page_title: Cleveland Hall, London
section_title: Mixed uses
hierarchical_section_title: Cleveland Hall, London / Mixed uses
caption_attribution_description: Пётр Алексеевич Кропоткин English: Kropotkin's photo by Nadar Ελληνικά: Φωτογραφία του Πιοτρ Κροπότκιν από τον Ναντάρ (Nadar) Español: Piotr Kropotkin fotografiado por Nadar
context_page_description: Cleveland Hall was a meeting hall in Cleveland Street, London that was a centre of the British secularist movement between 1861 and 1878, and that was then used for various purposes before becoming a Methodist meeting hall.
context_section_description: In 1869 the ownership of the hall changed. In 1870 the Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle noted that the Reverend Charles Adolphus Row was delivering a course of lectures in defence of the gospel at Cleveland Hall, Fitzroy Square, the former secularist centre.
  On 25 June 1871 the spiritualist Mrs Emma Hardinge Britten delivered a lecture at Cleveland Hall while under inspiration of a spirit, in which she described the third and higher spheres.
  On 16 April 1874 the British National Association of Spiritualists held a grand inaugural soirée in Cleveland Hall. On 10 May 1874 Cora L.V. Tappan delivered an inspirational discourse at the Hall. The next week Judge John W. Edmonds delivered an address to a large audience there through Mrs Tappan as medium; the judge had died less than two months earlier. Charles Maurice Davies wrote that year,
  The reigning favourite at present in London is Mrs Cora Tappan, who was better known as a medium in America by her maiden name of Cora Hatch. She came out with considerable éclat at St George's Hall, after which she drifted to Weston's Music Hall in Holborn, in which slightly incongruous locality she set up her "Spiritual Church". Now she has abandoned the ecclesiastical title, and hangs out at Cleveland Hall, somewhere down a slum by Fitzroy Square. Facilis descensus!" 
  On 18 August 1874 Jonathan Charles King of 54 Cleveland Street and 30 Howland Street, proprietor of the Cleveland Hall Assembly Rooms, initiated proceedings for liquidation under the Bankruptcy Act.In 1876 Harriet Law again leased the hall for use in freethought lectures.In July 1877 it was reported that Harriet Law had leased Cleveland Hall for another twelve months, and a meeting would be held at which George Holyoake, Harriet Law, George William Foote and others would speak. The secularists did not renew the lease in 1878. The hall was then used for some years for dances and other purposes.
  In the 1870s and 1880s various groups of political refugees came to London, including French communards, German socialists, Russian Jews and Italian anarchists such as Tito Zanardelli.
  Most of the Italian refugees settled in Soho and Clerkenwell. Giovanni Defendi, who had fought with Garibaldi, lived at 17 Cleveland Street.
  On 18 July 1881 an anarchist congress was held at the Cleveland Hall, Fitzroy Square,
  at which the American Marie Le Compte, Louise Michel, and Prince Peter Kropotkin spoke.
  The congress openly supported "propaganda by deed", and discussed using "chemical materials" to further the revolution.
  The meeting resulted in a question being asked in the House of Commons.
  The Commonweal of 5 February 1887 announced that "A meeting of the international revolutionists to protest against the coming war will be held in Cleveland Hall, Cleveland Street... The chair will be taken by comrade [William] Morris. Speeches will be made in various languages ..."
  Morris described the place at the time of the meeting as "a wretched place, once flash and now sordid, in a miserable street. It is the headquarters of the orthodox Anarchists, most of the foreign speakers belonging to this persuasion; but a Collectivist also spoke, and one, at least, from the Autonomy section who have some quarrel which I can't understand with the Cleveland Hall people."{{sfn|Boos|2013}
caption: The anarchist Peter Kropotkin
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