Author: Otley, Richard
Biography:
OTLEY, Richard (1795-1870: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 26 Dec. 1795 and baptised on 7 Feb. 1796 at St. George’s, Doncaster, Yorkshire, the eldest child of John Otley, joiner, and his wife Sarah Stones. The family moved to Sheffield when he was a boy. His father became a silver stamper and apprenticed him to a silversmith. He would later go into business with his brother Thomas as a Britannia metal manufacturer, but the firm went bankrupt in 1838, forcing him to sell his library of a thousand volumes. As a young man he worked as a teacher at Redhill Wesleyan Sunday Schools and intended to become a minister but became increasingly sceptical and abandoned the plan. Thereafter he moved in radical circles and embraced free-thinking, chartism and socialism. He ridiculed Wesleyan methodism in Wesleyan Parsons and even more intemperately in A Black Draught for the Cantwells (1845?). He published pamphlets attacking the “priesthood,” linking it to political tyranny. William the Norman, or The Tyrant Displayed. A Tragedy(1848) attacked monarchy and its priestly supporters. A final work, Monsieur Guizot; or, Democracy, Oligarchy, and Monarchy (1849) has not been located. In 1850 he contributed a series of “Reminiscences of Ebenezer” Elliott (q.v.) to Cooper’s Journal. In 1842 he was arrested with 58 others and charged with sedition, conspiracy, tumult and riot, in what became known as the “monster indictment”. He was convicted on the lesser charge of conspiracy at Lancaster Castle but the sentence was adjourned and never carried out. He returned to Sheffield and continued to be active politically. He was a tobacconist and newsagent in later years but always struggled financially. By 1851 he was recorded as a widower (his wife is unknown) and bookseller at 112 Carver Street. He also ran a Circulating Library but after the Free Library opened in 1856, it failed. He went bankrupt in 1857 and thereafter was supported by family and friends. In 1858 he was described as “the schoolmaster to the infidels of Sheffield.” He died on 24 Mar. 1870 and was buried at Burngreave Cemetery. (Stephen Roberts, DLB 15: 199-201; ancestry.co.uk 23 Apr. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 23 Apr. 2023; Sheffield Independent 15 May 1858; Sheffield Daily Telegraph 29 Mar., 4 Apr. 1870; chartistancestors.co.uk; GRO death cert.) AA
Other Names:
- R. Otley