[3] George Jacob Holyoake was born in Birmingham, where his father worked as a whitesmith and his mother as a button maker.

[6] Holyoake joined Charles Southwell in dissenting from the official Owenite policy that lecturers should take a religious oath to enable them to take collections on Sundays.

Holyoake was influenced by the French philosopher of science, Auguste Comte, notable in sociology and famous for the doctrine of positivism.

In 1842, Holyoake became one of the last persons convicted for blasphemy in a public lecture, held in April 1842 at the Cheltenham Mechanics' Institute, though this had no theological character and the incriminating words were merely a reply to a question addressed to him from the body of the meeting.

[7] It took an intervention by supporters to stop him being walked in chains from Cheltenham to Gloucester Gaol, and there was a formal complaint to the Home Secretary, which was upheld.

Those at the lecture, the second in a series, moved and carried a motion "that free discussion was equally beneficial in the departments of politics, morals and religion.

"[8][9] In 1842 Holyoake and the socialist Emma Martin formed the Anti-Persecution Union to support free thinkers in danger of arrest.

He also published (1892) an autobiography entitled Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, and in 1905 two volumes of reminiscences, Bygones Worth Remembering.

[23] Holyoake coined the term "jingoism" in a letter to The Daily News on 13 March 1878, referring to the patriotic song "By Jingo" by G. W. Hunt, popularised by the music hall singer G. H.

[24][25] Referring back to this he wrote, "I had certainly intended to mark, by a convenient name, a new species of patriots... [whose] characteristic was a war-urging pretentiousness which discredited the silent, resolute, self-defensiveness of the British people.

It is mounted on the front of a newsagents' at 4 Woburn Walk in Bloomsbury, London, WC1H 0JL, as part of the Marchmont Association's scheme of local history commemorative plaques.