author
Casey
1864–1932
A working-class writer, fiddler, and socialist journalist, this author wrote with firsthand feeling about ordinary people and public struggle. Best known under the pen name “Casey,” he brought the same plainspoken energy to labor journalism and local history.
1 Audiobook
The Burston School Strike
by Casey
About the author
Walter Hampson (1864–1932), who also wrote as “Casey,” was born in Dublin and spent much of his life in northern England. Sources describe him as largely self-educated, with a hard childhood that included work as a chimney sweep, and later as a railway engine driver. Alongside that working life, he wrote poetry and prose, played the violin, and became known for his strong interest in regional speech and everyday life.
He is linked with The Labour Leader, and his pamphlet The Burston School Strike was published in 1915 under the name “Casey.” That work supported the famous Norfolk school strike and shows his clear sympathy for workers, teachers, and village communities standing up to local power. Other sources also credit him with Yorkshire dialect writing, editing a local journal devoted to dialect, and writing about the history of Normanton.
Because the surviving information is scattered, some details of his life are reported a little differently from source to source. Still, a consistent picture emerges of a self-made author shaped by labor, music, place, and radical politics—someone who wrote not from distance, but from lived experience.