Background
Thomas Spence was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne on the 21st of June 1750, the son of a Scottish netmaker and shoemaker.
Thomas Spence was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne on the 21st of June 1750, the son of a Scottish netmaker and shoemaker.
A dispute in connexion with common land rights at Newcastle impelled Spence to the study of the land question. At 25 he presented to the Newcastle Philosophical Society his paper The Real Rights of Man, advocating that land be owned by democratically organized local corporations that would rent it out at moderate rates and distribute the net proceeds to the inhabitants. There would be no need for taxes. Spence maintained that men in their natural state held land in common and viewed the establishment of property as usurpation. He pressed his views in pamphlets and poems throughout the rest of his life. In 1784 he spent six months in Newgate gaol for the publication of a pamphlet distasteful to the authorities, and in 1801 he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for seditious libel in connexion with his pamphlet entitled The Restorer of Society to its Natural State.
In 1792 he established himself in London, where he was active in a number of contemporary reform movements. After his death his followers organized the Society of Spencean Philanthropists in 1816.