Robert Applegarth

Robert Applegarth (26 January 1834 – 13 July 1924) was a prominent British trade unionist and proponent of working class causes.

Robert Applegarth was born in Hull in the United Kingdom. His father was the captain of a whaling brig. He spent a brief period in a dame school but had no other formal education and began work in a shoemaker's shop aged ten. He learned the skills of carpentry, before moving to Sheffield where he met and married Mary Longmore, a farmer's daughter.

Applegarth moved to New York City in December 1854, seeking well paid employment, with only a half crown in his possession. He lived with another immigrant from Sheffield for a time, and held a variety of jobs including master at a railroad station. He admired the democracy of the United States, but was appalled by slavery, and visited Mississippi to witness it for himself, where he met Frederick Douglass. By 1857, Applegarth was confident that he could support his wife in America so sent for her from Sheffield, but she was too ill to travel and so he returned to Sheffield. During the American Civil War, Applegarth strongly supported the unionists.

Once back in the United Kingdom he joined the Sheffield Carpenters Union, and rose to become their secretary. In 1861 the Sheffield Carpenters Union merged with the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ), and in 1862 was elected as general secretary of the union. The ASCJ was a New Model Union, and Applegarth regularly met with other leading New Model Unionists in London, in what Sidney and Beatrice Webb termed a .

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