DEATH OF GEORGE ODGER.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 888, 30 April 1877, Page 3

DEATH OF GEORGE ODGER.

Mr George Odger died at his house in High street, Bloomsbury, on March 4th, after a lingering and painful illness. He was born in 1820, in a Tillage between Plymouth and Tavistock. His education was limited to the rustic school of his native place, and consisted of the simplest rudiments of elementary knowledge. He began work at an early age, and afterwards became apprenticed to a shoemaker. He commenced an early course of study and self-culture, and made himself soon known in his native county as an advanced thinker, public reader, and reciter of dramatic, poetic, and general literature. -At that time it was usual among workmen of his class on completing their apprenticeship to travel extensively through England to study the different kinds of work. Mr Odger, having visited numerous places, finally settled down in London, and became a member of the Society of Oordwainers. When shoemakers opposed the introduction of machinery about the year 1848-51, he showed the folly of such opposition and contributed considerably to the modification of the workmen's views. In 1859 he became more conspicuous as a public and political man in connection with the lock out in the building trades, at the delegate meetings of which he represented his own society, and became well known to and associated with the prominent working men of London. About 1863 he was appointed secretary of the London Trades Council, which had been formed two years previously, and in connection with which he visited many towns in England as the representative of that association during their agitation with regard to wages and hours of work. But it was as a member of the Reform League that he became so widely known. In 1865, when a Commission was appointed to inquire into the working of the Master and Servants' Act, Mr Odger gave assistance to the Select Committee appointed for the purpose of amending the law with regard to contracts of hiving and of service, and was examined at great length before that committee. In 1868, he stood as a candidate for the newly-constituted borough of Chelsea, but. on agreeing to arbitration as to which of the Liberal candidates would be most likely to carry the suffrages of the electors, he on a decision, consented to withdraw. In 1869 he stood for the Borough of Stafford, where it was decided to take*a preliminary ballot, of the Liberal voters; the residt was that he, among others, had to retire. In 1870 he contested the Borough of Southwark, and polled 4382 votes. He was conspicuous during the Civil War in America by his constant and consistent advocacy of the North against what he termed as " the slaveholding South."