PLACE, FRANCIS radical reformer, was born on Nov. 3, 1771, and later apprenticed to a leather-breeches maker. He suffered great hardships owing to the decline of this trade, and in 1793 organized an unsuccessful strike of London breeches-makers. He acted as secretary to other trade clubs and from 1794-97 was prominent in the London Corresponding Society. He used his frequent enforced leisure for self-education, especially in political economy, and became a great admirer of Bentham. In 1799 he and a partner opened a tailoring shop in Charing Cross road, and the next year he went into business alone, rapidly becoming so successful that in one year he made £3,000. He was already known as a Radical politician when in 1814 he took up seriously a campaign to secure the repeal of the Combination Acts forbidding trade unions. For some years he met with little success, but in 1824, acting through Joseph Hume, M.P , he secured a parliamentary committee "on artisans and machinery" which reported in favour of the abolition of the acts. Bills to this effect were carried, amid general indifference; the premier, indeed, afterwards assured the House of Commons that he had no idea of the contents of the bills when he recom mended them. The immediate effect of the repeal was a sudden increase in the number and activity of trade unions, and next year the Government attempted to restore the prohibition. The
public excitement and the interest of the working-men were such that after a parliamentary struggle of an unusual stiffness, Place secured the passing of an act which scarcely altered the position.
His skilled political organization made the Westminster elec tions from 1807-32 events of national importance in the struggle for parliamentary reform. In 1831 and 1832 he greatly assisted behind the scenes in the preparations for military revolt should the Lords remain obstinate. Together with Joseph Parkes of Birmingham he framed the placard "TO STOP THE DUKE, GO FOR GOLD" which produced the run on the banks that drove Wellington from office and carried the Reform bill without violence. He also disorganized the "Rotundanist" reformers, who wished the extension of the franchise to the working class, by the organization of a "tame" working class union at the height of the struggle. He died at the age of 83, having been for many years out of politics.
See Graham Wallas, Francis Place (1918). Place's mss. and guard books, an incomparable source of political information from 1790 to 185o, are in the British Museum. (R. W. P.)