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TOM POOLEY'S LATER WRITINGS

  “Man and Woman must reform themselves and not Trust to Christian Priestcraft”  (2135) I felt it was an auspicious day when I discovered that the later writings of Tom Pooley had survived and had been safely archived.  I would not have known of them if I had not consulted a scholarly work by Professor Joss Marsh of the University of Kent.  In her excellent book, Word Crimes:  Blasphemy, Culture and Literature in Nineteenth Century England , she covered the Pooley Case in detail and there drew my attention to Pooley’s writings, I must admit I envied the incisive way in which she covered Tom’s story in a few pages.  As I have already written, I am not a scholar but I know one when I see one and although I am anxious not to misrepresent the history of Tom Pooley this is not intended to be a scholarly work so much as the telling of a curious tale.  When George Holyoake died in 1906, The Co-operative Union, of which he had been leader, promoter and histori...
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TOM POOLEY'S PARSONS.

The decision to have recourse to law taken by the Cornish parsons so as to hunt down and deal with the blasphemer in their midst in the expectation that he would pay for his impiety with hard labour in a Victorian gaol would seem unduly rigorous to today’s mild clergymen even if blasphemy were still a criminal offence.   I have found no indication that any of these parsons were in any sense otherwise vicious, but they hardly seem to have shown that love and charity, that moderation the Anglican Church preaches and has long preached.  Hypocrisy is a widespread human practice and not one limited to clergymen.  Most of us perhaps do not altogether practice what we preach although, as it is clergymen who tend to do more preaching than most, they are more likely to be thought to qualify as dyed in the wool hypocrites.  The parsons of the Church of England in Queen Victoria’s day were given to preaching long sermons from the pulpit and it was an ego-booster and a career-mo...
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TOM POOLEY, TRIUMPHANT.

  “Judge Coldridge And His Son with the Clergey magastrates And jurey men of Cornwall Have Learnt A Wise Lesson.  They know what they Houte to Have known Before they Had Eny Thing to Doe with T. Pooley. They know now that Thir is A one Allmighty Being that Brought All Things Into Being And judge Coldridge would Have Saved ‘is Chariter from Shame and Disgrace if He Had Sed:  ‘Pooley, Doe you Believe that thir is a one Allmighty Being that Brought All Things Into Being?’”     T. Pooley. Tom was soon congratulating himself on his escape from the prison and the asylum. Once safe home in his house in Moon’s Court, he gloated like the Toad at Toad Hall.  “ The battle is fought and the victory is won.  The Cornish Infidel is left go free from Christian traps and Christian snares.”   In his fevered imagination the Church in Cornwall was reeling from the blows that he had struck. “ The Christian Clergy have had their misery!  They have caught a strang...
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