Following the abolition of blasphemy as a criminal offence in 2021, Dr Felicity Loughlin reflects on Scotland’s last prosecutions for this crime, and asks what they tell us about changing attitudes towards religion & free speech in the early Victorian period
In 1837, a 23-year-old publisher and bookseller named Henry Robinson set up shop in Glasgow’s Brunswick Place, just off the Trongate. His advertisements drew attention to the shop’s large supply of newspapers and its ‘rare and valuable works on science, literature and religion, not to be had at any other shop in Glasgow’. This rather oblique description alluded to Robinson’s striking collection of radical anti-Christian publications. His copious stock included numerous pamphlets and newspapers that rejected Christianity, lamented its moral and intellectual effects, criticised its ministers and denied the Bible’s authenticity as the word of God. Such views were highly unusual in 19th-century Scotland, which was an overwhelmingly Christian nation. Yet there was a small but significant market for radical bookshops such as Robinson’s.
The 1820s had seen the establishment of ‘freethinking’ societies in Edinburgh and Glasgow, where atheists, deists and sceptics held weekly Sunday meetings to debate theological and philosophical topics. These groups were popular with members of the middling and upper working class, attracting shop-keepers, artisans and apprentices, and at their peak they drew in audiences of 200-300. They were dominated by men, but a small number of women also participated. By the late 1830s, socialist Rational Societies in Scottish towns and cities also attracted unbelievers. Concerned Christians recognised that radical bookshops were important to Scotland’s infidel communities, facilitating the circulation of controversial theological and philosophical ideas.
By 1839, Robinson had relocated to Edinburgh, where he opened a bookshop and publishing house at 11 Greenside Street. Nestled between St James Square and Calton Hill, this bustling row of tenements was home to numerous artisans and shop-owners and for many years his business thrived. Yet his fortunes changed suddenly in June 1843 when he was arrested for selling blasphemous books. The catalyst was his publication of The Bible an Improper Book for Youth, written by an unknown author from Edinburgh under the pseudonym ‘Cosmopolite’. This controversial pamphlet, widely advertised thr
