Thomas Allsop

Thomas Allsop (10 April 1795 – 1880) was an English and author. Allsop is commonly described as the favourite disciple of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He also took part in violent radical politics.

He was born 10 April 1795 at Stainsborough Hall, near Wirksworth, Derbyshire, a property which belonged to his grandfather. Allsop was educated at Wirksworth grammar school. 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. He then left for the , prospering during the early years of railway construction.

Allsop's home was a favourite resort of Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Barry Cornwall, and others such as Thomas Noon Talfourd. Besides men like Lamb or Robert Owen, who would stay for weeks at a time, he shared the personal friendship of men as dissimilar as Cobbett, Joseph Mazzini, and the Emperor of Brazil, who, after a pilgrimage to the grave of Coleridge, sent to Allsop a silver urn inscribed with words of personal regard.

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. He was also anti-clerical.

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:

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