The New Black List

This broadside was issued by the publisher, reformer and chartist John Cleave. In 1834 Cleave founded Cleave’s Weekly Police Gazette As well as reporting on sensational crimes the gazette also campaigned for political reform. Cleave was actively involved in radical politics and fought the “tax on knowledge” by refusing to pay stamp duty on his paper which he sold cheaply at 1d, unstamped. He told one meeting that: 'When we have a free press, who will dare oppress us.'
The gazette was an instant success, and provided a platform for Cleave’s radical views on political reform, the Poor Law and factory reform. By 1836 the paper was selling 40,000 copies a week.
Similarly to other radical printers Cleave was prosecuted and imprisoned for stamp tax avoidance. In 1836 Cleave became a founder member of the London branch of the Working men’s Association and merged the Police Gazette with fellow founder member Henry Hetherington’s London Dispatch. In 1837 Cleave began to publish Cleave's London Satirist and Gazette of Variety. Cleave's premises at Shoe Lane where this broadside was published in 1838, included a bookstore and coffee shop.
The following year Cleave become a London delegate to the first Chartist Convention in February 1839. When the National Charter Association split over tactics, Cleave supported William Lovett and the Moral Force Chartists who believed peaceful methods of persuasion such as the holding of public meetings, the publication of newspapers and pamphlets and the presentation of Parliamentary petitions would finally convince those in power to change the parliamentary system. John Cleave continued to work for universal suffrage and the complete removal of the stamp duty on newspapers until his death in 1847.