A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allsop, Thomas
Allsop, Thomas, reformer. B. Apr. 10, 1795. Ed. Wirksworth Grammar School. Allsop was a business man of literary tastes who in 1818 became a friend of Coleridge. He is known as Coleridge's "favourite disciple," but it was the radical opinions of the poet's youth which he shared. See his Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge (1836). He had a passion for reform and enlightenment, and was much esteemed by Robert Owen, Mazzini, and Holyoake. In advertising for a country house he said that preference would be given to one which had no church or clergyman within five miles (Dict. Nat. Biog.). With Holyoake he attended Owen's funeral, and, when he learned that they were compelled to have the Church service, he complained bitterly of this "mummery of an outworn creed" over the remains of a man who had spent a life in freeing his fellows from "the degradation of superstition" (Holyoake's Life and Last Days of R. Owen, p. 17). D. Apr. 12, 1880.