Newsletter 17 .pub - The Binns Family

George Binns, Chartist
George Binns(I204) was born on 6 th December
1815 , the sixth child and third son of George
and Margaret Binns. After schooling at Ackworth
in Yorkshire he returned to Sunderland.
He had radical political views and, along with
James Williams, established a Mechanics Institute
that included a newspaper library for the
general public to use.
Their next venture was to set up as booksellers,
stationers, and newsagents in Sunderland
where their newly-formed Sunderland Democratic
Association met. This association became
one of the many Chartist movements in the
North of England.
In 1839 both men were arrested and in 1840
found guilty of attending an illegal meeting and
sentenced to six months in Durham. Prison. After
their release in January 1841, fellow Chartists
met them at the prison gates and marched
with them back to Sunderland.
A Chartists Meeting in London in 1848
Canadian Cousins
Judith Baxter wrote to tell us that she was looking for the family
of David Binns who lived in Keighley in 1881 and emigrated to
Toronto, Canada.
His son Cyril Waddington Binns (I351) married Judith’s
great aunt May Slater in Toronto in 1914. They had a
son Wilfred and if he is still alive Judith would dearly
like to get in touch with him, or his family.
This family has been connected to a John Binns
(I3558) born about 1820, in Kildwick.
Judith very kindly sent a variety of interesting snippings
from Canadian newspapers amongst which was an
account of the death on Prince Edward Island of Benjamin
Binns, in August 1945. Benjamin was 34, and a
former maritime amateur middleweight boxing champion.
His jugular vein had been severed and his brother
in law, Leo Herbert Cheverie, was accused of murder.
In February a grand jury found that Cheverie had no
case to answer and assumed the death was suicide.
Sadly, deaths in unusual circumstances are often reported
in the papers. Another example, from April
1950, describes how the body of 76 year-old Alfred
Binns was recovered from the government dock at
Waubashene. There were no witnesses to the drowning
but he had been seen sitting on the dock a short
time before his body was found
Another former boxer, Roland Binns, died in November
1985, after his foot developed gangrene and had
to be amputated. Roland was 83 years old and had
been living in a nursing home so his death caused
quite a rumpus. His obituary said that he was born in
Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1902 and arrived in Toronto with
his father when he was seven. He was British Empire
Welterweight Champion in 1930, and retired from boxing
in 1932, aged 30.
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