Jump to content

Edward Carpenter & Scotland Street Café


Guest AJCJ

Recommended Posts

Hi

I'm looking for information (including the address) of the café - used for lectures, talks, meetings, gatherings, etc. - that Edward Carpenter opened on Scotland Street in 1887.

All leads gratefully received! Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello and Welcome to the Site AJCJ.

Before you ask I'm not related to anyone at all ever - also I don't know how to get hold of this document, hopefully the following details will assist in some small way..

I've like to know the final answer ...

"MSS 321 contains a memorandum copy of the Lease from George Burrell of Sheffield to Edward Carpenter of Millthorpe, near Chesterfield, for a house and shop in Scotland Street in Sheffield"

No date given for the document.

FABIAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL THOUGHT

Series One: The Papers of Edward Carpenter, 1844-1929, from Sheffield Archives

Part 2: Manuscripts, Cuttings, Pamphlets and Selected Publications

REEL THIRTY-TWO

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS (MSS 311-313)

Congratulating addresses and letters relating to Carpenter’s 70th and 80th birthdays

FAMILY MATTERS (MSS 314-323)

Photographs, Ordination Papers, Deeds, Lease, Marriage Settlement and Servants Licence.

Source - also

Hi I'm looking for information (including the address) of the café - used for lectures, talks, meetings, gatherings, etc. - that Edward Carpenter opened on Scotland Street in 1887. All leads gratefully received! Thanks!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a tough question for a first post, you sure you're not a spy or a professional hard-question-putter ? lol

The ever reliable Wikipedia has the Sheffield Socialist Society originally based on Solly Street (low cost cafe, lodgings and a meeting room) before moving to Scotland Street.

Read here

Hi

I'm looking for information (including the address) of the café - used for lectures, talks, meetings, gatherings, etc. - that Edward Carpenter opened on Scotland Street in 1887.

All leads gratefully received! Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In 1887 we took a large house and shop in Scotland Street, a poor district of the town; and opened a café, using the large room above for a meeting and lecture room, and the house for a joint residence for some of us who were more immediately concerned in carrying on the business. We had all sorts of social gatherings, lectures, teas, entertainments in the Hall - the wives and sisters of the "comrades" helping, especially in the social work; we had Annie Besant, Charlotte Wilson, Kropotkin, Hyndman, and other notables down to speak for us; we gave teas to the slum-children who dwelt in the neighboring crofts and alleys (but these had at first to be given up on account of the poor little things tearing themselves and each other to pieces, perfect mobs of them, in their frantic attempts to gain admittance - a difficulty which no arrangement of tickets or of personal supervision seemed to obviate); and we organized excursions into municipal politics; and country propaganda.

.....

As to the Café, we were only able to hold to it for a year. Though quite a success from the propagandist point of view, financially it was a failure. The refreshment department was not patronized nearly enough to make it pay. The neighborhood was an exceedingly poor one. And so we were obliged to surrender the place, and retire to smaller quarters. During that year however I really lived most of the time at the Scotland Street place. I occupied a large attic at the top of the house, almost high enough to escape the smells of the street below, but exposed to showers of blacks which fell from the innumerable chimneys around. In the early morning at 5 a.m. there was the strident sound of the 'hummers' and the clattering of innumerable clogs of men and girls going to their work, and on till late at night there were drunken cries and shouting. Far around stretched nothing but factory chimneys and foul courts inhabited by the wretched workers. It was, I must say, frightfully depressing; and all the more so because of tragic elements in my personal life at the time.

Source

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I've slowly and irresistibly been drawn back to Edward Carpenter and his circle over the last few years. I've started to track them down obsessively now with street plans and ordnance survey maps, down Rockingham Street, Sheffield, where the secularists and socialists spoke and distributed their literature in the Hall of Science, down Pinstone Street where the socialists and anarchists held a meeting for the men from the ironworks in 1889, to Fargate where the police attacked one of the socialist club's early meetings. In Holly Street and Scotland Street there were radical and socialist cafés.

Holly Street ... ?

The ever reliable Wikipedia has the Sheffield Socialist Society originally based on Solly Street (low cost cafe, lodgings and a meeting room) before moving to Scotland Street.

Read here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for this information - really interesting! I'm trying to put something together (maybe an online pamphlet) about the café... would love to find some images, some of the pamphlets they published and distributed, for example... Am going to follow up the MSS leads in the archives and see if I can get the address... Will post any more information I find here. Thanks again for info so far!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...