Born Nov. 3, 1771, in London; died there Jan. 1, 1854. English political figure and bourgeois radical.
A garment worker as a youth, Place was active in workers’ associations in 1793 and 1794 and was a member of the London Corresponding Society from 1794 to 1797. In 1800 he started his own business. He enjoyed some influence among the workers as a defender of the freedom of workers’ associations in the 1820’s, and he played an active role in the electoral reform movement of 1832. In 1838 he took part in the drafting of the People’s Charter of the chartist movement; however, he subsequently abandoned chartism and assumed a hostile attitude toward it.