Author: Ackland, James
Biography:
ACKLAND, James, later ACLAND (1799-1876: ODNB)
His surname at birth was Ackland but in the 1820s he began using Acland. His poetry was published as by James Ackland and we have retained that spelling in the database. An orator, parliamentary agent, and radical reformer, he was born on 21 Mar. 1799 in the City of London to Headley Ackland, a provisions merchant in Leadenhall Market, and his wife Elizabeth Bennett. He was baptised at All Hallows church on 21 Apr. 1799. James, who was educated at Alfred House Academy in Camberwell, was obliged to find work when he was fifteen after his father’s bankruptcy. He tried various occupations: actor, clerk in a firm of merchants, and English teacher in Calais. On 30 June 1819 he married Elizabeth Stoddard Mullins in St. Paul’s, Hammersmith; they had one daughter and a son. Ackland became a police court and parliamentary reporter in London. In 1827 he moved to Bristol where he founded The Bristolian, an unstamped newspaper espousing radical views and, in 1831 he moved to Hull where he started The Portfolio. In both cities he fell afoul of members of the corporation, was convicted of libel, spent time in prison, and ran unsuccessfully as a radical candidate in the general elections of 1830 and 1832. In 1835 he moved to Paris where he launched several short-lived newspapers. By the late 1830s he was living in the north of England and campaigning for the Anti-Corn Law League; his political views and rhetoric had become increasingly radical and inflammatory and on one occasion he was severely beaten at a meeting. He returned to London where he was employed by the Electric Telegraph Company although he continued being very active politically. His marriage to Elizabeth did not last and the 1851 Census shows Ackland living with Marianne (or Maryanne) Day in Hornsey with one son and four daughters. In Feb. 1854 Elizabeth Ackland was admitted to Camberwell House, a lunatic asylum, where she died in 1863; Ackland married Marianne immediately after Elizabeth’s death. In 1865 he published the Imperial Poll Book of all elections held from 1832-64. He died in Clapham on 21 June 1876 and was buried in Norwood cemetery. (ODNB 26 Sept. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 26 Sept. 2022; Janette Martin, “Oratory, Itinerant Lecturing, and Victorian Popular Politics: A Case Study of James Acland,” Historical Research 86 [2013]: 30-52; Morning Post 6 Feb. 1829; Bristol Mercury 24 June 1876)