Samuel Bennett (b 1815) was a Provost of Dumbarton.
Born in Ardrossan, Bennett moved to Glasgow in the late 1830s intending to study for a career in the church. He undertook missionary work in the city centre’s worst slums and helped set up the New Vennel school – perhaps the first of Scotland’s “ragged” schools. Abandoning his ambitions to become a churchman, however, Bennett became a political activist in the Chartist movement. In 1842 he led 20,000 unemployed in a protest march from Glasgow Green to the west end of the city and in 1848 he organised a large Chartist demonstration on the Green.
In 1851 Bennett moved to Dumbarton where he established the Dumbarton Herald and later its sister-newspaper, the Lennox Herald. He became Provost of Dumbarton in 1870.
Reference: Mitchell Library, 920.04BAI
Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning
Keywords:
Chartists, demonstrations, Dumbarton Herald, Glasgow Green, Lennox Herald, missionaries, New Vennel school, newspaper proprietors, Provosts, ragged schools
You have 27 images in your photo album.
