John Robertson - Charles Bradlaugh - a Record of His Life and Work, Volume 2 (of 2)

But Mr Charles Capper would not retract, and would not apologise, so Mr Bradlaugh, who felt all the more incensed about this, because of the dragging in of Mr Gilpin's name as authority for the slander, brought an action against him. Before it could be brought into Court, however, Mr Capper died.

In the December of the same year, during the hearing of the proceedings in the Razor libel case, the counsel for the defendant Brooks asked Mr Bradlaugh, in cross-examination, "Did you not once at a public lecture take out your watch and defy the Deity, if he had an existence, to strike you dead in a certain number of minutes?" "Never. Such a suggestion is utterly unjustifiable," was my father's indignant answer.

In the winter of 1869, the Rev. P. R. Jones, M.A., of Trinity Church, Huddersfield, added the weight of his authority to the slander. The municipal elections were about to take place, and the cry of "infidel" had been raised against one of the candidates for the West Ward. Hence, on the Sunday immediately before the election, Mr Jones preached a sermon against "infidels" and "infidelity," and, as an "apt illustration of his subject," he charged Mr Bradlaugh with the watch episode. When this came to the ears of the Huddersfield Secular Society, they lost no time in writing to ask Mr Jones whether he had indeed made such a statement concerning Mr Bradlaugh. This, said the Huddersfield Examiner , the reverend gentleman had not "the manliness to admit … nor even the courtesy to acknowledge the receipt of the secretary's letter." The Committee of the local Secular Society waited for seven days, and then appointed a deputation to wait upon the Rev. Mr Jones. The editor of the Examiner observed that the explanation then given by that gentleman was "not very satisfactory, and I do not wonder he was so tardy about making it. He had heard the absurd story some years ago, but the person who told it to him had left Huddersfield; and on such slender authority as this he brought a charge of using senseless and blasphemous words against Mr Bradlaugh." The Rev. P. R. Jones, M.A., in the course of his duties must have preached obedience to the ninth commandment, but he evidently did not always enforce his teachings by a personal example.

Just about the same time another clergyman, the Rev. Dr Harrison of St James's Church, Latchford, in a sermon preached upon that favourite but not very polite text, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God," was reported 31 31 Crewe Guardian. to have told the story, with a slight variation, of some unnamed person.

"What did they think of a man at Manchester," he asked, "standing up at a public assembly and opening the Bible in the presence of the people, and saying if the Bible was true he hoped God would strike him dead? That was in the newspapers not long ago. A creature, a worm, a being dependent upon the Almighty, raising his puny arm against the Deity, asking God to strike him dead if the Bible were true. It would not have been a wonder if God had struck him dead; the wonder was that God should be so merciful as to let him live."

When the Rev. Dr Harrison was challenged as to the name of the man, the time, and place of the occurrence, and the names of the newspapers which reported it, he could of course give no satisfactory authority for his statements.

In the summer of 1870 the Christian , in a tirade against infidelity, stated that "the well-known Atheist Bradlaugh, at a public meeting in London, is reported to have taken out his watch, with these words, 'If there be a God in heaven, I give Him five minutes to strike me dead.'" Upon this being brought under his notice, my father said that he was "really weary with contradicting this monstrous lie."

The Liverpool Porcupine in the same year gave a startling variation on the ordinary version. A certain unnamed person – by implication, Mr Bradlaugh – "called on the Almighty, if he had any existence, to strike dead some relative , and thus prove his power." The Porcupine forgot that it is the Christian creed which teaches the doctrine of the scapegoat, and even the sacrifice of a relative. It forms no part whatever of Atheistic teachings.

The Rev. R. S. Cathcart, agent to the Religious Tract Society, in addressing a meeting in the Corn Exchange, Gloucester, in the autumn of 1871, lamented the spread of infidelity in the north of England, where, he said, it was encouraged by a "blatant orator, Bradlaugh, from London." He added that there was even "one poor benighted woman" who "had actually produced her watch and challenged God, if, she said, there be one, to appear before them on the platform at a given time." Mr Cathcart, on being asked as to the when, and where, and the woman, failed to make reply.

The next carrier of the slander was an important one. The Financial Reformer for the December of the same year (1871) described Mr Bradlaugh as "the superenlightened gentleman who pulled out his watch at an open-air meeting and challenged Almighty God to strike him dead within five minutes, if God there were." My father was becoming somewhat accustomed to having this accusation made by persons who wished to make out a case against the "infidel," but to find it in the Financial Reformer was an unexpected blow. He wrote a courteous letter to the editor, but the editor made no reply; he wrote to Mr Robertson Gladstone, the president of the council publishing the paper, but Mr Robertson Gladstone left the letter without notice. At length, thoroughly angry, he wrote to the printers, threatening legal proceedings. A proof of an "apology" already in type was sent him, but it was not such as he felt he could accept, and he wrote to the printer to that effect. The apology was then somewhat amended, and with the copy of the Financial Reformer containing it the editor sent a letter to Mr Bradlaugh, conveying a frank and full expression of his regret. Upon receiving this my father forgave not only the offence, but the tardiness of the acknowledgment, and, moreover, expressed his sense of indebtedness to the editor for his apology.

The Stourbridge Observer of about the same date also repeated the watch story of "Bradlaugh," and, with incredible coarseness, added that "he has been known on another occasion to stop a lame man in the streets, and tell him that he would spit upon such a God as his that would allow him to remain in that deplorable condition." Mr Bradlaugh, at the request of his Stourbridge friends, specifically contradicted both these stories; but, he added, it was too much to expect him to continually contradict every scandalous calumny to which the press gave ready circulation against him.

One of the next places in which the story appeared was Dudley, where, in the winter of 1873, during my father's absence in America, it was related by the Rev. B. M. Kitson, who apparently introduced it into a speech for the benefit of the Additional Curates' Aid Society. He located the episode at the Hall of Science in Old Street, City Road. As soon as Mr Bradlaugh could obtain the reverend gentleman's address after his return to England, he wrote requesting Mr Kitson to retract, or to furnish him with the name of his solicitor. Mr Kitson retracted the statement, and expressed his regret for having made it.

In the spring of 1874, the Rev. Mr Herring related the tale to some school children at a school near Goswell Road, and in the following August the Rev. Edgar N. Thwaites, of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, carried it to Salisbury.

A month later, the Weekly News , in referring to the Northampton election, remarked that Northampton was specially prominent, "because Mr Bradlaugh, the Radical orator who challenged the Almighty to strike him dead, has appeared in person." Anything is fair in war or elections, some people seem to think.