Robert Forder

Robert Joseph Forder (14 October 1844 – 14 August 1901) was an English freethinker, radical, publisher and bookseller and birth controller.

It was in Woolwich that he first began to move in radical circles and became a familiar speaker at open air venues throughout London - Kennington, Smithfield, Mile End Waste etc.

[2] In 1862 he encountered Charles Bradlaugh at a meeting in Hyde Park and in 1865 went on to join The Reform League.

[3] By 1875 he had joined the NSS Council and in 1877 became the first paid secretary of the organisation after the brief temporary tenure of George Standring.

This followed Bradlaugh and Annie Besant falling out with Charles Watts (the original NSS secretary) over Bradlaugh and Besant's republication of the pioneering birth control pamphlet Charles Knowlton's 'Fruits of Philosophy'[4] As secretary of the NSS Forder was closely involved with Bradlaugh's successful campaigns to publish birth control literature at a price all could afford and from 1880-1886 to enter the House of Commons as an MP for Northampton when initially barred due to his atheism.