Thomas Spence (1750-1814)

The radical Thomas Spence had a “plan” which if followed, he believed could reform the nation. This was based on just two improvements: land ownership and language use. Spence thought that for the lower sorts the greatest barrier to the spread of knowledge (and by extension power) was English spelling. As this was not phonetic Northumbrians like him had great difficulty in learning to read. He therefore invented modified alphabets and used them in his own books, famously adapting the period’s most published novel Robinson Crusoe into Northumbrian dialect.

Spence also communicated directly with the unlettered in the street by handing out iconic medallions about political equality and common land ownership. His uncompromising attacks on eighteenth-century landlords provide a timely lesson which we would do well to consider in this period of rentier capitalism.

Spence was an associate of Thomas Bewick and the preacher and writer James Murray.