This riot, which Mrs. Gaskell describes so graphically, did
actually take place on February 23rd, 1797, and the prototype
of Daniel Robson was hanged at York, for encouraging the
rioters. Mrs. Gaskell got copies of the documents relating to
the trial and execution, and she interviewed several of the old
residents of Whitby, when writing her story.
Everyone who was capable of understanding the state of feeling in
Monkshaven at this time must have been aware that at any moment an
explosion might take place; and probably there were those who had
judgment enough to be surprised that it did not take place sooner than
it did. For until February there were only occasional cries and growls
of rage, as the press-gang made their captures first here, then there;
often, apparently, tranquil for days, then heard of at some distance
along the coast, then carrying off a seaman from the very heart of the
town. They seemed afraid of provoking any general hostility, such as
that which had driven them from Shields, and would have conciliated the
inhabitants if they could; the officers on the service and on board the
three men-of-war coming often into the town, spending largely, talking to
all with cheery friendliness, and making themselves very popular in such
society as they could obtain access to at the houses of the neighbouring
magistrates or at the rectory. But this, however agreeable, did not
forward the object the impress service had in view; and, accordingly,
a more decided step was taken at a time when, although there was no
apparent evidence as to the fact, the town was full of the Greenland
mariners coming quietly in to renew their yearly engagements, which,
when done, would legally entitle them to protection from impressment.
One night—it was on a Saturday, February 23rd, when there was a bitter
black frost, with a north-east wind sweeping through the streets,
and men and women were close shut in their houses—all were startled
in their household content and warmth by the sound of the fire-bell
busily swinging, and pealing out for help. The fire-bell was kept in
the market-house where High Street and Bridge Street met: everyone knew
what it meant. Some dwelling, or maybe a boiling-house, was on fire, and
neighbourly assistance was summoned with all speed, in a town where no
water was laid on, nor fire-engines kept in readiness. Men snatched up
their hats, and rushed out, wives following, some with the readiest wraps
they could lay hands on, with which to clothe the over-hasty husbands,
others from that mixture of dread and curiosity which draws people to
the scene of any disaster. Those of the market people who were making
the best of their way homewards, having waited in the town till the
early darkness concealed their path, turned back at the sound of the
ever-clanging fire-bell, ringing out faster and faster as if the danger
became every instant more pressing.
As men ran against or alongside of each other, their breathless question
was ever, “Where is it?” and no one could tell; so they pressed onwards
into the market-place, sure of obtaining the information desired there,
where the fire-bell kept calling out with its furious metal tongue.
The dull oil lamps in the adjoining streets only made darkness visible
in the thronged market-place, where the buzz of many men’s unanswered
questions was rising louder and louder. A strange feeling of dread crept
over those nearest to the closed market-house. Above them in the air the
bell was still clanging; but before them was a door fast shut and locked;
no one to speak and tell them why they were summoned—where they ought to
be. They were at the heart of the mystery, and it was a silent blank!
Their unformed dread took shape at the cry from the outside of the crowd,
from where men were still coming down the eastern side of Bridge Street.
“The gang! the gang!” shrieked out someone. “The gang are upon us! Help!
help!” Then the fire-bell had been a decoy; a sort of seething the kid
in its mother’s milk, leading men into a snare through their kindliest
feelings. Some dull sense of this added to utter dismay, and made all
struggle and strain to get to all the outlets save that in which a fight
was now going on; the swish of heavy whips, the thud of bludgeons, the
groans, the growls of wounded or infuriated men, coming with terrible
distinctness through the darkness to the quickened ear of fear.
A breathless group rushed up the blackness of a narrow entry to stand
still awhile, and recover strength for fresh running. For a time nothing
but heavy pants and gasps were heard amongst them. No one knew his
neighbour, and their good feeling, so lately abused and preyed upon, made
them full of suspicion. The first who spoke was recognized by his voice.
“Is it thee, Daniel Robson?” asked his neighbour, in a low tone.
“Ay! Who else should it be.”
“A dunno.”
“If a am to be anyone else, I’d like to be a chap of nobbut eight stun.
A’m welly done for!”
“It were as bloody a shame as ever I heered on. Who’s to go t’ t’ next
fire, a’d like to know!”
“A tell yo’ what, lads,” said Daniel, recovering his breath, but speaking
in gasps. “We were a pack o’ cowards to let ’em carry off yon chaps as
easy as they did, a’m reckoning!”
“A think so, indeed,” said another voice.
Daniel went on:
“We was two hunder, if we was a man; an t’ gang has niver numbered above
twelve.”
“But they was armed. A seen t’ glitter on their cutlasses,” spoke out a
fresh voice.
“What then!” replied he who had latest come, and who stood at the mouth
of the entry. “A had my whaling-knife wi’ me i’ my pea-jacket as my
missus threw at me, and a’d ha’ ripped ’em up as soon as winking, if a
could ha’ thought what was best to do wi’ that ⸺ bell making such a din
right above us. A man can but die onest, and we was ready to go int’ t’
fire for t’ save folks’ lives, and yet we’d none on us t’ wit to see as
we might ha’ saved yon poor chaps as screeched out for help.”
“They’ll ha’ getten ’em to t’ Randyvow by now,” said someone.
“They cannot tak’ ’em aboard till morning; t’ tide won’t serve,” said the
last speaker but one.
Daniel Robson spoke out the thought that was surging up into the brain of
everyone there.
“There’s a chance for us a’. How many be we?” By dint of touching each
other the numbers were counted. Seven. “Seven. But if us seven turns
out and rouses t’ town, there’ll be many a score ready to gang t’ t’
Mariners’ Arms, and it’ll be easy work reskying them chaps as is pressed.
Us seven, each man-jack on us, go and seek up his friends, and get him as
well as he can to t’ church steps; then, mebbe, there’ll be some there
as’ll not be so soft as we was, letting them poor chaps be carried off
from under our noses, just because our ears was busy listening to yon
confounded bell, whose clip-clapping tongue a’ll tear out afore this week
is out.”
Before Daniel had finished speaking, those nearest to the entrance
muttered their assent to his project, and had stolen off, keeping to the
darkest side of the streets and lanes, which they threaded in different
directions; most of them going straight as sleuth-hounds to the haunts
of the wildest and most desperate portion of the seafaring population of
Monkshaven. For, in the breasts of many, revenge for the misery and alarm
of the past winter took a deeper and more ferocious form than Daniel
had thought of when he made his proposal of a rescue. To him it was an
adventure like many he had been engaged in in his younger days; indeed,
the liquor he had drunk had given him a fictitious youth for the time;
and it was more in the light of a rough frolic of which he was to be the
leader that he limped along (always lame from old attacks of rheumatism),
chuckling to himself at the apparent stillness of the town, which gave
no warning to the press-gang at the Rendezvous of anything in the wind.
Daniel, too, had his friends to summon; old hands like himself, but
“deep uns,” also, like himself, as he imagined.
It was nine o’clock when all who were summoned met at the church steps;
and by nine o’clock, Monkshaven, in those days, was more quiet and asleep
than many a town at present is at midnight. The church and churchyard
above them were flooded with silver light, for the moon was high in the
heavens: the irregular steps were here and there in pure white clearness,
here and there in blackest shadow. But more than half-way up to the top
men clustered like bees; all pressing so as to be near enough to question
those who stood nearest to the planning of the attack. Here and there
a woman, with wild gestures and shrill voice that no entreaty would
hush down to the whispered pitch of the men, pushed her way through the
crowd—this one imploring immediate action, that adjuring those around her
to smite and spare not those who had carried off her “man”—the father,
the breadwinner. Low down in the darkened, silent town were many whose
hearts went with the angry and excited crowd, and who would bless them
and caress them for that night’s deeds. Daniel soon found himself a
laggard in planning, compared to some of those around him. But when, with
the rushing sound of many steps and but few words, they had arrived at
the blank, dark, shut-up Mariners’ Arms, they paused in surprise at the
uninhabited look of the whole house: it was Daniel once more who took the
lead.
“Speak ’em fair,” said he; “try good words first. Hobbs ’ll mebbe let
’em out quiet, if we can catch a word wi’ him. A say, Hobbs,” said he,
raising his voice, “is a’ shut up for t’ night; for a’d be glad of a
glass. A’m Daniel Robson, thou knows.”
Not one word in reply, any more than from the tomb; but his speech
had been heard nevertheless. The crowd behind him began to jeer and
to threaten; there was no longer any keeping down their voices, their
rage, their terrible oaths. If doors and windows had not of late been
strengthened with bars of iron in anticipation of some such occasion,
they would have been broken in with the onset of the fierce and now
yelling crowd who rushed against them with the force of a battering-ram,
to recoil in baffled rage from the vain assault. No sign, no sound from
within, in that breathless pause.
“Come away round here! a’ve found a way to t’ back o’ behint, where
belike it’s not so well fenced,” said Daniel, who had made way for
younger and more powerful men to conduct the assault, and had employed
his time meanwhile in examining the back premises. The men rushed after
him, almost knocking him down, as he made his way into the lane into
which the doors of the outbuildings belonging to the inn opened. Daniel
had already broken the fastening of that which opened into a damp,
mouldy-smelling shippon, in one corner of which a poor lean cow shifted
herself on her legs, in an uneasy, restless manner, as her sleeping-place
was invaded by as many men as could cram themselves into the dark hold.
Daniel, at the end farthest from the door, was almost smothered before he
could break down the rotten wooden shutter, that, when opened, displayed
the weedy yard of the old inn, the full clear light defining the outline
of each blade of grass by the delicate black shadow behind.
This hole, used to give air and light to what had once been a stable,
in the days when horse travellers were in the habit of coming to the
Mariners’ Arms, was large enough to admit the passage of a man; and
Daniel, in virtue of its discovery, was the first to get through. But
he was larger and heavier than he had been; his lameness made him less
agile, and the impatient crowd behind him gave him a helping push that
sent him down on the round stones with which the yard was paved, and
for the time disabled him so much that he could only just crawl out of
the way of leaping feet and heavy nailed boots, which came through the
opening till the yard was filled with men, who now set up a fierce,
derisive shout, which, to their delight, was answered from within. No
more silence, no more dead opposition: a living struggle, a glowing,
raging fight! and Daniel thought he should be obliged to sit there still,
leaning against the wall, inactive, while the strife and the action were
going on in which he had once been foremost.
He saw the stones torn up; he saw them used with good effect on the
unguarded back-door; he cried out in useless warning as he saw the upper
windows open, and aim taken among the crowd; but just then the door
gave way, and there was an involuntary forward motion in the throng, so
that no one was disabled by the shots as to prevent their forcing their
way in with the rest. And now the sounds came veiled by the walls as of
some raging ravening beast growling over his prey; the noise came and
went—once utterly ceased; and Daniel raised himself with difficulty to
ascertain the cause, when again the roar came clear and fresh, and men
poured into the yard again, shouting and rejoicing over the rescued
victims of the press-gang. Daniel hobbled up, and shouted, and rejoiced,
and shook hands with the rest, hardly caring to understand that the
lieutenant and his gang had quitted the house by a front window, and
that all had poured out in search of them; the greater part, however,
returning to liberate the prisoners, and then glut their vengeance on
the house and its contents.
From all the windows, upper and lower, furniture was now being thrown
into the yard. The smash of glass, the heavier crash of wood, the
cries, the laughter, the oaths, all excited Daniel to the utmost; and,
forgetting his bruises, he pressed forwards to lend a helping hand. The
wild, rough success of his scheme almost turned his head. He hurraed at
every flagrant piece of destruction; he shook hands with everyone around
him, and, at last, when the destroyers inside paused to take breath, he
cried out:
“If a was as young as onest a was, a’d have t’ Randyvow down, and mak’ a
bonfire on it. We’d ring t’ fire-bell t’ some purpose.”
No sooner said than done. Their excitement was ready to take the
slightest hint of mischief; old chairs, broken tables, odd drawers,
smashed chests were rapidly and skilfully heaped into a pyramid, and
one, who at the first broaching of the idea had gone for live coals the
speedier to light up the fire, came now through the crowd with a large
shovelful of red-hot cinders. The rioters stopped to take breath and look
on like children at the uncertain flickering blaze, which sprang high
one moment and dropped down the next only to creep along the base of the
heap of wreck, and make secure of its future work. Then the lurid blaze
darted up wild, high, and irrepressible; and the men around gave a cry of
fierce exultation, and in rough mirth began to try and push each other
in. In one of the pauses of the rushing, roaring noise of the flames,
the moaning low and groan of the poor alarmed cow fastened up in the
shippon caught Daniel’s ear, and he understood her groans as well as if
they had been words. He limped out of the yard through the now deserted
house, where men were busy at the mad work of destruction, and found his
way back to the lane into which the shippon opened. The cow was dancing
about at the roar and dazzle and heat of the fire; but Daniel knew how to
soothe her, and in a few minutes he had a rope round her neck, and led
her gently out from the scene of her alarm. He was still in the lane when
Simpson, the man-of-all-work at the Mariners’ Arms, crept out of some
hiding-place in the deserted out-building, and stood suddenly face to
face with Robson.
The man was white with rage and fear.
“Here, tak’ thy beast, and lead her where she’ll noan hear yon cries and
shouts. She’s fairly moidered wi’ heat an’ noise.”
“They’re brenning every rag I have i’ t’ world,” gasped out Simpson; “I
niver had much, and now I’m a beggar.”
“Well! thou shouldn’t ha’ turned again’ thine own townfolks, and
harboured t’ gang. Sarves thee reet. A’d noan be here leading beasts if a
were as young as a were; a’d be in t’ thick on it.”
“It was thee set ’em on—a heerd thee—a see’d thee a helping on ’em t’
break in; they’d ne’r ha’ thought on attacking t’ house, and setting
fire to yon things if thou hadn’t spoken on it.” Simpson was now fairly
crying. But Daniel did not realise what the loss of all the small
property he had in the world was to the poor fellow (rapscallion though
he was, broken-down, unprosperous ne’er-do-weel!) in his pride at the
good work he believed he had set on foot.
“Ay,” said he; “it’s a great thing for folk to have a chap for t’ lead
’em wi’ a head on his shoulders. A misdoubt me if there were a felly
there as would ha’ thought o’ routling out yon wasps’ nest; it taks a
deal o’ mother-wit to be up to things. But t’ gang’ll niver harbour there
again, one while. A only wish we’d cotched ’em. An’ a should like t’ ha’
given Hobbs a bit o’ my mind.”
“He’s had his sauce,” said Simpson dolefully. “He and me is ruined.”
“Tut, tut, thou’s got thy brother, he’s rich enough. And Hobbs ’ll do a
deal better; he’s had his lesson now, and he’ll stick to his own side
time to come. Here, tak’ thy beast an’ look after her, for my bones is
aching. An’ mak’ thysel’ scarce, for some o’ them fellys has getten their
blood up, an’ won’t be for treating thee o’er well if they fall in wi’
thee.”
“Hobbs ought to be served out; it were he as made t’ bargain wi’
lieutenant; and he’s off safe wi’ his wife and his money-bag, and a’m
left a beggar this night in Monkshaven street. My brother and me has had
words, and he’ll do nought for me but curse me. A had three crown-pieces,
and a good pair o’ breeches, and a shirt, and a dare say better nor two
pair o’ stockings. A wish t’ gang, and thee, and Hobbs, and them mad folk
up yonder were a’ down i’ hell. A do.”
“Coom, lad,” said Daniel, noways offended at his companion’s wish on his
behalf. “A’m noan flush mysel’, but here’s half a crown, and tuppence,
it’s a’ a’ve gotten wi’ me; but it’ll keep thee and t’ beast i’ food and
shelter this neet, and get thee a glass o’ comfort, too. A had thought o’
taking one mysel’, but a shannot ha’ a penny left, so a’ll just toddle
whoam to my missus.”
Daniel was not in the habit of feeling any emotion at actions not
directly affecting himself; or else he might have despised the poor
wretch who immediately clutched at the money and overwhelmed that man
with slobbery thanks whom he had not a minute before been cursing. But
all Simpson’s stronger passions had been long ago used up; now he only
faintly liked and disliked, where once he loved and hated; his only
vehement feeling was for himself; that cared for, other men might wither
or flourish as best suited them.
Many of the doors which had been close shut when the crowd went down the
High Street were partially open as Daniel slowly returned; and light
streamed from them on the otherwise dark road. The news of the successful
attempt at rescue had reached those who had sate in mourning and in
desolation an hour or two ago, and several of these pressed forwards
as from their watching corner they recognised Daniel’s approach; they
pressed forward into the street to shake him by the hand, to thank him
(for his name had been bruited abroad as one of those who had planned the
affair), and at several places he was urged to have a dram—urgency that
he was loath for many reasons to refuse, but his increasing uneasiness
and pain made him for once abstinent, and only anxious to get home and
rest. But he could not help being both touched and flattered at the way
in which those who formed his “world” looked upon him as a hero; and was
not insensible to the words of blessing which a wife, whose husband had
been impressed and rescued this night, poured down upon him as he passed.
“There, there—dunnot crack thy throat wi’ blessing. Thy man would ha’
done as much for me, though mebbe he mightn’t ha’ shown so much gumption
and capability; but them’s gifts, and not to be proud on.”
When Daniel reached the top of the hill on the road home, he turned to
look round; but he was lame and bruised. He had gone along slowly, the
fire had pretty nearly died out; only a red hue in the air about the
houses at the end of the long High Street, and a hot lurid mist against
the hill-side beyond where the Mariners’ Arms had stood, were still left
as signs and token of the deed of violence.
Daniel looked and chuckled. “That comes o’ ringing fire-bell,” said
he to himself; “it were shame for it to be telling a lie, poor oud
story-teller.”