11. Creation on the Cheap

How available were the cheap prints pouring off the radical presses? The options of urban operatives are analysed: they could join literary associations, or read pamphlets in London’s plethora of coffee houses, each with their distinct working-class clientele and well-stocked reading rooms. Seditious science lectures in blasphemy chapels could be as cheap, and Saull’s were often free. We see him now at the ex-Carlilean James Watson’s Philadelphian Chapel (the renamed Optimist Chapel). The radical context in 1831-1832 is discussed, as the ultras started to arm. This was reflected as the chapel hosted NUWC meetings, ran anti-theological nights, and interspersed them with Saull’s talks on “Creation” (that is, the natural emergence of species), which the police spy called ultra-materialistic. The narrative switches, as Watson in 1834 moved his “Cheap Publications Warehouse” to the barn-like Mechanics’ Hall of Science off the City Road, funded by wealthy freethought financier Julian Hibbert (whose head was to become one of the ghoulish exhibits in Saull’s museum). The hall was set up with Saull’s help, and was to be one of his main venues for life.