George Jacob Holyoake (1817–1906)

Freethinker, newspaper editor, and author. Worked for thirteen years at a Birmingham foundry, becoming a skilled tinsmith. Employed as an Owenite lecturer at Worcester, 1840, at Sheffield, 1841. From 1846 to 1861, and intermittently thereafter, edited the weekly paper the Reasoner, around which he developed the secularist movement. Active in several liberal political endeavours; with other former Owenites and Christian socialists, established the co-operative movement. In the 1860s, increasingly turned to journalism.