But that is far from the most remarkable thing that Christina Longden and her dad, Brian, have discovered about their ancestor. In fact, Robert\u2019s fascinating and unusual story has supplied enough material for not one, but two books by Christina.<\/p>
\u201cIt began when my dad was made redundant in the late 1990s,\u201d explains Christina. \u201cAll his life he\u2019d wanted to do his family history but he\u2019d never had the time, so he started looking into the most interesting characters including his great great grandad, Robert Stanley. We knew nothing about him, other than he\u2019d been the mayor of Stalybridge.\u201d<\/p>
Brian told relatives he was researching the family, and was mystified when one of them sent him a battered copy of a publication called The Crescent<\/em> from April 1907. Inside, there was a striking photograph of an elderly bearded man. He was every inch an English gentleman \u2013 except that on his head was a fez. The caption read: \u201cBro. Robert Reschid Stanley, Esq., J. P., Late Mayor of Stalybridge.\u201d Christina and Brian were puzzled \u2013 had Robert really been a Muslim?<\/p> Published weekly, The Crescent<\/em> was the first Islamic newspaper in Britain. Along with the monthly Islamic Review<\/em>, it was produced in Liverpool at the First Mosque. The man behind both the mosque and publications, read around the world, was convert William \u2018Abdullah\u2019 Quilliam. \u201cHe had a massive international presence.\u201d<\/p> The piece accompanying the photo is entitled \u201cdistinguished British Mussulman\u201d, an old term for Muslim. In it Robert explained why he converted in 1898. \u201cIt\u2019s all about rational logic and reason,\u201d says Christina. \u201cI think Quilliam wanted to use it as evidence that the converts were making sensible, careful choices. Robert was a respectable mayor \u2013 it was very clever.\u201d<\/p> Helpfully for Christina, The Crescent<\/em> repeated a list of Robert\u2019s achievements from the Stalybridge Municipal Yearbook<\/em>. \u201cHe had been a Tory, and had been to Parliament as an expert advisor for the 1869 Parliamentary Committee on whether the working class should have a secret ballot.\u201d He wanted to put an end to employers forcing their workers to vote a certain way. At the Parliamentary Archives, Christina found the records of the select committee he\u2019d appeared before. \u201cThere were pages and pages recording what he\u2019d said \u2013 it was great to see his actual words. He\u2019d left no other written record at all, and there he was talking to the biggest names in British politics.\u201d<\/p> It was an amazing achievement for someone who started off as a grocer. Trawling through the local papers on microfiche, Christina followed his political career. \u201cHe was the first working-class mayor. When he was appointed, the papers joked: \u2018A curious proceeding has taken place with regards to the Town Council this week \u2013 a grocer has been elected to the office of Mayor.\u2019\u201d<\/p> Christina\u2019s ancestor rubbed shoulders with other famous people: \u201cI had a hunch about him knowing the Pankhursts, who had lived in the Chorlton area of Manchester during this period, from an article in WDYTYA? Magazine<\/em>.\u201d The Pankhursts had indeed lived literally around the corner from Robert and his family, and Emmeline had signed his wife Emma\u2019s death certificate.<\/p> Robert came from a large family. His parents, William and Ann, met in Dukinfield and went on to have 10 children. \u201cWe worked out that Ann must have got pregnant with her first when she was 12!\u201d William disappeared for a bit: \u201cWe think the family didn\u2019t approve, and sent him away.\u201d Upon his return the couple went to live in Cardiff, where the baby was born (as was Robert 20 years later).<\/p> Christina\u2019s Auntie Gay found William in the local newspapers claiming he was being overtaxed for his work as a hatter. \u201cHe challenged them in court. The Welsh high sheriff came down on his side, and said they were discriminating against non-Welsh-born taxpayers. I think that\u2019s one of the things that switched Robert on to justice.\u201d<\/p> When he was 10, Robert was sent to work in his uncle John\u2019s shop in Ashton-under-Lyne. Robert\u2019s marriage certificate shows that he married in the town\u2019s Christian Israelite Sanctuary. \u201cThe Christian Israelites were a sect who in the 1820s received unwelcome national attention because of the \u2018Seven Virgins Scandal\u2019.\u201d And John Stanley had been a Christian Israelite leader.<\/p> It all started when the self-proclaimed prophet John Wroe came to the town in the 1820s to build the New Jerusalem. \u201cHe was literally trying to build the city walls around Ashton-under-Lyne,\u201d says Christina. The Industrial Revolution created widespread poverty and disease; people were desperate. The Christian Church was failing massively, so John Wroe walked into a power vacuum. His downfall came when he was alleged to have taken seven \u2018handmaidens\u2019 to see to his every need, and two of them accused him of impropriety.<\/p> \u201cNothing was ever proved. However, there were two massive riots in Ashton after the scandal. The sanctuary was ripped apart, and church members\u2019 homes were wrecked. I can imagine Robert thinking the Christian Israelites had been treated badly.<\/p> \u201cI think one reason why Robert was drawn towards Islam is that the Christian Israelites\u2019 beliefs he\u2019d grown up with followed Mosaic Law closely, as does Islam. Perhaps when he met the Muslims, it all felt familiar.\u201d<\/p> Christina believes that the family may have covered up Robert\u2019s conversion, and she has some theories why. In an era when there was huge suspicion of Russia, and its agents were deemed to be everywhere, he marked himself out with his fascination with foreign politics and his sympathy for countries that had suffered at the hands of the British.<\/p> \u201cWhile still a grocer, he chaired a massive debate in Stalybridge on the slave trade and the American Civil War. He also had a tea-trading office at the Corn Exchange in Manchester, where he would have met traders and got a different view of world politics,\u201d she explains. \u201cIn 1876, there was an incident Gladstone named the Bulgarian Horrors, during which thousands of Bulgarians were massacred.\u201d Mayors were called on to hold meetings to condemn it, but Robert, then mayor of Stalybridge, refused, believing that British activities had partly triggered it. This didn\u2019t go down well at the time.<\/p> By the early 1900s, all of the leading white Muslim converts were under surveillance by the Government, because Turkey was moving closer to an alliance with Germany and there were close ties between the mosque and Turkey. \u201cRobert, who was vice chairman of the First Mosque, and Quilliam had been advising the caliph on various things, so they were under suspicion as being potential traitors.\u201d Quilliam fled the country in 1908 for Turkey.<\/p> Christina suspects that if Robert\u2019s family had known any of this, they would have been horrified. \u201cI think the cover-up was probably down to a mix of fear, because the First World War was teetering on the edge, and also embarrassment because Robert would have been perceived as a bit eccentric.\u201d<\/p> After Quilliam left, the white converts dispersed. Robert returned to Stalybridge, and died in 1911. \u201cWe found his grave in the local churchyard, though we don\u2019t think he\u2019d renounced being a Muslim.\u201d It was a family plot where his wife Emma and some of their children were buried. \u201cBut three weeks after we found him, it was demolished,\u201d says Christina. The council built a car park over the top.<\/p> Thankfully, several mementoes of Robert\u2019s life have survived. Among them is a tie pin that Brian found in his mother\u2019s jewellery box and was associated with the First Mosque, and his fez which an elderly cousin passed on.<\/p> Now Robert\u2019s actions, too, have been reclaimed by the family, memorialised in Christina\u2019s books: the biography His Own Man<\/a><\/em> and the novel Imagining Robert<\/a><\/em>. In a coincidence she still finds hard to believe, her brother Steven converted to Islam a decade before they knew anything about Robert. And in celebration of his ancestor, Steven and his wife passed Robert Reschid\u2019s name down to their son.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Claire Vaughan Published: Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 10:01 AM Robert Stanley was under government surveillance in the tumultuous lead-up to the First World War. But that is far from the most remarkable thing that Christina Longden and her dad, Brian, have discovered about their ancestor. In fact, Robert\u2019s fascinating and unusual story has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":28941,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"7"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/my-ancestor-was-one-of-the-first-british-muslims.jpg",2560,1707,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/my-ancestor-was-one-of-the-first-british-muslims-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/my-ancestor-was-one-of-the-first-british-muslims-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/my-ancestor-was-one-of-the-first-british-muslims-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/my-ancestor-was-one-of-the-first-british-muslims-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/my-ancestor-was-one-of-the-first-british-muslims-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/my-ancestor-was-one-of-the-first-british-muslims-2048x1366.jpg",2048,1366,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Claire Vaughan Published: Tuesday, 14 November 2023 at 10:01 AM Robert Stanley was under government surveillance in the tumultuous lead-up to the First World War. But that is far from the most remarkable thing that Christina Longden and her dad, Brian, have discovered about their ancestor. In fact, Robert\u2019s fascinating and unusual story has…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/28940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Political influence<\/h4>
One in ten<\/h4>
![\"Six](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2020\/07\/Some-of-Roberts-children-2-001-2-41e785c.jpg\" "\\"Six")
Secrets and spies<\/h4>
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"