KROPOTKIN

In 1881, shortly after the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II, the Swiss government expelled Kropotkin from Switzerland. After a short stay at Thonon (Savoy), he went to London, where he stayed nearly a year, and returned to Thonon in late 1882. Soon he was arrested by the French government, tried at Lyon, and sentenced by a police-court magistrateto five years' imprisonment, on the ground that he had belonged to the IWA (1883). But the French Chamber repeatedly agitated on his behalf, and he was released in 1886. He settled near London, living at various times in Harrow – where his daughter, Alexandra, was born – Ealing and Bromley. While living in London, he became friends with a number of prominent English-speaking socialists, including William Morris and George Bernard Shaw.