W. S. De Mattos

William Sydney De Mattos (10 January 1851 – fl.1909) was a British socialist activist.

Born in Clapham, De Mattos graduated in mathematics from Trinity College, Cambridge,[1] becoming captain of Cambridge University A.F.C.. He then worked as a private tutor for the university and the British Army. He became interested in radical politics, and eventually became a socialist.[2]

In 1874, De Mattos married Katharine Stevenson, an author and the cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, but the marriage was soon in trouble, and the two separated early in the 1880s.[3]

De Mattos joined the Democratic Federation, and then the Fabian Society, for which he lectured widely, and was a founder of many local Fabian societies. For some years, he served on the society's executive committee. His travels inspired him to launch "red van" campaigns, where a group of socialist lecturers toured rural areas, giving speeches from a van painted red. He also wrote articles for the Sunday Chronicle, the Weekly Times and Echo and the Dispatch.[2]

De Mattos was associated with the General Railway Workers' Union, working for a time as a union organiser, and also becoming a trustee of the union.[2] By the end of the 1890s, he had emigrated to Canada, where he lived until at least 1909.[3]

References
  1. Venn, John (1944). Alumni Cantabrigienses. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 275.
  2. Edwards, Joseph (1895). Labour Annual. Manchester: Labour Press Society. p. 168.
  3. Stevenson, Robert Louis (2001). Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Yale University Press. p. 96. ISBN 0300091249.
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