He lived in slum housing in the Cromer Street area of King's Cross and later around Drury Lane in Covent Garden.

[3] He appears to have been influenced by the ideas of the Chartist and socialist Bronterre O'Brien and was prominent in several of the small extreme radical groups which emerged in the early 1870s.

At about this time, he published the first of his own pamphlets, in total producing at least twenty titles often incendiary in tone, denouncing the royal family, organised religion and government and urging workers to revolt.

[4] While the tone of Chatterton's writings was intemperate and angry, he also addressed issues which touched directly on the lives of the urban poor.

[5][6] In another pamphlet, he expressed fierce criticism of slum clearances which left slum-dwellers homeless and argued that land and houses should be nationalised.

Chatterton has been described as 'a born contrarian' who was also 'an authentic voice, steeped in British and continental political demands, typical themselves of the result of Victorian non-conformity'.