CARLILE, RICHARD (179o-1843), English reformer and freethinker, was born on Dec. 8, 179o, at Ashburton, Devonshire, the son of a shoemaker. He was educated in the village school and, after apprenticeship to a tinman, obtained occupation, in 1813, in London as a journeyman tinman. Influenced by Paine's Rights of Man, he became an uncompromising radical, and in 18i7 started pushing the sale of the Black Dwarf, a new weekly paper, edited by Thomas Woofer, all over London, and in his zeal to secure the dissemination of its doctrines frequently walked 30m. a day. In the same year he also printed and sold 25,000 copies of Southey's W at Tyler, reprinted the suppressed Parodies of Hone, and wrote himself, in imitation of them, the Political Litany. This work cost him 18 weeks' imprisonment. In 1818 he published Paine's works, for which and for other publications of a like character he was fined £15oo, and sentenced to three years' imprisonment in Dorchester gaol. Here he published the first 12 volumes of his periodical the Republican (1820, etc.). The publication was continued by his wife, who was accordingly sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 1821. A public sub scription, headed by the duke of Wellington, was now raised to prosecute Carlile's assistants. At the same time Carlile's furniture and stock-in-trade in London were seized, three years were added to his imprisonment in lieu of payment of his fine, his sister was fined £Soo and imprisoned for a year for publishing an address by him, and nine of his shopmen received terms of imprisonment varying from six months to three years. In 1825 the government decided to discontinue the prosecutions. After his release in that year Carlile edited the Gorgon, a weekly paper, and conducted free discussions in the London Rotunda. For refusing to give sureties for good behaviour after a prosecution arising out of a refusal to pay church rates, he was again imprisoned for three years, and a similar resistance cost him ten weeks' more im prisonment in 1834-35• He died on Feb. 1o, 1843, after having spent in all nine years and four months in prison.
See G. J. Ho1yoake, The Life and Character of Richard Carlile (1870) ; T. C. Campbell, The Battle of the Press, as told in the life of R. Carlile (1899) ; G. A. Aldred, Richard Carlile, Agitator (1923) .