Frederick Rogers (bookbinder)

Frederick Rogers
Portrait of Frederick Rogers by Ernest Stafford Carlos
Chairman of the Labour Representation Committee
In office 1900–1901
Preceded by	New position
Succeeded by	Allen Gee
Personal details
Born	(1846-04-27)27 April 1846 Whitechapel, London, England
Died	1915
Occupation	Bookbinder, trade unionist, writer, journalist

Frederick Rogers (1846–1915) was an English bookbinder, trades unionist, writer and journalist. He is notable as first chairman of the Labour Representation Committee, the organisation to which the British Labour Party traces its origins, as well as for a lifetime of work dedicated to educational improvement for the working class, and to the introduction of a general tax-funded system of old-age pensions.

Rogers was born on 27 April 1846 in Whitechapel, London to a working-class family. His father, also Frederick Rogers, was variously a dock labourer, sailor, and linen drapers assistant; his mother Susan Bartrup a laundress. He left school at or before age 10, and after a period as an ironmonger's boy was employed in a stationery warehouse where he learned the skilled craft of bookbinding. His artisanal career for the next forty years was as a bookbinder specialising in vellum-bound accounts books.

Rogers was an autodidact who pursued four entwined interests through his life: trades unionism, education for the working-class, journalism, and religion. He was also greatly interested in English literature, and was considered to be extremely well-read - "the most scholarly man I know in the Labour movement", according to an anonymous writer in a 1909 Railway Review article. Rogers took some pride in having overcome a lack of formal education (and a spinal complaint) in his childhood.

He joined the Vellum (Account Book) Binders' Trade Society in the 1870s whilst working for the Co-Operative Printing Society. In this period, he is mainly noted for his interest in the settlement movement and facilitating the education of working people. He acted as secretary from the outset of the University Extension Movement, working in collaboration with Alfred Milner to encourage universities to deliver lectures in 'extension centres' in cities across the UK. His work, in part, gave rise to Toynbee Hall, a university settlement house delivering education to working people, in which Rogers for many years involved himself, acting as vice-president from 1886 onwards. He was active on the London School Board and within working-mens clubs in east-end London. His work in these fields brought him into the society of reformers such as the Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, and Francis Herbert Stead, founder of the Browning Hall. Direct involvement in the English literature teaching at Toynbee Hall facilitated Rogers' introduction to many socially concerned literary figures of the period.