Thomas Poole (tanner)

Thomas Poole (14 November 1766 – 8 September 1837) was a Somerset tanner, Radical philanthropist, and essayist, who used his wealth to improve the lives of the poor of Nether Stowey, his native village. He was a friend of several writers in the British Romantic movement, a benefactor of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his family, and an influence on the poems of Wordsworth.

Poole was born in 1766 in the village of Nether Stowey, Somerset, the son of a successful tanner and farmer. He was, against his own wishes, denied much formal education by his father, who instead apprenticed him to the family tanning business. In spite of his dislike for tanning he became a master of the trade, well thought of by his competitors, and in his spare time studied French, Latin and the humanities and social sciences. In 1790 he went to London as delegate to a tanners' conference, and in 1791 was chosen by the conference to express their concerns to the Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger. His London experiences did much to radicalize Poole, and he returned to Somerset a confirmed advocate of the cause of democracy, though he hoped to promote it by peaceful means rather than revolution. In 1793 he started a local reading club which spread the teachings of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the same year he toured the Midlands dressed as a workman to research the living and working conditions of the poor. Within a few years he had attracted the hostile interest of the Home Office, who thought him a revolutionary agitator and are said to have rated him as the most dangerous person in the county. Even his relatives were thoroughly exasperated with him: "I wish he would cease to torment us with his democratick sentiments", his cousin Charlotte complained after one argument, while another cousin, with whom he had fallen in love, refused to marry him on political grounds. In the event, he never married.

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