William Hamilton Reid

William Hamilton Reid (died 1826) was a British poet and hack writer. A supporter of radical politics turned loyalist, he is known for his 1800 pamphlet exposé The Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies in this Metropolis. His later views turned again towards radicalism.

The son of servants in the household of the Duke of Hamilton, Reid was a Londoner, initially apprenticed to a maker of silver buckles. Completing this Soho apprenticeship in 1779, he worked as a journeyman in his trade, in Smithfield, London. In 1811 he wrote that when young he heard the preachers Martin Madan and William Romaine.

Reid began on a literary career in the 1780s. He was introduced to the Esto Perpetua Whig political writers' club, founded in 1785, "almost certainly," according to Iain McCalman, by George Ellis.

A contributor to the Visits from the World of Spirits (1791) of Henry Lemoine, Reid has been described as a "typical Jacobin litterateur" of the 1790s. In 1792 he mentioned work he had as a translator, from Dutch. This employment was removed, by a monopoly given to the Post Office.

As an early member of the radical London Corresponding Society (LCS), Reid in 1793 wrote Hum! Hum!, a satirical song against those who professed "loyalism" (i.e. anti-radicalism) as a way to personal advancement. He was apprehended in early 1798 during a raid on a meeting in the St Martin's Lane area of London, which took in 57 of those attending but not John Binns, a prominent figure of the United Irishmen, and the raid's intended target. (Binns was arrested not much later, according to Reid, with Arthur O'Connor in Kent.) McCalman states that Reid then acted as a government informer, monitoring a subversive meeting in Cripplegate, as a matter of self-preservation. The circulation of his intelligence was to George Canning, Richard Ford, and John King. Reid also sought patronage, by conforming to loyalist attitudes of the period, putting himself forward as a man of letters. He subsequently wrote a pamphlet from a loyalist point of view, the Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies of 1800 (see below), for which he is best known. Around this time he also expressed similar opinions in letters to the Anti-Jacobin Review. He was given cash by Canning, and the approval, according to his widow, of the bishops Shute Barrington and Beilby Porteus, with Porteus offering him Anglican ordination.

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