George Odger

[2] Odger's father was a miner from Cornwall and the family was an impoverished one, forcing George to be apprenticed as a shoemaker at about 10 years of age.

According to John Bedford Leno, George Odger spoke out in support of Cluseret's proposal but this was misreported in the next days issue of The Times.

On 28 September 1864 a meeting was held at the St. Martin's Hotel in London to launch an international association bringing together trade union leaders from Great Britain and the European continent, with a view to forestall the ability of employers to use unwitting foreign workers as a means of enforcing lockouts or breaking strikes.

[8] As a leading member of the British trade union movement, George Odger not only attending this foundational gathering but was a prominent speaker at the event.

"[13] Henry James wrote of the funeral: "The element of the grotesque was very noticeable to me in the most marked collection of the shabbier English types that I had seen since I came to London.

Mr. George Odger, it will perhaps be remembered, was an English Radical agitator of humble origin, who had distinguished himself by a perverse desire to get into Parliament.

A London County Council commemorative Blue Plaque was erected at Odger's former residence, 18 St Giles High Street, in the 1950s.

George Odger (1813–1877) pioneer British trade union leader and as a longtime member of the governing General Council of the International Workingmen's Association , also known as the First International.
Base of the Reformers Memorial, Kensal Green Cemetery, showing George Odger's name.
Blue plaque inside St Giles in the Fields .