Place, Francis (1771–1854)

Abstract

English Radical, born in London on 3 November 1771, died in London on 1 January 1854. Apprenticed to the leather-breeches trade, he developed his radical activism while a member of the London Corresponding Society from 1794 to 1798. A comfortable fortune made as a master tailor after 1799 made possible his second career in politics, beginning with the startling radical victory he engineered in the Westminster election of 1807. Deeply involved in the parliamentary reform agitation of 1830–32, he devised the famous placard, ‘To Stop the Duke, Go for Gold’, intended to prevent the Tories from taking office by forcing a run of the Bank of England. He drafted the People’s Charter in 1838, though he took no part in the later, more extreme phase of Chartism, and was active in the early stages of the Anti Corn Law campaign.