John Towill Rutt

John Towill Rutt (4 April 1760 – 3 March 1841) was an English political activist, social reformer and nonconformist man of letters.

Born in London on 4 April 1760, was only son of George Rutt, at first a druggist in Friday Street, Cheapside, and afterwards a wholesale merchant in drugs in Upper Thames Street, who married Elizabeth Towill. In early boyhood he was placed for some time under the care of Joshua Toulmin at Taunton. On 1 July 1771 he was admitted at St. Paul's School, London, under Dr. Richard Roberts. The headmaster recommended his parents to send him to university, but they were strict nonconformists, and would not accept the advice. Rutt went into his father's business, and continued for most of his life.

Rutt joined in 1780 the Society for Constitutional Information. At the time of the French Revolution he became an original and active member of the Society of the Friends of the People. Concern for the reformers Thomas Muir, Thomas Fyshe Palmer and William Skirving led him to visit them as convicts on board the hulks, when awaiting transportation, and he sent papers and pamphlets to them in New South Wales. He was a vigorous public speaker. His religious convictions gradually became Unitarian, and by 1796 he was a leading member of the Gravel Pit congregation at Hackney, of which Thomas Belsham was the pastor. With Joseph Priestley and Gilbert Wakefield he was on close terms of friendship. He supported Priestley after the riots in Birmingham, and he was one of Wakefield's bail, smoothing matters after his incarceration in Dorchester gaol. Another intimate friend was Henry Crabb Robinson.

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