie Ranstead January-March quarter 1888.

William’s voluntary work: Toynbee Hall Record volume 1 number 7, April 1889 pamphlet between p82 and p83, on activities for students. William was one of two men named as running the students’ union.

The move out of London: freebmd; birth registration Thomas Lawrence Ranstead Epsom registration district.

Then there is a gap in my knowledge until:

CENSUS DAY APRIL 1891

William and Margaret were living at 14 The Grove, Poulton-cum-Seacombe on the Wirral. Their children John Morris (aged 6), William junior (5), Bessie (3) and Thomas (1) were at home. The family had one servant living in.

Source: 1891 census.

Comment by Sally Davis: employing a servant was one of those great leaps onto or up the ladder of Victorian middle-classness. Census data for their parents’ households shows that neither William’s family nor Margaret’s had ever employed one. At least in 1881, William’s sister Jessie had been a servant. She was one of two housemaids at the home of William Durning Holt, his wife Frances and their large family, in the exclusive enclave of Sandfield Park, Liverpool. This was a seriously wealthy household, employing a butler, a footman, a governess and a lady’s maid as well as the more typical servants.

Sources for the Holts: 1881 census and The Blue Funnel Legend by Malcolm Falkus 2016 p112: William Durning Holt’s father George Holt was one of the founders of the shipping line, in 1831; and was also a shareholder and director of the Bank of Liverpool.

APRIL 1891

William joined the Theosophical Society as a member of its Liverpool Lodge. At this time all applicants for membership had to have two sponsors who were already members. William’s were Robert Nisbet and John Hill.

Comments on this interesting development by Sally Davis: even if he hadn’t already known Nisbet and Hill as friends, William could have gone along to hear a theosophist speak about the subject, and been signed up then: the TS regularly held public meetings in major cities and Liverpool Lodge, newly-founded in 1891, was actively recruiting members. Other people who joined the lodge in the early 1890s were Rev Thomas Duncan; Joseph Gardner; James Callie – William will have come across him again in 1895 in a completely different context; Jeanie Gillison; Robert Nisbet’s wife Agnes; and John Hill’s second wife Amy Earp. All those people and several other Liverpool Lodge members joined the GD in due course. A typical meeting of a local lodge was a committee meeting; followed by a talk given by one of the members with a discussion afterwards. Though William didn’t give any of the talks at Liverpool Lodge, he did join its committee in 1892 and was the lodge’s treasurer in 1893.

Only a few weeks after William joined the TS, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died, of complications after flu. For the next two years Liverpool Lodge continued to meet as usual. However, a dispute arose within the TS worldwide about its direction after Blavatsky’s death, and who should lead it. Most of Liverpool Lodge’s members, William included, favoured William Quan Judge as the TS’s future leader and joined a group set up to campaign on his behalf; Judge was one of the TS’s original members from 1879. As the dispute between Judge’s supporters and those who favoured Annie Besant became increasingly bitter and public, it caused a serious breach within theosophy; many members left the TS, and Liverpool Lodge was one of many that ceased to meet around 1895.

Liverpool Lodge always met in the business district of Liverpool, originally at the YMCA, later at 62 Dale Street; so it would have been difficult for Margaret Ranstead – with four and then five children at home - to go to the meetings. She did not join the TS.

Sources:

74 of William’s books were donated to New Zealand’s national library by his son John Morris Ranstead. They are now in the Turnbull Library. By using its search engine via the links at

//natlib.govt.nz/schools/a-z/ranstead-collection

you can get to a list of them. Looking through the list, I didn’t see any of Blavatsky’s works in it. I did see some books for children published by the Religious Tract Society and the London Missionary Society in the early part of the 19^th century. There was also a copy of A New Hieroglyphic Bible; the first edition of this was published in Edinburgh by Oliver and Boyd in 1818. William and Margaret must have been given the books when they were children and were passing them on to their own. The world was changing though. Socialism was presenting one different view of how it worked; theosophy was presenting another.

Theosophical Society Membership Register volume for January 1889 to September 1891 p213

There is a note on the entry that William had paid his subscriptions from 1891 to 1895 but then had come out as a member of the “Judge Society".

William is mentioned in the TS’s main magazine several times:

Lucifer: A Theosophical Magazine published London: Theosophical Publishing Society of 7 Duke Street Adelphi. Volume X March-August 1892:

- number 56 issue of 15 April 1892 p166 news section: item on Liverpool Lodge sent in by its hon sec John Hill, mentioning lectures at the YWCA and a discussion class on Blavatsky’s last work, The Secret Doctrine.

- number 58 issue of 15 June 1892 p340 a report on Liverpool Lodge’s annual meeting listing the committee members for the next 12 months.

Lucifer: A Theosophical Magazine published London: Theosophical Publishing Society of 7 Duke Street Adelphi. Volume XII March-August 1893:

- number 67 issued 15 March 1893 p78 news section. Report on Liverpool Lodge sent in by its assistant secretary, Gustave E Sigley, one of the few lodge members who didn’t join the GD.

- number 69 issued 15 May 1893 p253 news section. Report on the annual meeting of Liverpool Lodge, which had taken place at the Nisbets’ home, 6 Piercefield Road Formby, while the members looked for a bigger but affordable venue.

In DECEMBER 1891 two events took place which altered the course of the Ransteads’ lives. They did not play any part in either of them.

12 DECEMBER 1891

The first issue of the newspaper The Clarion was published in Manchester.

Comments by Sally Davis: though The Clarion took care not to endorse any political party, it was a consciously socialist publication and was later seen by many as the mouthpiece of the Independent Labour Party. It was founded by journalists Robert Blatchford and Alexander Mattock Thompson. They had resigned from Edward Hulton’s Manchester-based newspaper group after Hulton had refused to allow them to write about socialism in his publications. Robert Blatchford and Thompson recruited Robert’s brother Montague, and their London-based journalist friend Edward Francis Fay, to be joint proprietors, writers and editors in their new paper. As was customary at the time, the four used pseudonyms: Nunquam; Dangle; Mont Blong; with Fay using two, The Bounder, and Quinbus flestrin. Who they really were soon became known to the Clarion’s readers, however, and by the mid-1890s The Clarion was selling photos of them to raise funds.

The Clarion aimed to challenge the arguments of capitalism, to explain socialism and make it a force in British politics. It had connections with anti-establishment social and political groups like the Humanitarian League and the various anti-vivisection campaigns. However, it would probably not have lasted if it had fed its readers nothing but serious and too-often-depressing news. The Clarion covered sport, especially football and cricket, and theatre and music hall; it printed and commented on letters from readers; and like most magazines, it had fiction serials – though of a particular kind, with (for example) Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection being the choice in 1900. From 1895 it had a regular women’s column, written by the Ransteads’ friend Julia Dawson Worrall, and from the mid-1890s it covered cycling, both for leisure and as a means of getting socialism more widely known. The paper’s four founders were very aware that socialism was a fringe activity. As with magazines today, they tried to foster a sense of community in the readers, and did it very well. The readers quickly began to see themselves as a group; in due course they were referred to – by themselves as well as by the Clarion’s writers – as Clarionettes. The Clarion’s readership base was always the North, if not the North-West. It was published once a week; in the 1890s that was on Saturday.

Sources for The Clarion and its four main writers. There were always other writers, including women; but the four I’ve named did most of the writing and all of the editing:

Its wikipedia page.

Memoirs by two of the founders who – alas! - mention the Ransteads less often than I’d hoped:

My Eighty Years by Robert Blatchford – Nunquam. London etc: Cassell and Co Ltd 1931.

Here I Lie: The Memorial of an Old Journalist by Alexander Mattock Thompson – Dangle. London: George Routledge and Sons. 1937

Connections: Humanity volume 1 number 9 November 1895 on p68 in article on Vivisection and the Labour Movement, by Edward Carpenter. In it, Carpenter mentions an article on vivisection by Mona Caird, which had been published in The Clarion.

The closeness between writers and readers: for example The Clarion issue of of Sat 2 December 1893 p1 in his regular front-page column, Mont Blong [Montague Blatchford] describes the readers as “almost like personal friends”.

How the writers of The Clarion saw the paper: The Clarion 2 December 1893 p2 Nunquam’s main editorial in which he also declared that all four of them looked forward to the day their work publicising socialism was no longer necessary, so that they could quit and get better-paid jobs.

The Clarion issue of 1 September 1894 p3 advert for a photo of the Board members; which by this time will have included William Ranstead.

22 DECEMBER 1891

Maurice Gandy died.

Source: probate registry entries 1893.

Comments by Sally Davis. He seems to have died suddenly, either in South Liverpool Hospital or on the way to it. There must have been something – perhaps a lot – that was unclear about his Will: probate on it wasn’t obtained for 15 months. The sole executor was likely to be a difficulty for family and firm: it was his estranged wife Elizabeth. Maurice Gandy’s personal estate amounted to a mere £28; if he had been receiving any money from the patents he held in the USA it might have been a lot more.

Sources for Richard Cromwell’s non-payment of royalties due:

Atlantic Reporter volume 3 1896 p489 summarising the Court decision given at length at www.courtlistener.com case of [Benjamin] Deford v [John] MacWatty 33A.488 (Maryland 1895); verdict given and filed 11 December 1895. Subject of dispute: Receiver’s Sale – Insufficient Advertisement of the Property to be Sold. The Court noted that Cromwell had been collecting royalties on Maurice Gandy’s patents himself, raising around $10,000 a year. Seeing that he was owed $50,000 by Gandy and MacWatty, perhaps it was a fair exchange.

?1892. PROBABLY ONLY A SHORT TIME AFTER MAURICE GANDY’S DEATH

William was offered a half-share in Maurice’s English business, in exchange for his taking on the job of managing it. William accepted the offer; he became managing director of Gandy’s Belt Manufacturing Company.

Sources for this and possible reasons why William was approached:

I haven’t found many direct ones, but it seems that the obvious successor, Maurice Hood Gandy, didn’t want to work in the firm; by 1901- if not much sooner - he was living in London and working as a self-employed engineer. He was not a director of the limited company set up in 1901. Of course, it would not have been up to him alone to decide who ran the limited company after its founder’s death, but the offer made to William suggests that the other shareholders in the English firm preferred William as the boss, rather than Maurice Gandy’s son.

For Maurice Hood Gandy’s whereabouts and employment: censuses 1901 and 1911. Neither of the Maurice Gandys is on the 1891 census; perhaps they were in Baltimore trying to get their company back.

The best indirect source for the offer and William’s response is his family, as reported in his NZ DNB entry. This is where the information that William took a half-share in the business comes from.

Stock Exchange Year-Book 1908 listed the directors of the Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd: D D Macpherson, the current chairman; J Bower; E M Downie; J Thomson; and C A Dimoline as company secretary – for more about him, see 1896.

APPARENTLY BY 1892

William was earning £2000 a year.

Source: the NZ DNB entry.

Comment by Sally Davis: this was an enormous yearly income, made up of his salary as managing director, and dividends from the shares he must have been given. I should suppose William and Margaret had never thought that he would earn so much. They could have turned their backs on socialism, but instead they used some of William’s earnings to help it out.

ALSO BY 1892

William had become a member of the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

Source:

Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England volume 53 1892 Report of the Finance Committee plxi in a list of members; William Ranstead, with address Somerville, Seacombe.

Comment by Sally Davis: William and Margaret’s backgrounds were completely urban and even industrial. Perhaps they had always longed to live a country life; but William’s success at Gandy’s was making it a bit more than a dream.

APRIL 1892

William was elected a member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool.

Source: its Proceedings volume 49 1895 pxiv in the list of members with date 25 April 1892, probably the date of his election. As the members are in alphabetical order by surname, immediately below William are several men called Rathbone, Liverpool-based financiers, shipping insurers and charity workers; one of Liverpool’s elite families. William is also listed in Proceedings volume 48 1894 pxii at Inveresk, Withens Lane Liscard.

Information from discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk: the Society had been set up in 1812, and the William Rathbone of the time was one of its founders. It helped to found Liverpool University College, now Liverpool University.

AUGUST 1892

William’s son Ralph was born in Somerville, Seacombe.

Source: birth registration and a page on Ralph and his 2 children at www.ancestry.co.uk.

Comment by Sally Davis on the address ‘somerville’. Although I found evidence that a house of that name had been built in Seacombe, probably in the 1850s; by the time the Ransteads moved from London to the Wirral, ‘somerville’ referred to a group of streets, one of the posher parts of the district.

Information on the address: facebook page of the Wallasey Days Gone By History Tours; posting of 25 May 2018.

NOVEMBER 1892

William was elected a member of the Smithfield Club.

Source: Live Stock Journal of 4 November 1892 pp493-494 long report on the most recent meeting of the club, whose members included some of the wealthiest farmers in the country, with the biggest estates. The meeting was held at the Royal Agricultural Hall on Wed 2 November 1892. A list of men elected members at that meeting includes William Ranstead of The Grove, Somerville, Seacombe; where it seems unlikely that he was breeding any cattle.

14-16 JANUARY 1893

A conference was held at Bradford Labour Institute which resulted in the formation of what became known as the Independent Labour Party (ILP). Delegates from local labour parties, the Social Democratic Foundation, and the Fabian Society were there. Sitting MP Keir Hardie became its first chairman.

Comment by Sally Davis: I put this information in because the founding of the party did influence William and Margaret over the next few years; and because according to William’s NZ DNB entry, the Ransteads were or had been members of both the SDF and the Fabian Society. I haven’t found any evidence that either of them were members of the ILP, though I haven’t gone through the ILP archives to see if I can spot them. Keir Hardie was an MP but he had been elected as an Independent.

Sources for the founding of the ILP: its wikipedia page; and The Clarion, which covered the conference in detail.

Lack of evidence, at least in the early years, for the Ransteads as members; and I note that William’s entry in the NZ DNB doesn’t state that he was:

The Clarion issue Sat 29 April 1893 p7 lists some but not all the current members of the ILP’s National Administrative Council. Neither of the Ransteads were on the list.

They could have just been members of the ILP’s branch in Liverpool: The Clarion Sat 5 August 1893 p4 mentions that one had been founded and was holding regular meetings at the Oddfellows’ Hall, St Anne Street. It’s not likely Margaret Ranstead would have been able to go to the meetings.

Independent Labour Party Directory and Branch Returns for the 3 months to 13 May 1896; published in Glasgow by the Labour Literary Society of 19 Hutcheson St. Its front cover lists the current senior officials. The list of branches begins on p2 with one named contact for each branch – presumably the secretary - and details where they were known (which they often were not) of money forwarded to head office in the last 3 months. On p2 a branch in Birkenhead was listed; on p8 several in Liverpool were: Everton, Toxteth, Kirkdale, West Derby, Edge Hill; a federation of them had also been set up. A lot of branch details were missing from the Directory but I couldn’t see William’s name anywhere.

19 MARCH 1893

William was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn as a member of its Horus Temple in Bradford.

Source:

R A Gilbert’s The GD Companion. Wellingborough Northamptonshire: The Aquarian Press p137.

Comments by Sally Davis. I think most of the members of the TS lodge in Liverpool had joined the GD in Bradford by March 1893. Relations between the members of the TS in the two cities were close. Here are two examples. One of the most active members of the TS in Bradford, and later of the GD there, was Thomas Henry Pattinson. He had been born in Tranmere and both his parents were Liverpudlians though he had lived nearly all his life in Bradford. In the same ritual that William was made a member of the GD, Fanny Clayton was also initiated. Her father, Joseph Clayton, had spent several years in Liverpool in the 1850s as a teacher in a National School, and the family still had friends in the city.

Though he was curious enough to get initiated, William decided that the GD was not for him. He joined at the level 0=0 (a level which indicates minimal knowledge of the western occult tradition) and never rose above it. I’ve noticed in my research on those who joined the GD, that members who were active politically didn’t stay: involvement in the occult, and involvement in trying to bring about political change, were both very demanding of people’s time, and sooner or later a choice had to be made between them. In addition in William’s case, he had a company to run and a big family, and was probably just too busy to get to know occultism in greater detail, or to go to the GD meetings, which were all held in Bradford. Margaret didn’t join the GD.

Another thing that William tried but didn’t stay with: 20 JULY1893

William was initiated as a freemason, in the craft lodge Hamer Lodge 1393 which met at Liverpool’s masonic hall, at 22 Hope Street.

Comments by Sally Davis: William was earning the kind of money, and moving in the kind of business circles, that were likely to lead to an invitation to become a freemason. Freemasonry went the way of the GD though: William resigned from the lodge on 20 June 1895 and there’s no evidence of any further freemasonry involvement on his part; at least, not in England. I don’t know who had invited him to join the lodge; I looked through the list of men who were members around the time William was initiated, but I didn’t recognise any names, either from Gandy’s or from the TS and GD.

Sources: membership records of the United Grand Lodge of England, to 1921; now at Ancestry.

At www.dhi.ac.uk, Lane’s Masonic Records on Hamer Lodge 1393.

MID-1890s

Cycling boomed.

Source: there’s lots of information on this but I got mine from Fellowship is Life: The National Clarion Cycling Club 1895-1995 by Denis Pye. Clarion Publishing 1995: p1.

Comments by Sally Davis: the invention of the safety bike was a big factor – before, bicycles had been dangerous. But what made the bigger difference was price: you could get a 2nd-hand one for around £2. A new one would cost more but you could pay by instalments, including through a scheme run by The Clarion. Both for commuting to work and for leisure, cycling became something that the lower middle-classes and working-classes could afford; and women could do it too.

FOR A SHORT TIME IN 1893/1894

William, Margaret and their children were living in one of the several houses they called Inveresk, on Withens Lane in Liscard.

Source for the Ransteads living there: Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool volume 48 1894 pxii which gives that address for William.

Sources for the house, which has had several names during its life but which is now known just as 167 Withens Lane:

Two websites have what seems to be the same pamphlet on the house’s history; though called by different names:

- //rochdale.spydus.co.uk where you might be able to download the pamphlet but I think you might have to be a member of Rochdale Library. Ebook with title The Early History of 167 Withens Lane.

- //wirral.overdrive.com seems to be calling the pamphlet Tales from the Big House.

Both pamphlets are the work of Helen M Gill whose father owned the house and had the title deeds, which went back as far as 1711.

Google’s bird’s-eye view shows an irregularly-shaped piece of ground to the rear of the house that extends behind the back walls of its late-19th century neighbours. The deeds indicate there used to be outbuildings and an older house, Rose Cottage behind the main house; the Cottage isn’t there now.

Roger Wright and I took a quick walk round the district with google streetview and noticed that 167 Withens Lane looked markedly different from its neighbours, suggesting it was much older.

At www.wikiwirral.co.uk there’s a list of named houses in the area, which says that amongst the residents before the Ransteads at 167 Withens Lane was Maurice Gandy; perhaps that’s how the Ransteads got to know about it. The Ransteads’ tenancy must have followed that of a Mr G A Leete and his family who moved in during 1893. There’s no mention of the name ‘inveresk’ in the wiki account until the Birchall family moved in, in 1910; somehow, the name the Ransteads gave the house must have been passed on.

NOVEMBER 1893

As The Clarion approached its second birthday, the editor/writers announced that a series of articles by chief founder and editor Robert Blatchford would be published in book form; with the title Merrie England.

Probably unnecessary comment by Sally Davis: the title was ironic, of course. The basis for the original articles were the walks Robert Blatchford had made through the worst slums of Manchester.

Source for Merrie England’s publication date:

The Clarion issue of Sat 28 October 1893 p2 with a big advert for it on p4: publication date of 10 November 1893, price 1 shilling. Issue of Sat 11 November 1893 p4 announced that the publication date had been slightly delayed, to 16 November 1893.

The book became a publishing sensation. Its wikipedia page estimates that over 2 million copies were sold, worldwide – helped I would say by The Clarion’s policy of keeping prices per copy very low – and suggests that it made more converts to socialism than the works of Marx ever managed.

LATE 1893 and despite all the changes in his life, which might have made him abandon his commitment to social and political change:

William was a regular reader of The Clarion and was worried about the future of the paper.

Source for the concern of William and other readers:

The Clarion issue of Sat 2 December 1893 p1 in which Montague Blatchford as Mont Blong, in his regular front-page column, celebrated 2 years since Clarion’s first issue; but also touched on the conflicting rumours that were going around in socialist circles. One set of rumours was suggesting that the paper’s owners were making a fortune from it while not making its readers’ lives any better. Another set were suggesting the exact opposite, that the paper was about to run out of money and cease publication. Further into the same issue, on p2, Robert Blatchford as Nunquam, in his main editorial, denied the ‘about to go bust’ rumours with the response that “with the dawn of the new year the Clarion will make a fresh start. Many changes and improvements are in contemplation” including an increase in the number of pages per issue. I suggest, therefore, that – it was probably LATE NOVEMBER 1893 when

William went to The Clarion’s offices in Corporation Street Manchester, with a cheque for £250; which led to him becoming a shareholder in the business.

Comment by Sally Davis on something I’m not quite clear about: whether William’s cheque was a donation or a loan. Several years later, Robert Blatchford called it a loan, but later events may have influenced how he remembered it; it may not have been seen like that at the time.

Sources for the details of how William got involved:

The Bounder: The Story of a Man, by His Friend anon but generally assumed to be by Robert Blatchford. Published 1900: p49 where the £250 is described as a loan.

My Eighty Years by Robert Blatchford – Nunquam. London etc: Cassell and Co Ltd 1931. On pp207-08. Robert Blatchford remembered William bringing the cheque as happening just after Merrie England was published as a book; and his comments in The Clarion of 2 December suggest that a much-needed injection of money into the Clarion had happened by then. Blatchford recalled that on taking the cheque the four founders had immediately offered to make William a partner in the business. William refused the offer, but said that if they would set up The Clarion as a limited company, he would invest in it; and he did so, to the eventual tune of £1000, becoming a director of the firm.

Comments by Sally Davis: in addition to memories of what had happened to Maurice Gandy in America, William had other good reasons for not wanting to become a partner in The Clarion. A few years later, Robert Blatchford remembered William’s arrival with his cheque, at a Clarion board meeting, as “a great occasion...Good old Farmer William, his face was a study...I think Farmer William was rather shocked”. William was more used to meetings of businessmen than meetings of newspapermen. Perhaps, having seen the informality and general chaos of its Manchester office, William felt that – if he was to commit himself to The Clarion – he wanted a legal framework that required annual attempts to see whether it was still solvent; and which wouldn’t leave him personally liable for a good proportion of the debts if it went to the wall.

Source for William’s first impressions of the four proprietors:

The Bounder: The Story of a Man, by His Friend anon but generally assumed to be by Robert Blatchford. Published 1900: pp49-50.

As a director of The Clarion William was not a sleeping partner. He had duties which seem to have been many and varied, including editing, newspaper production and covering for writer/editors absent through illness; though one thing he did not have to do was write a regular column. On one occasion in February 1895 he was referred to by Alexander Mattock Thompson (Dangle) as the Clarion’s business manager – though the column where that’s stated is so full of leg-pulls that I’m not sure Dangle was serious.

THE CLARION ISSUE OF 9 DECEMBER 1893 p8

First mention of William as Candid Friend.

Comment by Sally Davis: ‘candid friend’ was the first way in which the writers and editors of The Clarion mentioned William; putting him on a par with themselves and other writers in the paper by awarding him a pseudonym.

Confirmation that ‘candid friend’ and ‘farmer william’ are both William Ranstead: The Clarion issue of Sat 18 August 1900 p267 Ranstead’s Farewell to England, by a friend of the Ransteads, who wrote occasional columns for The Clarion as Slender.

Comment by Sally Davis: the first reference to the Candid Friend comes in The Clarion issue of Sat 9 December 1893 p8 which gives an account of William rather more at ease at a later meeting of Clarion’s board; and just noting here that board meetings were as much (perhaps more) about editorial matters as they were about money. It’s a typically jokey account (anonymous but probably by Robert Blatchford) describing Candid Friend as “always welcome, for he invariably supplies a long-felt want” – which apparently was a bottle of gin on this occasion. Candid Friend had come late; sat in the only armchair; and announced that the paper needed more features. However, the report also said that the board members who worked for the paper were now able to earn around £20 per week; up until this point they’d been paying themselves about £4 a week and, as family men, had to take on other work to make ends meet.

EARLY ( I think it may have been February)1894

Richard Cromwell paid $15,000 to buy Maurice Gandy’s patent rights on behalf of the Gandy Belting Co of Baltimore.

Source:

Comments by Sally Davis: I’m not clear who or what was paid the $15,000 as I can’t figure out who the owners of the patents were after Maurice Gandy’s death. The sale of the patents may have financed the English firm’s new factory (see below). I couldn’t find any information about whether the English firm had to pay the American one any royalties after the sale. It doesn’t seem to have attempted to set itself up in the USA after 1894; and perhaps a promise not to set up as a rival on American soil was part of the deal.

BY EASTER 1894

The first Clarion cycling club had been formed.

Source:

Fellowship is Life: The National Clarion Cycling Club 1895-1995 by Denis Pye. Clarion Publishing 1995: pp8-13.

Comment by Sally Davis: from William’s point of view over the next 3 or 4 years, this was an important event, but he played no part in it himself: the club was founded by a group of Clarion- reading socialists in Birmingham.

At www.londonclarion.org.uk a posting The History of the Clarion Cycling Movement says that the group had got to know each other because they all attended a Labour Church in Birmingham.

For further information, the National Clarion Cycling Clubs’ archive is now at the Working Class Movement Library; at 51 Crescent, Salford M5 4WZ.

SPRING 1894

William and Margaret’s youngest son, George Morris Ranstead, was born.

Source: birth registration, in the Birkenhead district so the Ransteads were still living there then, probably on Withens Lane.

?LATE 1893; CERTAINLY BY END 1894

The Gandy Belt Manufacturing Co Ltd moved out of the factory at Ansdell Road and Mersey Street, to a new, bigger site on the Wirral, on Wheatland Lane very near where the Ransteads had been living. The big depot in London was kept, and new depots were set up in Manchester, Glasgow, Bradford and at Courbevoie in France.

Comment by Sally Davis: the shareholders were now focusing the business on sales in the UK and Europe. William must have been in charge of the company’s move across the Mersey to its much bigger site.

The earliest reference I could find to the Wheatland Works: The Electrician’s Electrical Trades Directory and Handbook 1894 p354.

BY JUNE 1894

The first Clarion Scouts groups had been set up.

Comment by Sally Davis: William became very involved with organising them nationally. See below for more on that.

Sources:

Fellowship is Life: The National Clarion Cycling Club 1895-1995 by Denis Pye. Clarion Publishing 1995: pp15-17.

It didn’t take long for the writers and editors of The Clarion to realise that volunteers on bicycles could be a huge help to socialism, reaching places further from the main cities to give talks and distribute leaflets. By The Clarion issue of Sat 16 June 1894 p6 in The Clarion Post Bag column there was mention of groups that already existed in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Clarion issue of Sat 14 July 1894 p4 had a letter about the Liverpool scout group, sent in by its secretary, Roger Pride of 87 Albany Road Liverpool. Not sure that William was a member, though: he no longer had much reason to go to Liverpool regularly.

PROBABLY MID JULY 1894

While on a trip to London, William met up with Edward Francis Fay. They went for a drink in Fleet Street and Fay mixed William something – he wasn’t sure what was in it -“a glass of terrible stuff...hell broth”.

Comment by Sally Davis: the source for this incident was a letter William then wrote to The Clarion’s editors back in Manchester, joking about the effects of whatever-it-was that Fay had concocted for him – 3 days and a session in a Turkish bath later, they still hadn’t worn off! He’d be sticking to “plain bitter” if invited out by Fay again.

Source – though I’m not sure William expected it to be published: The Clarion issue of Sat 28 July 1894 p4, quoting the letter at length.

Comment by Sally Davis on Edward Francis Fay: in 1900, Robert Blatchford wrote a memorial to Fay which mentioned that his heavy drinking contributed to his death at 42. I’m not sure that anyone saw it like that during Fay’s lifetime. Source for Blatchford writing with hindsight:

The Bounder: The Story of a Man, by His Friend anon but generally assumed to be by Robert Blatchford. Published 1900: p98.

ALSO MID JULY 1894

William donated £5 towards the election expenses of Leonard Hall, who was intending to stand as an Independent Labour Party candidate for Manchester North East in a by-election. A few weeks later and as a member of The Clarion’s board, he helped pay for an edition of 100,000 copies of Merrie England to be distributed as part of the by-election campaign.

Sources:

The Clarion

- issue of Sat 14 April 1894 p4 an early mention of Leonard Hall and his intentions.

- issue of Sat 4 August 1894 p7 which made it clear that Hall would be standing as the ILP candidate.

- issue of Sat 21 July 1894 p8 a list of donations to Hall’s campaign. William headed the list, having made by far the largest donation so far. Issue of Sat 18 August 1894 p2 announcement about Merrie England, with further details in The Clarion Sat 25 August 1894 p2.

Some information on [William] Leonard Hall (1866-1916) with whom William had something in common: both from families where money was tight, they’d had to leave school at 13. Leonard had been rather more adventurous than William however: after time as a sailor, he’d spent several years in the US, working as a cowboy. Returning to England, he soon became very active, politically, joining the Socialist League and working part-time for what became the Navvies Union. He had contacts in a wide range of industries and as he worked as a journalist as well, he was known to The Clarion’s editors. He was a founder member of the Independent Labour Party, was a member of its National Administrative Council and secretary of its Lancashire and Cheshire Federation. Hall was obliged to drop out of the campaign in Manchester North East, for reasons I’m not clear about. In 1890 he had married Martha Alice Blears; on census day 1891 they were living in Eccles.

Sources for Hall: a wiki on him; freebmd; 1891 census.

At //sca-archives.liverpool.ac.uk there’s a copy of Hall’s Land, Labour and Liberty; or the ABC of Reform published 1899 by The Clarion. Ref: GP/6/2/61

Leonard and Martha left the north-west for Birmingham in 1897, but their friendship with the Ransteads continued: see //paperspast.natlib.govt.nz article by Margaret Scott: A Glance at the Ranstead Papers. Originally published in the Turnbull Library Record volume 1 number 4 issue of 1 November 1968 p25. The article quotes from a letter Leonard sent to William in New Zealand, which includes good wishes from Martha. Scott says that Leonard visited the Ransteads at Waikato in 1906.

Finally in this very busy year: ?LATE 1894; CERTAINLY BY MID-1895

The Ransteads bought a piece of land in the country, at Tilston, a hamlet east of Wrexham but usually described as being at Malpas. They called it Inveresk Cottage.

Source for a date by which they were definitely living there, but hadn’t been there long: at //fred.eu5.org/clarion-old/history_75.html The Clarion issue of Sat 8 June 1895 has a report

about a group of cyclists who would be taking a trip from Shrewsbury to Chester. On the way they would be going past “Candid Friend’s new country cottage at Malpas” and would call in on him.

An online walk around Tilston with google streetview in 2024 didn’t come up with any building called Inveresk Cottage; though there was one with that name as late as the 1970s when a printing firm was giving it as their address. There is an Inveresk Road in Tilston, making 3 sides of a rough square with the main, Roman road making the 4^th. The land seems to have been filled in with post-1960s houses but might have been part or all of the land that the Ransteads bought.

Here’s what the land consisted of, from Fabian News volume 8 issue of July 1898 p20: it was freehold, well-drained, and with a good water supply. It included 2 acres of old pasture; a 3½ acre orchard with around 1000 fruit trees; and 2 acres of market garden which in 1898 had strawberries growing. The house on the site had three living rooms; 6 bedrooms; attics; kitchens; and a cellar. There was stabling with harness rooms; a vinery; and a propagating house.

Julia Dawson, who visited Tilston in 1896, said that there were bee hives, though these weren’t mentioned in the advert. Source: The Clarion 30 May 1896 p176.

Another item on the site when the Ransteads bought it, and which became important in 1895 and 1896, was a gypsy-style caravan.

See www.disused-stations.org.uk entries for Malpas and Broxton for how easy it was to commute to Birkenhead, Chester, Manchester and London – the places William needed to go most often. There were more railway lines in operation then; and – of course – far more services.

Such a move to the country by two people, not hugely wealthy and with no background in agriculture, was odd. However, the Ransteads had been working towards it for a year or two – there’s information above on the agricultural societies William had already joined, reading their magazines and perhaps attending meetings. With some understanding of how agriculture worked and the important issues of the day, he and Margaret were now ready to move from theory to practice. In a letter printed in The Clarion 25 July 1896 p237 William explained that one of the reasons he’d done it was to “get at facts first-hand”. By this time he was thinking that wider access to land for cultivation was one of the biggest issues in current politics.

It’s likely that the Ransteads had the idea from the start that they would create a market garden; but they were both too busy to do the daily work themselves. With William now earning so much, they could afford to hire someone else to do that; someone with experience. In 1896 they hired an experienced gardener: The Gardeners’ Chronicle volume 20 issue of 19 September 1896 p350 in its Appointments column noted that Peter Williams had gone to work for “Ranstead Esq” of Inveresk, Tilston, Malpas, after two years as head gardener at Oakfield Gardens near Nantwich. The Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener volume 33 issue of 17 September 1896 p275 also reported the appointment and said that Williams was a Journal of Horticulture medallist.

Just noting here that it looks like the staff at the Gardeners’ Chronicle in 1896 didn’t know who William Ranstead was. He was a newcomer to gardening on this scale. He did have money to invest, though: in 1897 he and Margaret financed the building of 4 heated greenhouses, each of them 100 x 21 feet.

Though the Ransteads were long-gone, the market garden was still in business in the 1920s:

Gardeners’ Chronicle 1925 p424.

EARLY 1895

The Clarion’s board, which included William, decided that the Clarion’s socialist activists needed their own magazine.

Source:

Fellowship is Life: The National Clarion Cycling Club 1895-1995 by Denis Pye. Clarion Publishing 1995: p28.

MID-JANUARY TO ?END FEBRUARY ?EARLY MARCH 1895

In severe cold, a van selling soup for a farthing a mug was set up outside St George’s Hall in Liverpool. Though a lot of local socialists became involved, William had started the scheme and lent it his van, angry at the absence of any such effort in the city on the part of its charities and authorities. A Mrs Dean was in charge of the soup’s cooking and handing out; while a number of men – though not William as far as I can see - made political speeches to the waiting crowds.

Source for the cold, which was so bad, for so long, in northern Europe and North America, that it has its own wikipedia page. Though it was cold from January to March, temperatures were lowest in mid-February, with -27°C -14°F being recorded around the 11^th and continuing nearly as cold for a week. The Thames and Manchester Ship Canal both froze. There was large-scale disruption to the economy and shipping, so Liverpool was badly hit.

Sources for William’s part in the soup van scheme:

The Clarion issues in January and February 1895, on its local news page in the column sent in by the writer calling him or herself ‘Citizen’. Unfortunately, Citizen’s column didn’t appear in The Clarion in late January so I can’t be more specific about the day the soup van first dispensed soup to hundreds of people thrown out of work by the weather.

- issue of Sat 2 February 1895 p38 where Citizen makes a passing reference to a “travelling soup kitchen” manned by ‘Lone Scout’. Despite the terrible weather, socialists in Liverpool were still holding outdoor meetings.

‘Lone Scout’ was well-known local activist Robert Manson.

- issue of Sat 16 February 1895 p54 local news page; in which there was more coverage of the soup kitchen than in previous issues but again with Citizen focusing on Manson, now seen by Liverpudlians in general as the public face of the soup van scheme and being sent donations by cheque through the post. A local bread firm was sending a batch of bread every day to the van. On the previous Friday the number of people waiting for the van to turn up was so great that the van and its horses were engulfed in people and the police had given up trying to hold them back.

- issue of Sat 23 February 1895 p62 in Citizen’s column, a first reference to William - “the Candid Friend” – as the instigator of what Citizen was now referring to as the socialist soup van. William had begun planning it after hearing the Lord Mayor of Liverpool declare that no special measures were needed in the cold weather; a sentiment echoed by most of the local press. Citizen noted, rather sourly, that similar efforts to feed those out of work were now being started all over town and the Lord Mayor had set up a fund for donations; and that in its early days the socialist soup van had got hardly any press coverage whereas now the papers were full of it. Citizen wrote of watching “Thousands of hungry beings clamouring for food fill the vast square every day”, and was depressed to see such desperation. The socialist and various other soup vans had fed 3000 people on the previous Monday. However, he or she felt that some good had come out of such a terrible situation – William and Robert Manson’s soup van had put socialism on the map in Liverpool.

Source for Mrs Dean doing the cooking and bowl-filling – she was never mentioned by Citizen: The Clarion Sat 25 April 1896 p136 in Julia Dawson’s women’s column.

Some later sources:

The Clarion issue of 29 February 1896 p72 Julia Dawson in her women’s column describes William as “Soup Vanstead” and refers to “his historic soup van, from which so many of the Liverpool starving were fed during the cruel frosts of last winter”.

However, most later sources focused as Citizen had done at the time, on the role of Robert Manson; and William’s part in the scheme dropped out of history: it isn’t mentioned in his entry in the NZ DNB.

At www.unionhistory.info there’s a photo of the van, though with the banner of The Clarion, which I think it didn’t have in 1895. The page notes that estimates suggest that in 1894, 40% of the population of Liverpool were below poverty line. The article states that the soup kitchen was in the charge of R T Manson of the Liverpool Unemployed Association.

The hard-hearted Lord Mayor was William Henry Watts (1825-1924), owner of the drapery firm W H Watts and Co of Compton House in Liverpool.

Sources for him: wikipedia’s list of the mayors of Liverpool. And for the family see the online family history at www.hoap.co.uk/ever_rolling_stream.pdf compiled by John Hamilton 2019.

MID TO LATE FEBRUARY 1895

For some at least of the long very cold spell, William was at The Clarion’s office in Fleet Street, where he had to fill in at short notice while Dangle – Alexander Mattock Thompson – was ill.

Source:

The Clarion issue of Sat 23 February 1895 p59 in the Stageland column, in the section headed The London Theatres, an article by William as Candid Friend describing the many and varied tasks Dangle set him as he headed for his sick-bed: everything from

- proof-reading the local news page, checking the columns for possible libels and cutting the whole to four columns; to

- finding the fountain pen Dangle lent to Nunquam (Robert Blatchford) which Nunquam says he has lost; to

- getting The Clarion’s Scout magazine to the presses – why the delay? To

- explaining why the Clarion’s readership wasn’t going up, and fixing the problem; to

- reviewing the new play at the Opera Comique: to

- tidying both their desks. What else do they employ a Business Manager for?

Was William employed at least part-time as The Clarion’s business manager? He was well-suited to the role, of course; but the whole article is so full of leg-pulls that I’m not sure whether the fancy job title was another of Dangle’s jokes. The play at the Opera Comique – An MP’s Wife - was not a joke and William went along to do Dangle’s bidding in a spirit of showing him how a critique should be done. He reached the theatre to be told that the leading lady hadn’t turned up; and as she hadn’t got an understudy, the performance had been cancelled. It’s a pity Dangle hadn’t been ill, and William in London, the week before, when William might have been called upon to review a now very famous play: elsewhere on the page is Dangle’s review of the first production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Confirming that the play An MP’s Wife was not a joke:

Times Sat 16 February 1895 p10 To-Day’s events includes it. Times Mon 18 February 1895 p12 had a review of it; with Miss T White named as taking the title role. Times didn’t mention the acting; most of the review was spent outlining the preposterous plot of a play whose author (wisely, by the sound of it) wished to remain anonymous.

MARCH 1895

The first issue of The Scout was published by The Clarion, to provide a forum for socialist activists. Unlike The Clarion itself, it was a monthly magazine, for sale at 1d. William edited some of the pages in the first issue.

Comments by Sally Davis: The Scout was not specifically aimed at activists on bicycles. The first issue called for ideas on how to get socialism more widely known; and for other ways to bring readers together to promote socialism as a group. However, as early as that first issue, the Clarion’s board came up against the gap between someone’s enthusiasm for the cause, and their willingness to spend time and effort volunteering. In the issue of April 1895 Robert Blatchford reported that the magazine needed 30,000 readers to break even, and the next few months showed that were not enough committed activists to make it pay. An advert for The Scout in The Clarion on Sat 5 October 1895 p315 announced a price-rise to 2d, beginning with that month’s issue; but still the magazine ceased to be published during spring 1896.

With only two issues still available to read, it’s not clear exactly when Montague Blatchford as Mont Blong took over all the editing but I think it was quite early on: from late 1895 he was the only editor mentioned in the adverts.

Sources:

The Scout volume 1 number 1 issue of 30 March1895, which is the only issue in the British Library. Again unlike The Clarion, it is A5-sized. For comments on the small number of cyclists in Liverpool who were willing to go out distributing leaflets, made by Mr Lowcock, the secretary of Liverpool’s Clarion Cycling Club: p7. William edited pp9-10, a series of short items of activists’ news. In the longer run, Montague Blatchford’s idea of a choir of socialist activists seems to have been the most successful of the schemes for publicising socialism. On pp10-11 Montague wrote that the one he’d founded in Halifax (where he lived) had 146 members, 120 of whom came regularly to the practices. The members had started a class for people who wanted to learn to sing. Unlike the Scout magazine, The Clarion Vocal Union was still going several years later and The Clarion had a special column with news of it and many other socialist choirs.

At //fred.eu5.org/clarion-old/history_62.html there’s a copy of the The Clarion’s issue of Sat 11 May 1895 indicating that William as Candid Friend edited the whole issue that month.

As far as I can see, no one in recent years has seen any other issues. While I was reading through The Clarion’s issues of 1896 I saw adverts for The Scout up until that of Sat 4 April 1896 p108, for that month’s issue. I didn’t see any more adverts so I think April 1896 was the last issue published.

In 1897 The Clarion started a new magazine for its cyclist readers, less focused on activism: King of the Road. William doesn’t seem to have been involved in any way with this magazine.

At www.londonclarion.org.uk a posting The History of the Clarion Cycling Movement.

The Clarion Sat 5 June 1897 p180 references to the first issue of King of the Road, with a list of contents. Over the next few months there were big adverts for the magazine with lists of contributors; William was not on any of the lists.

APRIL 1895

William wrote a letter of advice about religion to Eleanor Keeling, who had begun writing a woman’s column in The Clarion.

Source: letter from William Ranstead to Eleanor Keeling; dated 10 April 1895 and now in the Joseph Edwards Papers at Liverpool Record Office. The letter is quoted by Geoffrey C Fidler in his ‘Secondary Education for All’ in Liverpool c 1902-1932; p92 and footnote. Fidler’s article was originally published in the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire volume 133 1983 but can now be read at www.hslc.org.uk. Fidler uses William’s letter as an illustration of the peculiar status of Liverpool, as a place (to quote Fidler) of “loyal Conservatism and...Irish Catholicism” where Conservatives, and the hierarchies of both the Roman Catholic church and the Church of England, actively condemned socialism as a threat to religion and morality.

Eleanor Keeling’s first woman’s column was in The Clarion issue of Sat 9 February 1895 p43. Several more by her appeared over the next few weeks, but sporadically, and the one in The Clarion issue of Sat 13 April 1895 p115 was her last, published a day or two after she received William’s letter. William had not been poking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted: Eleanor had asked readers to contact her with leaflets and suggestions for what she should write about. William’s advice was that she should NOT write about religion under any circumstances. I think Eleanor was not an experienced journalist; perhaps she found the advice she received rather overwhelming, and lost her confidence. However, she may just have realised that she’d taken on too much and something had to give: she was already organising Liverpool’s Cinderella clubs and trying to set up a Labour Church in the city. She was also about to get married, to William’s friend Joseph Edwards.

Several months later, the Clarion’s editors hired an experienced journalist to write a woman’s column.

Source for Eleanor Keeling’s other commitments:

Mrs Brown is a Man and a Brother: Women in Merseyside’s Political Organisations by Krista Cowman 2004: p33, p62.

EASTER 1895

There was a big meeting of the Clarion’s cycling clubs, at Ashbourne in Derbyshire. The National Clarion Cycling Club was founded and William was elected to its committee, with a man called Atkinson from the Birmingham club, and John Dalby Sutcliffe from the Manchester one.

Comments by Sally Davis: William may have been at the meeting as a member of Liverpool’s Clarion Cycling Club: 10 members of it were there including William’s activist friend Robert Manson. One of the main tasks of the national committee was to organise more meetings like this one. Over the next few years they were an annual event, at Bakewell in 1896; Leek in 1897; and Chester in 1898 with a trip to Eaton Hall and an excursion on the River Dee. However, the national committee was disbanded at the 1897 meeting as Robert Blatchford felt things were getting too bureaucratic and complacent – William and his two committee fellows had just been re-elected unopposed, despite (Robert Blatchford said) having done nothing in particular for the last 12 months.

Sources:

Fellowship is Life: The National Clarion Cycling Club 1895-1995 by Denis Pye. Clarion Publishing 1995: pp15-20.

At www.londonclarion.org.uk a posting The History of the Clarion Cycling Movement, which notes that the Clarion cycling clubs became a world-wide movement – by 1912 there was one in New Zealand; perhaps William was a member of it.

The Clarion cycling club’s wikipedia page which says that the Clarion cycling clubs were distributing socialist pamphlets during the local election campaigns of November 1894.

SPRING 1895

The National Clarion Cycling Club committee set up a scheme to buy bicycles in bulk. Members of the local clubs could buy one from the scheme with a loan, paying it back in monthly instalments. William, and John Dalby Sutcliffe, each paid £100 into the scheme to get it started.

Comment by Sally Davis: two years later William was able to say that the scheme had been very successful, many people joining a Clarion cycling club solely to be able to buy a bicycle this way. All the money loaned to individual members had been paid back within the time agreed.

Source:

The Clarion Sat 22 May 1897 p164: a letter from William which was printed as part of the main editorial. The National Clarion Cycling Club committee had just been disbanded, and William was suggesting that the Clarion’s editorial/financial board take over the scheme.

AUGUST 1895

The Clarion organised a three-week summer camp for its readers, in a field at Tabley Brook near Knutsford in Cheshire. William lent his van as the camp’s headquarters; also tents and a stove.

Source: Fellowship is Life: The National Clarion Cycling Club 1895-1995 by Denis Pye. Clarion Publishing 1995: pp42-43. This meeting was for all the Clarion readers who could come; not just the cyclists. Crockery and benches were also provided, organised by John Dalby Sutcliffe, who lived quite near, in Stretford. The preparations were on a grand scale, which was a good thing because the camp was a great success: 2000 cyclists visited it; 400 people stayed for a night or more at 6d per night; and 1400 meals were served, with diners able to pay 9d or 1 shilling per meal. A second camp in the same field was held in August 1896 on an even bigger scale, and in 1897 the third camp could afford to rent a house at Bucklow Hill.

JULY/AUGUST 1895

Campaigning took place in a general election, which resulted in a Conservative majority of 153. The Independent Labour Party was practically invisible in it and Keir Hardie lost his seat.

Source: wikipedia pages on the Independent Labour Party and the General Election of 1895. The Marquis of Salisbury became PM.

Comment from Sally Davis: just noting here that the ILP was trying to take part in the GE on a minute budget compared to the Big Guns of Parliament; rather like the Green Party nowadays.

Since Eleanor Keeling’s abortive attempt at writing a column, The Clarion had been in the weird state of having a regular column for children, but nothing for women.

5 OCTOBER 1895

Julia Dawson’s women’s column appeared for the first time in The Clarion.

Source: The Clarion Sat 5 October 1895 p320.

Comment by Sally Davis: I have a hunch (on no evidence so far – February 2025) that Julia may already have been a friend of the Ransteads, through her husband Harry Worrall who was about William’s age and had grown up in Liverpool. If she was not already, she soon became a friend of William, Margaret and their children. Julia’s column was a mainstay of The Clarion for over a decade.

For events from January 1896 please go to my other Ranstead life-by-dates file.

4 April 2025

Email me at

Find the web pages of Roger Wright and Sally Davis, including my list of people initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn between 1888 and 1901, at:

www.wrightanddavis.co.uk

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