William Cuffay (1788 – July 1870) was a Chartist leader in early Victorian London. Chatham Cuffay William was mixed-race, the son of an English woman from Gillingham, Kent, Juliana Fox, and a man of African heritage, Chatham Cuffay, who was previously enslaved and originally from Saint Kitts (then a British colony). Chatham Cuffay and Juliana Fox were married in 1786, and they had five children, one of whom died in infancy. William, the oldest child, was baptised on 6 July 1788, and Juliana on 28 August 1791. Juliana later married a widower named George Chaney, who worked in the dockyard, and between them they had four children. Chatham Cuffay worked in the Chatham dockyard, and died in 1815. He was buried in Gillingham. His wife Juliana died in 1837, and was buried beside her husband. Early life Born in 1788 in Old Brompton, an area of the Medway Towns that is now in Gillingham, William Cuffay was apprenticed to a tailor, and later worked for Matthews and Acworth, on Chatham High Street. He was of short stature, being tall. Cuffay moved to London around 1819 and was married three times. In 1819, Cuffay married Ann Marshall, but she died in 1824. A year later, Cuffay married Ann Broomhead, but she died in childbirth in 1826. Their only daughter, Ann Juliana Cuffay, was baptised at St Mary Magdalene's Church, Gillingham, but she also died shortly afterwards. Tu Madre Cuffay rejected the Owenite trade unions of the London tailors. He went on strike with his fellow tailors in 1834, demanding a ten-hour workday from April to July and an eight-hour day during the rest of the year with pay of 6 shillings and 5 pence a day. The strike collapsed, Cuffay was sacked and subsequently blacklisted from employment. In 1839, Cuffay helped to form the Metropolitan Tailors' Charter Association. He was elected first to the Chartist Metropolitan Delegate Council in 1841 and onto the National Executive in 1842. Cuffay was one of the organisers of the large Chartist rally on Kennington Common on 10 April 1848, but was dismayed by the timidity of other leaders, who had rejected the idea that the rally should be a show of force. Cuffay's radical faction soon became involved in plans for a display of "physical force". Arrest and transportation Betrayed by a government spy, Cuffay was arrested and accused of "conspiring to levy war" against