John Towill Rutt was an English political activist, social reformer and nonconformist man of letters.
Background
Born in London on 4 April 1760, was only son of George Rutt, at first a druggist in Friday Street, Cheapside, and afterwards a wholesale merchant in drugs in Upper Thames Street, who married Elizabeth Towill. Rutt went into his father"s business, and continued for most of his life.
Career
In early boyhood he was placed for some time under the care of Joshua Toulmin at Taunton. On 1 July 1771 he was admitted at Saint Paul"s School, London, under Doctor Richard Roberts. Rutt joined in 1780 the Society for Constitutional Information.
Concern for the reformers Thomas Muir, Thomas Fyshe Palmer and William Skirving led him to visit them as convicts on board the hulks, when awaiting transportation, and he sent papers and pamphlets to them in New South Wales.
He was a vigorous public speaker. He supported Priestley after the riots in Birmingham, and he was one of Wakefield"s bail, smoothing matters after his incarceration in Dorchester gaol.
On his partial withdrawal from business about 1800 Rutt lived for some years at Whitegate House, near Witham in Essex, afterwards at Clapton and Bromley-by-Bow, and finally settled at Bexley. He died at Bexley on 3 March 1841.
They had thirteen children, seven of whom, with his widow, survived him.
Rachel, the eldest daughter, married Thomas Noon Talfourd.
Membership
At the time of the French Revolution he became an original and active member of the Society of the Friends of the People. His religious convictions gradually became Unitarian, and by 1796 he was a leading member of the Gravel Pit congregation at Hackney, of which Thomas Belsham was the pastor. As a member of the Clothworkers" he worked in the administration of the company"s charities, and he laid the first stone of the Domestic Society"s school and chapel in Spicer Street, Spitalfields.