Robert Wedderburn (radical) - Religious Conversion and Activity

Religious Conversion and Activity

In 1786, Wedderburn stopped to listen to a Wesleyan preacher he heard in Seven Dials. Influenced by a mixture of Arminian, millenarian, Calvinist, and Unitarian ideas, he converted to be a Methodist, and soon published a small theological tract called Truth Self Supported: or, a Refutation of Certain Doctrinal Errors Generally Adopted in the Christian Church. Although this work contained no explicit mention of slavery, it does suggest Wedderburn's future path in subversive and radical political action.

Politically influenced by Thomas Spence, Wedderburn published an anti-slavery book entitled The Horrors of Slavery in 1824, printed by William Dugdale and possibly coauthored by George Cannon.

To promote his religious message, he opened his own Unitarian chapel in Hopkins Street in Soho in London. After he began to question Christian tenets he was later associated with Deism. He also campaigned for freedom of speech.

Wedderburn served several prison terms. According to Linebaugh (2000) it is recorded that Wedderburn "did time in Cold Bath Fields, Dorchester, and Giltspur Street Compter prisons for theft, blasphemy, and keeping a bawdy house." While imprisoned, Wedderburn wrote a letter to Francis Place.

In 1831, at the age of 68, he was arrested and sent to Giltspur Street Prison and sentenced to two years in jail, having been convicted of keeping a brothel. On his release he appears to have gone to New York, where a newspaper records his involvement in a fraud case and refers to him as a ‘a tailor and breeches maker, field preacher, anti-bank deposite politician, romance writer, circulating librarian, and ambulating dealer in drugs, deism, and demoralization in general’. He returned to London shortly after.His last mention in the historical record was in March 1834 when a Home Office informer listed him as present among the congregation at the Theobalds Road Institute.