I'm wondering whether anyone can enlighten me on my great grandfather's (Thomas Goodall) political gang life in Birminham in the early 1880s! I'm very lucky as my great uncle wrote many books and included the following about his father, Thomas Goodall.
" In his teens he was a member of a gang which acquired a considerable reputation for its skill in breaking up political meetings. The main venue was in the great Bingley Hall, Birmingham, in which such orators as Bright and Cobden held forth. The body of the hall was without seats; the hearers stood massed before the platform. One or other party would engage my father’s gang when the cause could best be served by a rumpus. Father, being slightly built and very lithe, would at a given signal be hoisted on to somebody’s shoulders; he would then leap across the heads of the crowd, jump on the platform and try to upset the chairman’s table. This was usually enough to set the ball rolling. It was with three members of this gang that on one boring Sunday night father stopped outside what was then called Wesley Chapel on Constitution Hill, Birmingham. Something was going on inside the Chapel and the boys decided to go in and create a disturbance. Shortly afterwards three of them slunk out and disappeared. Father remained and experienced a sound conversion in the authentic Methodist tradition. "
Many thanks!
Wendy
