One hundred years ago, a Dublin-born socialist named Robert Crocker, also known as Robert Noonan and, most famously, as Robert Tressell, died in Liverpool, England and was buried with 12 others in a pauper’s grave. He was barely 40 years old. He’s rightly remembered today for his only novel, ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, generally hailed as a classic literary endeavour, which describes aspects of Edwardian English working class life from a Marxist perspective.