Charles Southwell (1814 - 7 August 1860) was a radical English journalist and freethinker. Charles Southwell was born in London, the youngest of 33 children in a poor family. His father, William, was a piano maker who had married three times. His mother, Fanny (William's third wife), was William's ex-servant, and at least three decades younger than him. Charles was Fanny's only child. A difficult pupil, but well-read, Southwell left school at the age of twelve (his father died in 1825 or 1826) and got work in a piano factory. It was while working at Broadwood and Sons that Southwell, encouraged by a Christian colleague, read the Sermons of Timothy Dwight and began thinking seriously about religion, only to reject it (as had his father). In 1830, Southwell set up as a radical bookseller in Westminster, London, and joined the radical lecture circuit.