The Westminster Review
[4] The controversy drew in a wide public response, much however critical: the Nuttall Encyclopædia, published in 1907, notes that the Breeches Review became a nickname for the journal because Francis Place, a breeches-maker, was a major shareholder in the enterprise.The then unknown Mary Ann Evans, later better known by her pen name of George Eliot, had brought together his authors, including Francis Newman, W. R. Greg, Harriet Martineau and the young journalist Herbert Spencer who had been working and living cheaply in the offices of The Economist opposite Chapman's house.These authors met during that summer to give their support to this flagship of free thought and reform, joined by others including John Stuart Mill, the physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter, Robert Chambers and George J. Holyoake.The group was divided over the work of Thomas Malthus, with Holyoake opposing it as the principle of the workhouse which blamed the poor for their poverty, while to Greg and Martineau this was a law of nature encouraging responsibility and self-improvement.After 1853 John Tyndall joined Huxley in running the science section of the Westminster Review and formed a group of evolutionists who helped pave the way for Charles Darwin's 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species and gave evolutionary ideas backing in the ensuing debate.