Thomas Allsop

At 17 he went to London, and entered the large silk mercery establishment of his uncle, Mr. Harding, at Waterloo House, Pall Mall, where he remained some years.

[1] Allsop's home was a favourite resort of Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Barry Cornwall, and others such as Thomas Noon Talfourd.

[1] When on a grand jury about 1836, Allsop startled London by informing the commissioners at the Old Bailey that he should think it unjust 'to convict for offences having their origin in misgovernment,’ since society had made the crime.

When Feargus O'Connor was elected member for Nottingham, Allsop gave him his property qualification, then necessary by law, so that Chartism might be represented in parliament.

On the night before 10 April 1848, the Chartist petition moment, he advised O'Connor, writing from the Bull and Mouth hotel, St. Martin's-le-Grand, London: Nothing rashly.

[2] Orsini was travelling on an old British passport issued by the Foreign Office to Allsop, at the request of a business, as Lord Palmerston explained in Parliament.

[4] Allsop managed to escape after the event to America;[5] and stayed in New Mexico for some months, writing home to George Jacob Holyoake from Santa Fe.

Orsini bomb , 1858, engraving published in the Illustrated London News , from a photograph of a police exhibit. The bomb was made by Joseph Taylor of Birmingham, with whom Allsop dealt. [ 3 ]