Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809
By Jill Scholey
Continued 12th Jan 2012
In 1757,Paine returned to London, Solvent and keen to establish himself.
He was able to live for sometime on his privateer earnings, and set about frequenting bookshops, science, astronomy and philosophy lectures and befriending some of the influential men of the day.
Paine’s radical political views (such as the freedom of the individual to organise against injustice) quickly developed.
However, Paine was soon forced to work again as a staymaker, this time in Dover and Sandwich, Kent.
He also preached as a Methodist minister to the poor, in plain language that they could understand.
Paine met and married Mary Lambert in 1759. It was a happy but short lived marriage.
Whilst Mary was pregnant, the couple moved to Margate.
Tragically, mother and baby died in childbirth.
This must have been devastating for Paine, but he never referred to it in his writings.
Paine’s staymaking business was also failing, so widowed and penniless he returned again to Thetford.
Mary’s father had been an excise man, a hard and dangerous calling, and this may have influenced Paine to change his career.
Smuggling was a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Excise men would lie in wait for the lawbreakers on lonely, windswept coasts.
Fierce fights would ensue, often resulting in deaths on either side.
To be continued.....
