Hammersmith Socialist Society

The Hammersmith Socialist Society was created from the old Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League after the latter's demise in 1890. The Hammersmith Branch chose to form a new body, one of the largest branches of first the Social Democratic Federation and then the League.

William Morris (March 24, 1834-October 3, 1896) was one of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts Movement and is best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, a writer of poetry and fiction, and an early founder of the socialist movement in Britain. With his friends and collaborators, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Philip Webb, he formed an artistic movement, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Morris had two daughters, Jane (called Jenny) and Mary (called May). Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain's first socialists, working with Eleanor Marx and Engels to begin the socialist movement. In 1883, he joined the Social Democratic Federation, and in 1884 he organised the Socialist League.