Samuel Holberry is Dead!

Samuel Holberry is Dead!, 1842

After the Newport Chartist Rising was put down in 1839, Samuel Holberry and a group of conspirators planned a similar uprising in Sheffield. The group began to organise a militia. They "had agreed to strike down every policeman and watchman that they might meet, and catch the soldiers before they could fire upon them. The barracks were to be fired, and the insurgents were to possess themselves of the Town Hall and Tontine, which they were to defend with the barricades."

The plot was exposed by the landlord of a pub in Rotherham. Leaders were identified, and both Samuel and Mary Holberry were dragged from their bed and arrested. In contrast to many members of the group, Holberry said he was willing to die for the Charter. Mary was pregnant at the time of her arrest. She was locked up for two days and interrogated. She refused to talk and was released without charge.

Holberry was not allowed to offer any defence, convicted of conspiracy to riot and sedition, and was sentenced to four years in Northallerton House of Correction. Holberry was illegally made to work a treadmill and his health deteriorated.

In 1842, he was transferred to York Castle. Holberry did not want Mary to visit him, knowing that seeing him in prison would be very difficult for her. He wrote to her: ‘My dear, you say you should like to come to York to see me; to that I cannot give my consent. In the first place we should have to look through the odious bars and it would only make your more unhappy’. He died of consumption in June 1842 aged 27.

At his funeral, Sheffield came to a standstill as shops were shut, and up to 50,000 people lined the streets to see the funeral party go by. He was buried in the Sheffield General Cemetery, where his grave can still be seen today.

In the 1980s, Sheffield City Council commemorated him by naming, at first a fountain and then the ‘Holberry Cascades’ after him.  

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Chartism, named after the People's Charter of 1838, was a mass working class movement in the UK during the mid-1800s, with six key demands:

- All men over 21 years old to be able to vote in elections
- Voting should be in secret
- No property qualification to be an MP, so people could have representatives from their own background
- Payments to MPs so poor people could afford to be MPs
- Constituencies to be rationalised so that MPs represented similar number of constituents
- Annual elections to Parliament.

The movement evolved out of the reaction to the 1832 Reform Act - which granted voting rights to property owning men - had three significant peaks: 1838, 1842 and 1848 - when massive petitions (including one with over three million signatures) were collected and submitted to Parliament.

The campaign included massive demonstrations, industrial action including strikes, riots and sabotage. It was described by some at the time as an insurrection. The movement was brutally suppressed by the military and police, famously at the Peterloo Massacre and similar violent assaults.

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Radical posters before the 20th century were predominantly text-based, primarily used to advertise events, meetings, and demonstrations rather than relying on colourful graphic imagery to convey ideas. While some did incorporate sketches or cartoons, these were relatively modest compared to the bold visual styles that emerged later.

Although the technology for producing striking graphics existed at the time and was widely used in commercial advertising, such vivid and imaginative designs were less common in political posters. It wasn’t until later that the kind of dynamic, visually arresting imagery often associated with the Russian and Spanish Revolutions blossomed in radical posters.

The posters in our pre-20th century selection reflect this earlier approach – they focus squarely on delivering a direct message, often employing dramatic language and typography to capture attention and provoke thought.