Life
?1775-1833 [err. 1785]; b. Rosscarbery; established an ill-fated agrarian
co-operative on Owenite principles in Glandore; anticipated Karl Marx,
whom Sidney and Beatrice Webb called ‘Thompson’s Disciple’,
and received a footnote in Das Kapital; wrote An Inquiry into
the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness
(1824, 1850), with German trans. (Berlin 1903-04), originating as a lecture
before q Cork literary society on ‘the blessings of the inequality
of wealth’; also, Practical Considerations for the speedy and
Economic Establishment of Communities on the Principle of Co-Operation
(1825); with Anne Wheeler the daughter of a Church of Ireland bishop,
by then separated from her husband (Francis Massey-Wheeler), whom he met
in London through Robert Owen for whose journal she wrote as ‘Vlasta’,
Thompson issued An Appeal of one Half of the Human Race, Women, against
[...] Political and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery (1825); an
atheist & vegetarian, he left his wealth to the occupants of his estate,
but his will was overturned in court in an action that wore on for twenty-five
years; d. 28 March; extensively considered in James Connolly, in Labour
in Irish History (1910). DIW DIH FDA OCIL
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Works
Dolores Dooley, ed. and intro., Appeal of one Half of the Human Race,
Women, against the Pretentions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain them
in Political and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery ([1825]; Cork
UP ?1995), pbk. 172pp.
Criticism
P.
Lynch, ‘William Thompson and Socialist Tradition,’ in Leaders
and Workers, ed. J. W. Boyle (Cork: Mercier 1966), pp.11-16.
Richard Pankhurst, William Thompson: British Pioneer Socialist, Feminist and Co-operator (1954; rep. Pluto Press 1991).
Dolores Dooley, Equality in Community: Sexual Equality in the Writings of William Thompson and Anna Doyle Wheeler (Cork UP 1996), 472pp.
Aodh de Blacam, in In What Sinn
Fein Stands For (1921).
Michael Kenny reviewing Richard Pankhurst, William Thompson 1775-1833: Pioneer Socialist (1954; rep. London: Pluto Press [1991], in Books Ireland, March 1992.
Sheila Rowbotham, reviewing of Dolores Dooley, Equality in Community: Sexual Equality in the Writings of William Thomson and Anna Doyle Wheeler (Cork UP 1996).
Timothy P. Foley, in Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 1996).
Desmond Fennell, ‘Irish Socialist Thought,’ in The Irish Mind, ed. Richard Kearney, 1985.
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Notes
R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland (London: Allen Lane 1988), p.307,
bio-note: 1775-1833; ‘the proto-socialist philosopher was prominent
in the Liberal Clubs of the post-1826 period’;; b. Co. Cork, wealthy
landowner and critical student of Bentham, Godwin, and Owen; An Inquiry
into [...] the Distribution of Wealth (1824), and an Appeal
for equality of sexes (1825); quoted by Marx, whom the Webb’s called
‘Thompson’s disciple’; atheist and vegetarian.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2; remarks that Appeal was influenced by Mrs. Wheeler’s legal difficulties with her husband; under pseud. ‘Vlasta’ she contributed to Owen’s Crisis. Biog., Richard Pankhurst, William Thompson: Britain’s Pioneer Socialist, Feminist and Co-Operator (London 1954). Does not note Virago rep. of Appeal, selected here: ‘Political rights are necessary to women as a check on the almost inveterate habits of exclusion of men [...] if none but men are to be jurors [...] the secrecy of domestic wrongs [...] system of exclusive political rights [...] think ye indeed that it is of the use of what are called your personal charms alone that man is jealous [...] there is not a quality of mind which his animal propensities do not grudge you [...] those only excepted [...] which render you, as objects of sense, more stimulating to his purely selfish desires. [...] a system of domineering hypocrisy [...] every moral and intellectual quality of which you might be possessed [is] thus systematically sacrificed at the shrine of man’s all-devouring jealousy [...] Many as are the years during which the Catholics of Ireland have been eligible to some few corporation and other offices, but very few of them have been so elected, because the keys of admission were absurdly or perfidiously left in the hands of the exclusionists [...] so must it in some measure be with the removal of the partial legislation and partial morals affecting women [...] persevere and you must be free ..(pp. 1125-29). [Note that it is actually addressed to Women.]
Hyland Books (Cat. 214) lists Thompson, Appeal of One Half [of] the Human Race - Women - [... &c.], facsimile rep., of 1825 edn. [sic] (Cork: [Mercier] 1975; Virago, 1983); new pref. Joe Lee. [n.d].
Kith & Kin: There is a biographical notice on [presumably another] William Thompson
in Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies (1821), vol.
II, p.592.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)