Hammersmith is a district in west London that originated as a parish in the county of Middlesex. It is home to Hammersmith Bridge, a suspension bridge over the river Thames, opened in 1827. Famous residents of the area have included the poet John Milton and the designer William Morris.
In Mar 1875, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company was dissolved and re-established as Morris and Company. Image: Photograph of William Morris, aged 53. First published 1899 (photo by Frederick Hollyer c. 1887). From Google Books edition of J. W. Mackail The Life of William Morris in two volumes, London, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co., 1899. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.
On 21 September 1885, William Morris was arrested. Morris was arrested for shouting “shame!” at the sentencing of Lewis Lyons, a tailor, to two months hard labor for allegedly resisting arrest at a public protest meeting in support of free speech. Upwards of 30,000 people attended the next Sunday morning socialist open air speech at Dod Street, a site for open-air meetings which the police had tried to shut down. Image: Photograph of William Morris, aged 53. First published 1899 (photo by Frederick Hollyer c. 1887). From Google Books edition of J. W. Mackail The Life of William Morris in two volumes, London, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co., 1899.
In June 1889, the “Actionist” Anarchist faction assumed control of the Socialist League at its Fifth Annual Conference. In June 1890, William Morris was removed as Commonweal editor in favor of anarchist David Nicholls; Morris' Hammersmith Branch resigned from the main body on 21 November 1890 in protest against incendiary statements issued in Commonweal and elsewhere. In response to long prison sentences meted out in 1892 to four anarchists accused of preparing a bomb, Nicholls published an editorial advocating violence. (No evidence of bombs or the intent to use them was ever found, and it was later revealed that the charges had been brought by an agent provocateur.) Nicholls was arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, and after his release in 1894 Commonweal was discontinued. Image: Cover of the Manifesto of the Socialist League, 1885. Published prior to 1923, public domain. Digital image from the Tim Davenport collection, no copyright claimed.
On May 8, 1891, the first Kelmscott Press book is published, William Morris’s The Story of the Glittering Plain. Image: Kelmscott Press logotype. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.