L’Illustration

Author/publication:  L’Illustration
Date: 20 April 1848
Our Archive Ref: KCP0004/NEW/1848

There was international interest in the Chartist monster meeting on Kennington Common. Less than a fortnight after the event, the French newspaper L’Illustration (20 April 1848) was able to reproduce pictures of the event that had first appeared in the London-based Illustrated London News. The paper’s somewhat dismissive account of “la revolution anglaise”, a somewhat tame affair by the standards of Paris and many other European cities that spring, was accompanied by a portrait of the Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor and a picture of the meeting at Kennington, adapted from photographs of the scene.

Collection of Mark Crail. Image and text submitted by Mark Crail, editor, writer, and researcher on Chartism and 19th Century history. Author of Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors and creator of the Chartist Ancestors website.

Download pdf