Charles Bray


Charles Bray was a prosperous British ribbon manufacturer, social reformer, philanthropist, philosopher, and phrenologist.

Life

Bray was born in 1811 and his education included time in the school run by Mary Franklin. He would have attended chapel every day.
Bray became a prosperous ribbon manufacturer who owned the Coventry Herald newspaper. His father had died in 1835, leaving him and each of his seven siblings a substantial inheritance. Charles married Caroline "Cara" Hennell on 26 May 1836 at Hackney in Middlesex. A disciple of the social reformer Robert Owen, he used the wealth generated from his businesses to establish nonsectarian public schools and to try to bring about changes in society.
Bray was a freethinker in religious matters and a progressive in politics. He was also a disciple of the phrenologist George Combe.

Rosehill Circle

The Brays' home "Rosehill" was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. People who participated in the "Rosehill Circle" included social reformer Robert Owen, philosopher/sociologist Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Most of the people who participated in the Rosehill Circle tended to have theologies that were considerably more liberal than the average.
The core group of the Rosehill Circle consisted of Charles Bray, his wife Caroline, and some of the members of Caroline's immediate family along with several of their close friends. The core group members from Caroline's immediate family were her sisters Mary Hennell and Sara Hennell, and her brother Charles Christian Hennell. Charles Hennell was a writer on theological and philosophical topics whose most important work was An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity. Although Caroline's father James Hennell was a devout Unitarian who raised his children as Unitarians, his 3 children who were core members of the Rosehill Circle all entertained serious reservations about many Unitarian beliefs.
On 1 November 1843 Charles C. Hennell married Elizabeth Rebecca "Rufa" Brabant, another core member of the Rosehill Circle. Elizabeth's father, physician Robert Herbert Brabant, was a core member as well. Elizabeth, in the months immediately preceding her engagement and marriage to Charles Hennell, had been under commission to translate into English the great theological treatise Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet by David Friedrich Strauss. As soon as it had been first published, Strauss' Das Leben Jesu was recognized internationally as one of the most revolutionary and important theological treatises of the 19th century. Not surprisingly, the members of the private group which had commissioned the translation, led by the radical politician Joseph Parkes, were very eager to be able to read this great work in their native English. However, once it was realized that Elizabeth's marriage would mean an end to her translation work, in January 1844 it was decided that Mary Anne Evans would take up the translating where Elizabeth had left off at the time of her marriage. Mary Anne had quickly become an integral part of the Rosehill Circle after she met and befriended Charles and Caroline Hennell in November 1841. Somewhat later she became an intimate friend of Elizabeth Brabant as well. Mary Anne worked on the translation of Strauss' Das Leben Jesu for over 2 years, and in June 1846 the fruit of her labor was finally published under the title The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined.
As a leading light in the Coventry 'intelligentsia,' Bray helped to found The Coventry Labourers & Artisans Co-operative Society Circa 1840–60, which provided gardens for working men and a co-op store. Inspired by the cottage factories in Coventry, he drew up a plan for a small community based on the same system – squares of 3–400 houses, each with their own steam engine to provide power and would be surrounded by enough land for each house to have its own allotment.

Publications