Welshhist0rian

* Remembering the lives of those who died during the Newport Rising, but also remembering Kenneth Budd who created the original Newport Rising Mosaic located in what was John Frost Square * Today we remember the 184th anniversary of the Newport Rising, some of the photos shown here are from when I visited the Newport Rising exhibition at the Newport Museum and Art Gallery recently.      On the 4th of November 1839, the Newport Rising was a large-scale armed rising in Wales to free prisoners held at the Westgate Hotel (Newport). The Chartists involved were led by John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones, and the men who followed came from surrounding valleys areas. Frost was a former mayor of Newport, Williams was a publican from Blaina, and Jones was a watchmaker from Pontypool and their target, was the Westgate.                                      ...

  The Chartists were a group of working-class men who wanted democratic change. The National Archive definition states that ‘Chartism was a working-class movement which emerged in 1836 in London’. It saw expansion during 1838 and 1848 with activity in Wales also and their aim was to gain political rights for those of similar backgrounds, they had meetings and published pamphlets. (read more here ) (Image taken from Spartacus Educational  though it is titled ' The Chartist Petition (1843)'  I believe the date is wrong as a petition was presented in 1842 and I have found no reference to one in 1843) So to start off this post, there are a few definitions to make things clearer. Charter - a written statement of the rights of a specified group of people. Rotten/Pocket Borough - a parliamentary borough or constituency before the Great Reform Act of 1832, which had a small electorate and could be used by a patron to gain unrepresentative influence within the unreformed ...