NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES.--A PAROCHIAL REVOLUTION.--THE OLD POOR-HOUSE
AND THE NEW "BASTILLE."
Over the dark night of the 18th and the dull grey morning of the 19th
century there was this remarkable feature, that while the local records
show how deplorable was the condition of the people, there was at the
head of the affairs of the nation a perfect galaxy of great men, such
as the public life of this nation had perhaps never known. There were
Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, Wellington, Wilberforce, Nelson, Canning,
Brougham, Lord Chancellor Eldon--whose greatness was only tempered by
the fear that the sun of Great Britain would set if a Catholic was
allowed to sit in the House of Peers,--the Duke of York--whose speech
against Catholic emancipation was printed in letters of gold and sold
by our local stationers,--the great Lyndhurst (four times Lord
Chancellor) Palmerston, Lord Derby, who, from a maiden speech about
lighting Manchester with gas, rose to be "the Rupert of Debate,"
Macaulay--the brilliant Buntingford school boy who went stamping
through the fields of literature with an _éclat_ which made him one of
the giants of the coming century,--O'Connell, the Liberator; and
Grattan, of Irish {156} Parliament fame. All these great names made up
a reflection of the glories of Ancient Greece and Rome in the arena of
debate. They shone like stars in the firmament, helping to make the
common people content to dwell in the night by the glittering panoply
they threw over the public life of the nation. Men and women forgot
their grievances in the contemplation of great names whose owners did
not then, like the statesmen of to-day, come down to the level of the
common life to be jostled on railway platforms.
It is only when one looks into the details of local life that it is
possible to realize the sharp contrast of great men and little
happiness for the people, or how terrible must have been the strain for
the whole nation to have existed under such conditions without a
revolution.
The marvel is that Parliament with so much talent in its foremost men
should have been powerless to deal with the weakness outside, or that
the brilliant leaders should have been content to reach such an
eminence by so rough and thorny a path; but the great forces which have
been liberated within this century had not then set men's energies
free, and they were pretty much confined to, and did not see much
beyond, the narrow way along which they were toiling.
Parliamentary Reform, for which more enlightened men here and there had
for fifty years been asking, was the first setting of the tide which
was to penetrate and revolutionize all our local life. Early in the
present century when the then Lord Dacre contested Cambridgeshire, and
had the audacity to advocate Parliamentary Reform and Civil and
Religious Liberty, he was called the Fire-Brand, and he had few
supporters when, in 1810, he moved for an inquiry into the state of
Parliamentary representation.
The amount of political literature and printers' ink used in the
agitation for "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill," was
perhaps unparalleled in the history of English electioneering. Some of
it, to say the least, was not very refined, but it expressed very well
the prevailing state of things which the "Bill" was destined to upset.
The electors of Herts. and Cambs. were not unlike those of Stafford who
said "Now, Gronow, old boy, we like what we have heard about you, your
principles and all that sort of thing. We will therefore all vote for
you if [slapping their breeches pockets]--you know what we mean, old
fellow, and if not, you won't do for Stafford!" Though the candidate
did not trouble himself much about his "principles and that sort of
thing, you know," his opponents generally managed, in the form of
squibbs of a more or less elegant turn, to supply the deficiency. Here
is a specimen of a Hertfordshire squib [after other promises put into
the mouth of a candidate]--
"Lastly, I engage to hire all the bullies, blackguards, bankrupts,
blacklegs, bum-bailiffs, and even the gipsies in the neighbourhood,"
&c. {157} This and much more of a scurrilous character appeared in
large type with the printer's name in bold letters!
It is curious to note how the desire for Parliamentary Reform took hold
of all classes of the people, and during that stormy period, when the
Commons were engaged in passing and the Lords in repeatedly rejecting
"the Bill," Parliament was watched by its constituents, through such
imperfect channels as were open to them, in a manner which had never
been known before. Here is a local incident which is vouched for by an
eye witness. On a certain division in the House, Mr. Adeane, the then
member for Cambridgeshire, walked out of the House without voting, and
shortly after when he was canvassing in Shepreth village, one, old
Jerry Brock, met him with this brusque little speech:--"Muster Adeane,
I've heerd say that when a sartin motion agin the Bill was made, you
walked out o' the House o' Commons without votin. Now I'll just thank
you to walk out o' my house!"
In December, 1832, following the passing of the Reform Bill, three
Liberal Members each were returned for Hertfordshire and
Cambridgeshire, to the first reformed Parliament--for Hertfordshire,
Sebright, Calvert and Alston, and for Cambridgeshire, Townley, Childers
and Adeane, but with the great issue of the Corn Laws looming in the
distance, these agricultural counties gradually went round, and in 1841
all the representatives of the two counties were Conservatives. In
Cambs., Yorke, Allix and Eaton, were returned without a contest, and in
Herts., Grimston, Ryder and Smith, were returned, Alston one of the old
members being defeated. In 1847 Mr. Trevor (the late Lord Dacre)
turned the tide in Herts. by recovering one of the seats, but it was
not till 1859 that a seat was gained for the Liberals in Cambs.--a seat
afterwards held by Mr. Brand (the Speaker), the late Viscount Hampden,
whose death everyone laments. It was in the election of the first
reformed Parliament that Royston first had a polling place.
We can hardly realize what the passing of the Reform Bill meant in the
estimation of almost all classes of the people in country districts,
but a pamphlet published by J. Warren, Royston, in 1832, in order that
"everyone may have in his possession a faithful report of so glorious a
triumph," affords us some interesting glimpses of the effect of the
passing of that great measure upon our local life. Here is a summary
of the record for Royston:--
"The struggle for so grand and important a measure having at length
terminated in favour of the wishes of the people, the inhabitants of
Royston were determined to commemorate it in that respectful way, so
glorious a triumph in passing the Reform Bill into law, really
deserved; consequently a committee was formed, and a subscription
collected of L130 without difficulty, with a promise of more if wanted.
{158} A band was sent for from London, then on Thursday morning the
bells were set ringing and the musicians struck up with the beautiful
air, 'Away, away to the mountain brow,' in the street, which so struck
the ears of the people that they really forgot all business."
"Twenty tables were admirably arranged, covered and fenced in on the
green where the horse-fair is kept. Some 1,400 of the towns-people
headed by the band filling the street from one end to the other and
forming a most imposing spectacle besides innumerable spectators, the
windows on both sides of the street crowded, so that it is supposed
there was not less than 3,000 pleasant faces to be seen at one time."
The scene at the great booth which accommodated the assemblage was an
imposing one too with its outward banners flying:--"Reform Festival,
1832," and "Triumph of Liberty "; while at the head of the tables were
mottoes galore:--"The people's Triumph," "Grey, Brougham," "Althorpe,
Russell," "The King and people united must prevail," "No slavery," "The
House of Dacre," "Townley and Reform," "Speed the plough," "England's
wealth, the working classes," "Our aim is peace, our end is victory,"
"Sebright, Calvert," "Duncombe, Currie," "We unite to conquer," "God
save the King," &c., &c. With three carvers, three waiters and a
tapster to each of the twenty tables, the eager 1,400 could hardly wait
for grace from the Rev. Samuel Cautherley (vicar of the parish), before
the set-to upon the beef and plum pudding "with good brown stout." The
cloths being removed, "the pipe fillers amply produced their fruits,
and the tapster regulated his tap which continued to run freely," while
the carvers and waiters were having a set-to in the Market House. Tea
followed, and what with tobacco, snuff, peals of bells and the music of
the band, the poor continued to enjoy themselves until nine o'clock,
when the illumination of the town began, and by ten o'clock at night
the streets "with their coloured lamps and candles and transparencies
had a most beautiful appearance."
The second day, Friday, 116 of the principal inhabitants sat down to
dinner at the Red Lion, Mr. John George Fordham, then of Odsey (father
of Mr. Henry Fordham), presiding, and supported on his right by Mr. J.
P. Wedd, and on his left by Mr. E. K. Fordham, the venerable banker.
Toasts came thick and fast, and all shared the enthusiasm of "this
proud moment of conscious victory when the march of ages is
over-stepped by the exertions of a day."
We kindle not war's battle fires;
By union, justice, reason, law,
We claim the birth-right of our sires:
We raise the watchword liberty,
We will, we will, we will be free!
{159}
In this strain the oratory flowed, from the reformers--the Chairman,
Mr. Wedd, Mr. E. K. Fordham, who re-called the first reform meeting he
attended in that very room forty years before, and the Rev. J. Horseman
(rector of Heydon).
The third day, and still the reforming zeal had not spent itself, and
the musicians were still in tune, and on Saturday joined in witnessing
a cricket match on the Heath, with a cold dinner. Unfortunately for
the older cricketing reputation of the town it is recorded that "owing
to their having had two amusing days previous there was too much work
in the game of cricket for their performance to be worth recording, and
so threw away their bats and balls and retired to the Indies who were
preparing a social cup of tea, making altogether a party of about 100."
"They then returned to the town headed by the Band, and concluded in
the High Street by playing and singing in full chorus the grand
national anthem of "God save the King," while the bells rang the old
Constitution out and the new one in! Thus ended three days such as the
inhabitants of Royston never before witnessed, and probably never will
again." Other towns in the district--Hitchin, Biggleswade, Ware,
Baldock, &c.,--also had their celebrations, and among the villages
there was a "spirited little set out" at Meldreth, where 750 were
provided with dinner, and the musical amateurs of the village and
neighbourhood with their "violins, clarinets, horns, &c., which they
were using to the best of their knowledge, gave youthful spirits to the
aged, and so well was the commemoration of the Reform Bill conducted
that it was much admired by all who witnessed it. In the evening they
all, ladies and gentlemen and poor, about 400 in number, had a reel
together, and concluded the evening in a very amiable manner, wishing
success to reform."
At the present time when comprehensive schemes of Old Age Pensions are
talked of which may, if carried out, transform much of the present
character of relief of the poor, it will perhaps be of interest to
glance at the state of things just before the introduction of the
present Poor-law had worked a complete parochial revolution.
There is, I imagine, a general impression amongst us, when we ever turn
our thoughts back to the subject, that the remarkable shaking of the
dry bones during the Reform Bill period, which culminated in the great
measure of 1832, was merely a matter of politics--that John Bull was
only buying a new broom to sweep away here and there an Old Sarum, and
dust the benches of St. Stephen's for new company and--_voilà tout_!
the nation was reformed at a stroke! Yet that was not all by any
means. In most of the rural districts of England there were parishes,
not here and there, but parishes by shoals, presenting a state of
things more rotten and more demoralizing than anything that the annals
of Borough-mongering could furnish.
{160}
Then the great bulk of the poor people in our villages held to the
sentiment expressed in the lines--
Come let us drink, sing, and be merry,
For the parish is bound to maintain us!
When the ratepayers began to assert themselves the pauper element broke
out in open riot and incendiarism. Then came severe penal measures,
Poor-law commissions, and an awakening of the national conscience to
the fact that there was something besides political Old Sarums to
reform if the salt in John Bull's family cupboard was not to entirely
lose its savour. A state of things was disclosed in many villages in
rural England at which the more thoughtful stood aghast, for under the
sacred name of charity, laziness and immorality, unblushing and
impudent, were found to be feeding the stream of pauperism and eating
out the vitals of our country life.
At the root of the domestic and social ruin which the old Poor-law was
silently but surely spreading through our villages, lay the two
principal factors of labour and public morals--the farmers paying low
wages and the parish making up the difference according to the number
of a man's family, and the lax way in which bastardy was dealt with by
the parish.
As to Royston, in 1831, when the Commissioners were appointed to
inquire into the laws affecting the relief of the poor, there were
fifty agricultural labourers in the town; wages nine or ten shillings a
week without beer; the magistrates required an allowance to be made
from the rates to make up earnings, according to the number in family,
but, it is added, that "this system is objected to by this parish."
"The desire to build the largest number of cottages upon the smallest
space and with no ground attached was strongly condemned," but the seed
had been sown and the harvest is still with us. Upon the subject of
making up a labourer's pay out of the parish funds, and the labourer
looking to the Overseer to pay him when he was not at work, a
remarkable test case occurred in Royston, of which I transcribe the
following particulars from the parish books--
"There is a difference of opinion existing between the parishioners of
this parish and some very respectable and intelligent magistrates
acting for this neighbourhood. The magistrates think it is within
their jurisdiction (if they are convinced of its necessity) to order
Overseers to pay money to able-bodied labourers in full employment by
private individuals, in order to make up their earnings to a sum
considered by the magistrates necessary for the support of their
families."
This the parishioners seemed inclined to resist, and it is added--"the
parishioners consider that if the Overseer be ordered to make up the
wages of one farmer's labourers, he may be ordered to go round the
parish and make up the wages of every labourer. It would then be the
{161} interest of every master to lower his wages and throw as much of
them as possible on to the poor rates. The poor rates might thus be
enormously increased and those ratepayers not employing labourers might
be crushed."
Upon this subject the parish officials and two of the local
magistrates, the Rev. H. Morice and Rev. T. Sissons, got into conflict;
for we learn from a communication to the Commissioners, that the
Royston Select Vestry, refusing to add to a labourer's pay, the
Overseers were actually summoned before the magistrates for
Hertfordshire to show cause why they should not make him an addition to
the pay he received in full employment. Two labourers, John James and
Joseph Wood, of Royston, having been refused additions to their wages
by the parish, applied to the magistrates in Petty Sessions, and the
magistrates making a verbal order upon the Overseers to make up the
wages to a certain sum, the Assistant Overseer put it off until he had
seen the Select Vestry. A few days after, he says he was taking a ride
with one of the Overseers and met the Rev. Henry Morice driving his
carriage with the man Wood riding behind. Observing them, he pulled up
and said, "Mr. Docura, here is this man Wood who says that you refuse
to relieve him as we ordered you on Wednesday last!"
Mr. Docura admitted the fact, upon which the rev. gentleman said, "I
wish I had given you a written order!"
Mr. Docura: "If you had, I have orders to resist them to the utmost."
The Rev. T. Morice upon this, in the presence of Wood and another
labourer, exclaimed in a violent passion, "it would serve you right if
your town was burnt down; you richly deserve it!" and then ordered the
man Wood to come to him at some other time.
A few days afterwards the Overseers received a summons to appear at the
Rev. Thomas Sissons', at Wallington, to show cause, &c.
The Overseers naturally resented being dragged to Wallington, and wrote
a letter asking for the case to come before the ordinary Sessions at
Royston, as one of the Overseers was ill.
The suggested alteration was not acceded to, however, and one of the
Overseers and the Assistant had to go to Wallington before the Rev.
Thos. Sissons and Rev. John Lafont. The magistrates first tried to
persuade the Overseer by appealing to his feelings, and then to
intimidate by pointing out the consequences of his refusal to comply
with their order, but he was proof against both, and said if they
thought proper to make an order he was under the necessity to say that
he must refuse complying with it. Upon which they gave him till
Wednesday to consider, and if he did not comply by that time they would
certainly give an order and enforce it.
{162}
They had orders to appear again on the Wednesday, "but for some
unaccountable cause the men did not appear, to the joy, apparently, of
the Magistrates and Overseers, since which time they have not tried to
enforce it, but we have since had good reason to suppose that they have
not either forgotten or forgiven us."
So ended the attempt to enforce a legal right to supplement wages,
which was acted upon in all the surrounding parishes.
Everything seemed to conspire to make the labourer a pauper even if he
would aspire to independence, until, through early and improvident
marriages, the lax treatment of bastardy, &c., paupers became a glut in
the market so to speak, and, finding the doles less satisfactory in
consequence, discontent, riot, and incendiarism, manifested themselves
in many places; hence the inuendo of the Rev. Mr. Morice, the
magistrate, about the town being burnt.
At Gamlingay the Overseer was summoned before a Magistrate six miles
off because he had a difference with the paupers about their parish
pay. On the day of their attendance something prevented the case being
heard, and on their return to Gamlingay, all together, they passed the
house of another magistrate about two miles from home when the Overseer
said, "Now, my lads, here we are close by; I'll give you a pint of beer
each if you'll come and have it settled at once without giving me any
more trouble about it." The proposal was rejected without hesitation!
It may be appropriate here to give a few instances of the way in which
paupers were pampered, and extracts from the Commissioners' report as
to how the old system of relief worked in the villages--
"An inhabitant of a large village near Newmarket has taken out a
certificate for killing game and actually goes out shooting with his
pointer and gun, although at this time he has 3s. weekly allowance from
the parish as a pauper, and during last year received 4s. 6d. weekly."
In one small parish containing 139 persons, only 35 of them, including
the clergyman and his family, were supporting themselves by their own
exertions!
In many villages the expenditure in out-relief--chiefly in orders upon
village shops for flour, clothes, butter, cheese, &c.--amounted to from
L2 to L3 per head of the population, that is, a village with a
population of a thousand persons would expend L2,600 a year in
"relieving" pauperism.
It seems incredible, yet it is in black and white in the Commissioners'
Report, that at Westoning, in Bedfordshire, there was scarcely an
able-bodied labourer in the parish in the employment of private
individuals who was not at the same time receiving his allowance from
the parish!
{163}
As to rent and taxes from cottage property, under such circumstances
these too often had to be paid or remitted by the parishes. Thus the
Royston Overseers state:--"We have omitted rating the cottages to the
number of 99, occupied by labourers and low mechanics, owing to the
difficulty of collecting the money and the ill-will it engendered
amongst the cottagers towards the parish authorities."
"Order'd that Mr. Simons apply to the justices and inquire of them
whether they can compel labourers who have decent earnings to pay their
rent"!
The following incidents are mentioned from Over in Cambridgeshire:--
"A widow with two children had been in receipt of 3s. a week from the
parish, and was able to live upon this. She afterwards married a
butcher, and still the allowance of 3s. for the children was continued.
But the butcher and his bride came to the Overseer and said 'they were
not going to keep _those children_ for 3s. a week, and if a further
allowance was not made _they should turn them out of doors_ and throw
them on the parish altogether.' The Overseers resisted; the butcher
appealed to the Magistrates, who recommended him to make the best
arrangement he could as the parish was obliged to support the children"!
The law and its administration, on behalf of the parish, actually put a
valuable premium on bastardy.
The Parish Beadle was tempted to bribe the young woman to lay an
information against someone in another parish, "a compulsory marriage"
was brought about and the woman and bastard, and all future liability,
were sometimes got rid of at one stroke! A Parish Beadle, in addition
to looking after little Oliver Twists, often had these delicate
negotiations to manage, and whether Mr. Bumble was able to ingratiate
himself with 'Mrs. Corney' or not, he often did a good stroke of
business for his parish in the matrimonial market, when, as I have
mentioned in an earlier chapter, a labourer could not even go into
another parish to work without a certificate from the parish he
belonged to. In the report of the Commission, to which I have
referred, occurs this significant little item:--
"A Beadle in a small district assured me he had alone effected fifty
marriages of this description in the course of a few years."
The labour market was the parish, and this was completely disorganised
and demoralised. The old law of settlement made it practically
impossible for labour to find the best market. Even if a young man had
an offer of a situation in another part of the country at double wages
he would often refuse to go lest he should "lose his parish," or it
might be that the parish where he was asked to go was considered a
"bad" parish compared with his own. Each parish {164} was thus
considered as a sort of freehold, with a family cupboard bound to
provide for nil its children.
It was almost impossible for any individual farmer to stand out and
follow an independent course, for if he paid his men full wages he
would also, as a ratepayer, be paying part of the wages for the other
farmers in the parish. In some cases the masters combined with the men
and gave false certificates as to the amount of their wages in order to
get more "make up" from their parish.
The farmer preferred to employ men with large families to keep them off
the parish, but single young men, finding they were not wanted,
contracted early and improvident marriages, to make sure of being
"provided for by the parish." Population increased to beyond the
requirements for local industry; the law of settlement was squeezed to
the utmost against removals, and thus the farmer was creating the
Nemesis he was seeking to flee from.
In many cases wages were as low as 8s. per week, the difference being
made up according to the labourer's increasing family, and "if he makes
more, still he receives his allowance in order that industry may not be
discouraged."
At Over on one occasion, Mr. Robinson, the overseer, refused payment to
men who would not keep their proper hours at work upon the road. "They
complained to the Bench at Cambridge, and beat him as usual," so says
the report, and not only that, but they returned home wearing favours
in their hats and button-holes, and in the evening collected in a body
before Mr. Robinson's house and shouted in triumph!
The report for the parish of Bottisham showed that the effect of the
scale for single young men when not working, or receiving less wage
than the scale, was that one family, consisting of man, wife, and seven
children, were entitled to and were at that time receiving 19s. 6d. a
week (over and above their earnings) from the parish, several of the
sons being grown up!
"At Little Shelford," says the Commissioner, "a worse case than this
was given me by the Acting Overseer, of one family, a man, wife, and
four sons, living together, receiving 24s. weekly from the parish"!
The effect of this pauperising system could not fail to be very
disastrous--it placed a direct premium upon idleness, as a man was sure
of a living from the rates even if he did not work, and also a bounty
upon wages, or an inducement for the farmer to pay a much lower wage
than he could afford. The ultimate effect of both these circumstances
was that there was such a large amount of pauper labour that it became
necessary, in order to relieve the rates, to take care that such labour
should be employed before any other. In some cases the unemployed men
were actually put up to auction, or rather {165} their labour, and an
instance is mentioned in the Commissioners' report of ten men in one
parish being knocked down to one farmer for five shillings, and that
out of a body of 170 men, 70 were let in this manner! The parish also
meddled and muddled in the labour market by making a contract with some
individual to have certain work performed by the paupers at a given
price, the parish paying the paupers. The making of the Newmarket Road
Cutting, near Royston, was an instance of this.
Parochial affairs presented this extraordinary condition of things that
for the industrious, thrifty man who was desirous of laying up
something for a rainy day, there was no hope! Take the following,
which I copy verbatim from the Commissioners' report--
"We have already quoted from Mr. Cowell's report a letter from Mr.
Nash, of Royston, in which he states that he had been forced by the
Overseer of Reed to dismiss two excellent labourers for the purpose of
introducing two paupers into their place. Mr. Nash adds that of the
men dismissed, one,
"Was John Walford, a parishioner of Barley, a steady, industrious,
trustworthy, single man, who, by long and rigid economy, had saved
about L100. On being dismissed, Walford applied in vain to the farmers
at Barley for employment! _It was known that he had saved money, and
could not come on the parish, although any of them would willingly have
taken him had it been otherwise_! After living a few months without
being able to get any work he bought a cart and two horses, and has
ever since obtained a precarious subsistence by carrying corn to London
for use of the Cambridge merchants; but just now the current of corn is
northward and he has nothing to do; and at any time he would gladly
have exchanged his employment for that of a day labourer, if he could
have obtained work. No reflection is intended on the Overseers of
Barley; they only do what all others are expected to do; though the
young men point at Walford and call him a fool for not spending his
money at a public-house as they do; adding that then he would get work"!
A somewhat similar instance is supplied to the Commissioners by Mr.
Wedd who is spoken of in the report as "an eminent solicitor of
Royston."
Here is another case:--"A man without children in this neighbourhood
emerged from poverty and bequeathed many pecuniary legacies, some L100
apiece, and others larger and smaller, to a number of agricultural
labourers who were his distant relatives. As soon as the legacies are
paid the legatees would not be able to obtain any employment in
husbandry until the legacies are spent! The employment in this parish
is all wanted for those who from deep poverty can claim it of the
Overseers, and these legatees will have no {166} title to claim
employment till they have reduced themselves again to poverty by having
spent all their legacies!"
It was not, however, so much in favour of the farmer as the system
might seem, for they got the worst of the labour--of the two whom Mr.
Nash was obliged to take in the above instance, one killed a valuable
mare, and the other he was obliged to prosecute for stealing corn--for
the farmer was obliged to take his share of the unemployed labour, and
often had a dozen idle worthless men on his hands at times when five or
six would have done the work.
Those of us to whom the memory of the bent-backed figure of the
"wheat-barn tasker" in every village, is now but a dim vision of the
past, can hardly realize how bitter must have been the feeling when the
threshing machine came to do away with the flail. A simple matter it
may seem, yet the peasant revolt which it brought about was for the
time more universal, and more effective, than Wat Tyler's rebellion,
because, without Wat Tyler's organization, it found a means of working
in every village. To the mind of the labourer this uprooting of the
habitual daily work of a thousand years, taken in connection with the
coming movement against allowing the labourer to go to the overseer to
make up his wages out of the rates--these things together presented to
his mind an outlook which was bad enough to arouse the sluggish mind of
the peasant in every village. So he set about upon a course of
retaliation and unreasoning revenge. The threshing machine was
threatening their work, and so upon the threshing machine wherever they
found it the labourers set with a vengeance. The effects of that
vengeance are traceable in the criminal returns for the period. Thus
the number of criminals for trial for malicious offences against
property, which for the previous five or six years had scarcely
averaged fifty a year, in the year 1831 went up at a hound to a total
of 1,245, of which no less than 921 were for "destroying threshing
machines." Riots, incendiarism, and sending letters threatening to
burn houses, &c., also went up almost to a corresponding extent.
One or two local examples of pauper insolence and tyranny may be given
from the Commissioners' report:--
"The tone assumed by the paupers towards those who dispense relief is
generally very insolent and often assumes a more fearful character. At
Great Gransden, the Overseer's wife told me that two days before my
visit, two paupers came to her husband demanding an increase of
allowance; he refused them, showing them that they had the full
allowance sanctioned by the magistrates' scale; they swore, and
threatened he should repent of it; and such was their violence, that
she called them back, and prevailed on her husband to make them further
allowance. Mr. Faircloth, by a stricter system, reduced the rates at
Croydon; he became unpopular among the labourers, and after {167}
harvest they gathered in a riotous body about his threshing machine and
broke it to pieces. At Guilden Morden, in the same neighbourhood, a
burning took place of Mr. Butterfield's stacks to the amount of L1,500
damage. Mr. Butterfield was Overseer, and the Magistrates have
committed, on strong circumstantial evidence, a man to whom he had
denied relief, because he had refused to work for it. I have found
that the apprehension of this dreadful and easily perpetrated mischief
has greatly affected the minds of the rural parish officers, making the
power of the paupers over the funds provided for their relief almost
absolute as regards any discretion of the Overseers."
Report of Mr. Power, Assistant Commissioner for Cambs.:--
"If an Overseer refuses relief, or gives less than the pauper thinks
himself entitled to, he (the Overseer) was liable to be summoned before
Justices to defend himself against the charge of inhumanity and
oppression, and unhappily the applicant, who has been refused relief,
has frequently recourse to a much more summary remedy than the
interference of the Magistrates. The tribunal which enforces it sits,
not at the Petty Sessions, but at the beershop--it compels obedience,
not by summons and distress, but by violence and conflagration. The
most painful and the most formidable portion of our evidence, consists
of the proof that in many districts the principal obstacle to
improvement is the well-founded dread of these atrocities."
But worse than mere insolence of words were the acts of lawlessness and
crime which prevailed. These items occur in a number of typical
questions and answers in the report of the Commissioners, extracts from
which I give below, with the name of the Overseers or other
informants:--
BOURN (Mr. Whittet.)
The poverty which compelled the farmer to use the threshing machine,
bore down the labourer to unprecedented distress, and drove him to
desperation.
FOWLMERE.
The lawlessness, &c., here was "Chiefly attributable to a long course
of bad execution of the Poor-laws. The cause of the riots and fires
was chiefly the cruel policy of paying the single men much below the
fair rate of wages. The object of the riots and fires was the same,
not the wanton destruction of property, but to obtain higher wages
which was too generally the result.
"Immediately after the fire at Guilden Morden, in 1831, I went to the
parish and found the farmers assembled in Vestry, the very morning
after the fire, consulting what they had better do to put their
labourers in a better state by raising their wages. I remonstrated
with them upon the impolicy of doing it then, as it would be a bonus
for such wickedness." [William Metcalfe and William Wedd.]
{168}
MELDRETH.
John Burr (churchwarden) gives this answer:--
"Keep up the price of labour or there will be always cause to fear." A
very fair echo of the Guilden Morden farmers' sentiments referred to
above.
ROYSTON.
Dissatisfaction at the decreased parish allowance tended to produce
these acts of insubordination. [Gamaliel Docura, Vestry Clerk and
Assistant Overseer.]
WIMPOLE.
The fires were lighted up by malice in the breasts of the labourers
because the farmers pinched them in their wages; the riots may be
called an effort to recover their former rate of wages, and answered
their object. [Robert Withers, Land Agent.]
STOTFOLD.
At Stotfold the late Mr. John George Fordham, of Royston, with a
foresight and courage that did him lasting credit, used his influence,
at personal risk to himself, in suppressing the riots.
During the years of 1830-5, a period of great discontent ensued, and
incendiary fires continued to be of alarming frequency. Ashwell and
Bassingbourn suffered severely. Of the former it is said that nearly
all one side of the place was burned, and of the latter, in the course
of three or four years, most of the farm homesteads were destroyed.
The fires at Shelford deserve notice here, on account of the remarkable
circumstances surrounding them. In the first place the perpetrator,
John Stallan, was the last man executed for the crime of arson, and in
the second place his conviction was brought about by a strange piece of
circumstantial evidence. Stallan was a labourer of respectable
character and in constant work, and became one of the men attached to
the fire engine. The fire in respect to which he was convicted, was
discovered in time for the owner to run to it and pull out some of the
thatch, and with it came out a ball of rag, and in it a piece of
ignited tinder. This was found on examination to be made up of
material including a piece of a lady's dress of which the pattern was
distinct, and was found to be a piece of a dress given by a Mrs.
Headley, to Stallan's wife, the remaining part of the dress being found
in his cottage! He was arrested, and at first tried to fix the taking
of the rag for the tinder upon a half-witted lad, but being unable to
shield himself behind this subterfuge, he next went so far as to try
and fix the crime upon his own wife, and again in this he conspicuously
failed, and at the Cambs. Assizes was convicted and sentenced to be
hung, and was executed in December, 1833, after confessing that he had
been the author of all the ten Shelford fires, and that his only motive
for {169} committing the crimes was _to get the ale and the money he
received for helping to extinguish the fires_!
Under such a condition of things as that described above, the farmer
had considerable difficulty in getting any insurance offices to insure
his produce.
One notable riot occurred at Fowlmere (about 1833-35). Warrants were
obtained for the apprehension of the ringleaders, and for executing
this warrant the Earl of Hardwicke, as Lord Lieutenant, came to Royston
and swore in about twenty special constables, whose ornamental staves
sometimes turn up now amongst local curiosities. These constables went
over to Fowlmere on horseback, under the command of a justice of the
peace, Mr. Hawkins, who then lived at the Priory, and was an uncle of
Mr. Justice Hawkins. On arriving at Fowlmere the posse of armed
"specials" found most of the labouring population of the village--male
and female--assembled in the open space near the Swan, armed with
sticks and other weapons, prepared to resist the execution of the
warrant! After some persuasion and the reading of the Riot Act, a
skirmish ensued, in which sticks, fire-irons and shovels, mixed with
constables' staves, produced some cuts and bruises, and some torn
clothes. Eventually the party of the law triumphed, the ringleaders
were secured, and marched off under escort of the special constables to
Cambridge gaol.
Out of the parochial inertia and the demoralization, discontent and
lawlessness, which we have seen springing up, a full crop, from the old
Poor-law, the Commission of 1831 presented a report which left no
alternative but a sweeping measure of reform of the parochial life if
England was to be saved from its own children, who, living a
parasitical life, were eating away the vitals of that upon which they
thrived. Salvation from within the parish was now well-nigh
impossible. So the new Poor-law of 1834 swept away the parish as a
unit of Poor-law administration--the Churchwardens and Overseers were
no longer to meet after service in Church to consider applications for
relief or the apprenticing of pauper children. The new order provided
for grouping a score, more or less, of such parishes into a Union, with
some uniform system of administration which should be less dependent
upon the circumstances and prejudices of an individual parish.
The Royston Union was formed in 1835, consisting of 29 parishes in
Herts., Cambs., and Essex, as at present.
The first chairman was John Bendyshe, Esq., J.P., of Kneesworth, and
John George Fordham, Esq., was vice-chairman. Mr. Henry Thurnall was
appointed Clerk (an office he continued to hold for forty years), Mr.
Thomas Wortham, auditor, and Mr. J. E. Fordham, of Melbourn Bury,
treasurer.
{170}
For the purposes of the administration of relief, the Union was at
first divided into three districts, or divisions as they were called,
and a relieving officer for each was appointed at L80 a year salary.
This arrangement, however, only lasted a short time, and a
re-arrangement was made dividing the Union into two districts as at
present, with a Relieving Officer for each at a salary of L120 a year.
Previous to the erection of the "Central Workhouse," as it was at first
called, the Guardians held their meetings weekly at the Red Lion Inn,
on Fridays, and the first meeting held on 3rd July, 1835, lasted, we
are told, from ten o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the
afternoon.
One of the first acts of the new Authority was to secure a suitable
site for the erection of a Workhouse upon, and having secured of Mr.
Luke his meadow in Baldock Street, plans were drawn up by Mr. William
Thomas Nash for a building to accommodate 350 inmates; the contract for
the building was obtained, and carried out by Mr. Gray, of Litlington,
and a loan of L7,700 was obtained from the Loan Commissioners.
Before the new order of things had gone far, and ere the walls of the
Workhouse were up, the paupers of the old school set up a sort of
vested interest in the old order, became dangerously discontented at
the prospect of having to work, and the ill-advised action of
individuals fanned this into a flame of indignation under which the
pauperised element in the villages was encouraged to look upon the
great central Workhouse arising on the borders of Royston Heath as a
sort of bastille, where for the misfortune of being poor they were to
be shut away from their kith and kin, and no longer to have any claim
upon the Overseer for that convenient subsidy of "making up" whenever
they did not think well to work. So strong did the feeling become that
there were disturbances in several parishes, especially in the two
Mordens, where the opprobrious Relieving Officer met with anything but
a friendly reception on his first visits, and certain individuals from
that parish, on applying for relief, found that the supply was cut off
until it was safe for the Relieving Officer to enter their parish!
About the same time a dreadful fire occurred at Bassingbourn which was
so closely associated in the popular mind with the prevailing
discontent that the services of a "Bow Street Runner" to scour the
district in search of the incendiary were paid for out of the rates.
Efforts were made to reconcile the inhabitants in the villages to the
new order of things, and for a very sensible letter or address to the
inhabitants which was written (and printed and circulated) by the late
Mr. Henry Thurnall, the writer was specially commended by the Poor-law
Commissioners.
{171}
Another active and sagacious worker in the cause of popularising the
reform was Mr. John George Fordham (the vice-chairman of the Board),
who did not hesitate to pay repeated visits to all parts of the
district during the riots already described, and endeavoured by every
reasonable means to quell the popular irritation which had existed for
some time before the formation of the Union in anticipation of the new
Poor-law. For similar services to these, Mr. Fordham had already
received the thanks of Lord Verulam, Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire,
and was placed on the Commission of the Peace as a magistrate for
Hertfordshire, the first Nonconformist to be made a county magistrate
for Herts. By the time the new Central Workhouse at Royston was built,
the worst forms of popular discontent would have subsided but for the
action of one or two individuals of note upon whom it is fitting that a
few words should here be bestowed.
The principal agents were two clergymen in the district--the Rev.
Thomas Clack, curate of Guilden Morden, and the Rev. Frederick Herbert
Maberley, curate of Bourn, Cambs., who had for some time convened
meetings of agricultural labourers in their own and surrounding
parishes, and harangued them upon the supposed horrors of the new
_Poor-law Prison_ to which they would be consigned if they did not rise
as one man to stand up for their rights! Growing bolder in their
agitation these gentlemen conceived the design of calling a monster
meeting from all the parishes belonging to the Royston Union, to be
held on Royston Heath in front of the unfinished building. An attack
upon, and the demolition of the building, was freely talked about and
expected, and from the temper which had been already displayed in
former riots, the event was looked forward to with some anxiety! The
handbill convening the meeting was of an inflammatory kind, and the new
Board of Guardians thought it necessary to call a special meeting of
their body at the Red Lion to decide what should be done. The outcome
of this meeting was that the Clerk (Mr. Thurnall), Mr. W. T. Nash, and
Mr. John Phillips were appointed a deputation to wait upon the Poor-law
Commissioners and upon the Home Secretary, to see what measures they
would advise, for the Parish Constable and the Beadle, and the swearing
in of special constables was about all that the local authority could
muster for the preservation of the peace.
This deputation waited upon Lord John Russell, then Home Secretary,
with the result that an inspector and a sufficient police force were
promised to be despatched from London to Royston on the day before that
announced for the meeting. Letters were also sent to the Lord
Lieutenants of both counties, and to the promoters of the meeting,
warning the latter of their responsibility should any serious
disturbance occur.
{172}
The day appointed for the meeting was Wednesday, 22nd June, 1836.
Inside the unfinished building on the morning of that day there is a
strange and an anxious company assembled--the Earl of Hardwicke, Lord
Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, is there, several local Magistrates,
several of the Guardians, and a posse of about a score of Metropolitan
police (the County police, as we now know them, had not then come into
existence), all assembled to await the threatened storming of the
bastille, as the new Workhouse was called by the agitators! It was
market day and the town and neighbourhood of Royston were in a
considerable state of alarm and excitement, in consequence of the
expected meeting. The handbill convening the meeting had been freely
circulated, calling upon the labouring population to "come in
thousands" and assemble opposite the new _Poor-law Prison_! This
address was signed by the Rev. H. F. Maberley. The Magistrates of the
division issued a caution to the people, and this was placarded about
the neighbouring villages, warning all persons that if any breach of
the peace took place, every individual present would be liable to be
apprehended and punished according to law. As a further precaution, "A
most efficient body of police" was sent down under the command of
Inspector Harpur, as stated above.
Meanwhile there was, we are told, by the old chronicler, [_Cambridge
Chronicle_] "a deep feeling among the upper and middle classes of
society, that imminent danger to the public peace was to be apprehended
from a meeting of the labourers called to petition on the subject of
the new Poor-law opposite a new unfinished house of considerable
extent, by a handbill characterising the new building as a new Poor-law
Prison, and therefore no one chose to interfere in the discussions of
the meeting."
"The labourers, with a large proportion of women and children,
continued to arrive in wagons, carts, and on foot, all through the
morning, and they sat down opposite the Workhouse on the road side."
Being questioned they said "They expected they had come to pull down
the Workhouse, but they were waiting for the gentlemen who called the
meeting"! They "appeared to consider their object one of ordinary
duty, as they spoke without excitement or intemperate language." Soon
after 12 o'clock the clerical champion, Rev. H. F. Maberley, arrived,
accompanied by the Rev. T. Clack, curate of Guilden Morden, and they
soon commenced the great business of demonstrating, but possibly from
hearing of the Home Secretary's reinforcements, they assembled the
people on the Heath a distance of a quarter-of-a-mile from the
Workhouse, and Mr. Clack opened the proceedings in a jubilant strain
with a Scriptural quotation, "This is the day the Lord has made; we
will rejoice and be glad in it." Some 1,500 persons, of whom at least
two-thirds were said to have been {173} women and children, listened to
the harangue "with listless indifference," possibly because words did
not pull the building down. The Rev. H. F. Maberley declaimed against
separating old men and women and the prospective hardships of the new
order of things. The whole proceedings lasted several hours, and a
storm of rain did not help the ardour of the crusaders.
At the conclusion, however, the people drew the rev. gentlemen in a
wagon through some of the streets of the town and the threatened storm
passed off without any breach of the peace occurring. The chronicle of
the time says:--"The labourers went away apparently dissatisfied with
the result, having learned nothing to instruct them," and "the whole
was the completest failure ever experienced as to any public meeting."
The Guardians laid the matter before the Bishop of the Diocese as to
the conduct of the clergymen named, but in the general satisfaction at
the peaceful ending of the affair, things gradually settled down into
the system as we now know it.
The old parish Workhouses were sold, pulled down, or otherwise dealt
with, and the proceeds were in some cases invested in Consols and still
appear occasionally as an item to the credit of the parish in parochial
balance sheets. The Royston Parish Workhouse on the Warren was sold by
auction and realized L315, leaving, after expenses and the paying of a
parish loan, advanced by Mr. Phillips, a balance of L166.
The new Workhouse was commenced in October, 1835, upon the site of an
old barn the property of Mr. Luke, which had just been blown down. It
was finished in September, 1836, the Royston paupers being removed from
the old Workhouse on the Warren and those from the villages brought in,
notwithstanding the indignation of the Revs. Maberley and Clack.
For some years the new system was the subject of not a little hostile
criticism and the meetings were not always harmonious.
The Poor-law expenditure under the old system and the new showed a
striking contrast. For the whole country before the new system, and
for the last two years under the old, the amount of the poor-rate was
L6,913,883, and for the two years immediately afterwards the rate was
L4,381,185, showing a reduction of more than one-third of the
expenditure. In some cases in the rural districts the figures were
much more remarkable, and in one parish in the Buntingford Union the
expenditure for the last year under the old system was L800, and the
first under the new it was less than L300. It may be that--
Who holds a power
But newly gained is ever stern of mood.
Even so, there was certainly plenty of room both for reform without
hardship, and considerateness with economy.
{174}
It is mentioned in the Parliamentary returns that in the Royston Union
in the winter of 1834, the number of able-bodied men maintained during
the winter out of the poor-rate was 361, whereas in the month of
December, 1836, after the new system had got into operation, there were
only twelve applications for "work or money." All these had orders for
the House, which were accepted by seven of them, two of whom stayed in
only two days, three only stayed in three days, and two, seven days
each. The amounts spent in relief of the poor at earlier periods, in
the reign of George III., were as follows:--In 1801 (the year of
scarcity), L4,017,871; in 1813, it had risen to L6,656,106; and in each
of the years, 1818-20, the figures reached L7,000,000, a figure which
was not again reached till 1832.
The late Mr. Henry Thurnall, though then but a young man, took an
active part in collecting evidence for the Poor-law Commission in this
district, and also in reconciling the working men to the new order of
things, and he was the author of a pamphlet in the form of an address
by a working-man to working-men, addressed to "The Labourers of
England," from which it appears that in some places the new Relieving
Officer was at first so unpopular that he was pelted when he came into
the villages to pay out his relief money!