It is possibly not a well known fact that Warrington Academy at one time may have employed the notorious French Revolutionary Jean Paul Marat as a teacher of French. He became infamous as one of the dreaded few along with Robespierre and Danton during the reign of terror 1789-1793 in Paris.

Marat alias M. le Maitre, or Mara, was born in 1743 in Neuchatel, Switzerland where he was educated. He left home at 16, later coming to England in about 1769. He taught for a short time at the Academy and it is believed he left Warrington about 1772. The following year he published a philosophical essay on the "Body and Soul in Man" and he also had a principal involvement in the publication of a seditious book entitled the "Chains of Slavery". These publications give an insight into the mind and thinking of Marat, who could only be described as a radical revolutionary of the highest order.

His subsequent reported escapades make for interesting reading, particularly those during his time in England, before his eventual return to France about 1788. He is reported as graduating in medicine from St. Andrews University in June, 1775 and then publishing a medical pamphlet in London in January 1776.

He is also reported living in Oxford in 1776, where it is alleged he robbed the Ashmolean Museum of "medals" and tried to sell the same. He fled to Ireland where he was apprehended and arrested in Dublin. He was tried in Oxford and convicted, being sentenced to five years hard labour in the Hulks (prison ships) at Woolwich. After release he went to live in Bristol, where be became a bookseller, but unfortunately for him, incurred debts and was committed to the Debtor's prison. There he remained until his release by the Society for the Relief of Prisoners for Small Debts.

It is noted that one of the members of the Society that had personally released him from the jail in Bristol had been one of his pupils at Warrington Academy. Another former student later saw him at the National Assembly in Paris in 1792. On his return to France be became actively involved in the Revolution. In September 1789 following the storming of the Bastille on July 14th, he published a newspaper '¹The Friend of the People "which soon became France's most radical journal. He labelled political moderates as traitors and called for popular violence against them.

Marat was a dangerous fanatic to his enemies and he was in tune with the radical mood that led to the fall of the French monarchy in August, 1792. He also contributed to the atmosphere of violence that led to the mass executions by guillotine of political and aristocratic prisoners from April 1792.

Elected to the National Assembly in 1792, he urged dictatorial measures to defend the Revolution.

He was the leader of the Paris Jacobin Club, a revolutionary party who vehemently opposed the Girondins; a right wing Republican party of the Revolution, who originated in the Gironde District of France. The Girondins were overthrown by the Jacobins who became all powerful, but Marat did not live to see it.

On July 13th, 1793, Marat working in his bath, where he regularly treated a skin complaint, was attacked and stabbed to death. His assailant was a young woman from Normandy called Char1otte Corday, a Girondist sympathiser, who held Marat responsible for the Reign of Terror.

She was taken by Marat's friends, condemned to death by a Revolutionary tribunal and guillotined on the 17th July, 1793. Marat's life was one of a complex personality, with varying manifestations of character and behaviour. His episodes in life as a teacher, doctor, artist, felon, convict, journalist and politician have been the subject of study by various authorities. It is from these sources that this narrative extract has been drawn. It is a story which is surely intriguing in as much as it had a Warrington connection.

(WARAC_MARAT.DOC)