William Stewart Ross
From Philosopedia
Ross, William Stewart (“Saladin”) (20 March 1844–1906)
A Scottish freethinker, the son of orthodox Presbyterians, Ross at the age of twenty went to Glasgow University to study for the Church. Finding his university interests were more literary than theological, he set out to make his name as a poet, entered a publishing house, then managed the Thomas Laurie branch store in London. At the university he had come to doubt the orthodox creeds, and his freethinking grew after reading the poetry of Burns and the philosophy of Thomas Carlyle.
His first involvement with the Secularists came in 1880 when, as president of the Lambeth Radical Association, he chaired a lecture from Bradlaugh which had been organized by the South West London branch of the National Secular Society. Caring neither for Bradlaugh nor Mrs. Besant, he had the support of C. A. Watts. However, the elder Watts must have had some trouble controlling his writing articles under the “Saladin” pseudonym, according to Royle. Ross hated the hypocrisy of his age: “Ours is the Era of Dissimulation,” he told F. J. Gould in a 1900 interview. His outlook showed him to be a man of public hates.
Ross wrote many essays on secularism, his most famous book being Roses and Rue (1891). He edited the Agnostic Journal (1888) which joined with Secular Review to form a joint title, Agnostic Journal (& Secular Review) that was published from 1889 until his death in 1906.
He wrote under the nom de plume of "Saladin" (the Muslim fighter who halted the Third Crusade). His books include God and His Book (1887) and Woman: Her Glory and Her Shame (2 vol., 1894).
In 1879, he won a gold medal for writing the best poem to memorialize the unveiling of a statue of Robert Burns.
The end of his life was tragic, for he concealed that he was suffering from an illness that impaired his walking. Because of sclerosis, which he admitted in 1904, he had edited the Agnostic Journal from his bed, scarcely able to write except with two hands.
After his death, wrote Royle, Ross’s influence continued as an inspiration to those rebels whom freethought inevitable attracted. He had built up an alternative school of thought to the official one of Bradlaugh, Besant, and Foote, and this had resulted in attracting old hands such as W. H. Johnson and young enthusiasts like C. R. Mackay, Ernest Pack, and Guy Aldred. “Even freethought, apparently, needed its guru,” Royle observed.
{BDF; EU, Victor E. Neuburg; FFRF;RAT; RE; RSR}
