William Benbow was a non-conformist preacher and a leader of the Great Reform Movement in Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

, England.

Benbow worked with William Cobbett

William Cobbett

William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...

 on the radical newspaper The Political Register

Political Register

The Political Register was a weekly newspaper founded by William Cobbett in 1802 and ceased publication in 1835, the year of his death.Originally propounding Tory views, and costing a shilling, Cobbett changed his editorial line to embrace radicalism, such as advocating widening the suffrage...

. Faced with being imprisoned for sedition he fled to the United States where he continued to work on the newspaper. Benbow was eventually tried for seditious libel

Seditious libel

Seditious libel was a criminal offence under English common law. Sedition is the offence of speaking seditious words with seditious intent: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel...

 and imprisoned in Coldbath Fields Prison

Coldbath Fields Prison

Coldbath Fields Prison was a prison in the Mount Pleasant area of Clerkenwell, London. Founded during the reign of James I , the prison was completely rebuilt in 1794 and extended in 1850. It was used to house prisoners on short sentences of up to two years...

 in London. In 1831 he joined the National Union of the Working Classes. He was again tried for sedition in 1840, and died in prison in 1841.