Frederick Rogers

“ In 1869 he became pastor of St Thomas's Square chapel, Hackney, remaining there till 1879. At Hackney, to the dismay of strict orthodoxy, he delivered to the working classes, on Sunday afternoons, popular lectures on secular themes such as English history and the principles of radical and conservative politics. He thus prepared the way for the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon movement. His growing tendency to rationalism inclined him to pantheism in later years. ”

“ Picton soon took an active part in public life as an uncompromising radical of an advanced type. A champion of secularism in education, he represented Hackney on the London school board from 1870 to 1879. For three years he was chairman of the school management committee. In 1883 he was accepted as a radical candidate for parliament for the Tower Hamlets, but withdrew in 1884, when in June he entered parliament as member for Leicester, succeeding Peter Alfred Taylor [q. v.] ”