Post by Dave on Jun 19, 2010 22:18:16 GMT
While I have found out the stories of the Hatherleigh riots have been recorded and I believe are in print, I have not been able to find the story on the internet, all I have found out is the riot was caused by unemployed workmen.
What has been fascinating to learn was that in Devon and many other places many railway riots occurred. In 1863 LSWR who had gained control of the North Devon Railway in 1862 put forward their plans to the government to open a line between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe. This was rejected on the grounds the route was not the best one between the two towns.
Riots erupted on the streets of Ilfracombe and the disappointed promoters incited a mob of over 800 people to attack the homes of two of the opponents of the bill. In other parts there were anti railway riots.
The more I look the more I learn that riots were very common it seems in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, such things as a big shift of the woollen cloth manufacturing to Yorkshire played a bit part. Employment and wages fell and then there were crop failures that caused very high. bread prices. The riots were known as the bread riots and as so many people in the southwest were starving, in their minds they might as well get hung for rioting as just dying of starvation.
Market towns were effected the most as these were the places the prices were set for the grain and where it was kept, the problems occurred when grain and other good were exported to other parts of England. Plymouth with its dockyard, Bristol and London drained Devon of its food supply and the locals felt disempowered, unable to compete for their own sources of food
Then a few years later word spread that there was going to be a Poor Law and all poor people would be put in prison where they would die of hard labour or be given poisonous bread. Some poor people would not even touch bread fearing they would drop down dead if the did.
Then there was the The Bristol Riots of 1831that took place after the House of Lords rejected the second Reform Bill, which aimed to get rid of some of the rotten boroughs and give Britain's fast growing industrial towns such as Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford and Leeds greater representation in the House of Commons. Bristol had been represented in the House of Commons since 1295, however by 1830 only 6,000 of the 104,000 population had the vote.
Local magistrate Sir Charles Wetherell, a strong opponent of the Bill, visited Bristol to open the new Assize Courts, on 29 October. He threatened to imprison participants in a disturbance going on outside, and an angry mob chased him to the Mansion House in Queen Square. The magistrate escaped in disguise but the mayor and officials were besieged in the Mansion-house.
The rioters numbered about 500 or 600 young men and continued for three days, during which the palace of Robert Gray the Bishop of Bristol, the Mansion House, and private homes and property were looted and destroyed, along with demolition of much of the gaol. Work on the Clifton Suspension Bridge was halted and Isambard Kingdom Brunel was sworn in as a special constable
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Brereton of the Dragoons led a charge with drawn swords through the mob in Queen Square. Brereton was later court-martialled for leniency because he had refused to open fire on the crowds, but shot himself before the conclusion of his trial.About 100 people involved were tried in January 1832 by Chief Justice Tindal.Four men were hanged despite a petition of 10,000 Bristolian signatures, which was given to King William IV
Well don’t think I will be buying one of those time machines I hoped would be made before I die, think I’ll just stick around here in the 21st centuary as it does not seem so bad after all.
What has been fascinating to learn was that in Devon and many other places many railway riots occurred. In 1863 LSWR who had gained control of the North Devon Railway in 1862 put forward their plans to the government to open a line between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe. This was rejected on the grounds the route was not the best one between the two towns.
Riots erupted on the streets of Ilfracombe and the disappointed promoters incited a mob of over 800 people to attack the homes of two of the opponents of the bill. In other parts there were anti railway riots.
The more I look the more I learn that riots were very common it seems in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, such things as a big shift of the woollen cloth manufacturing to Yorkshire played a bit part. Employment and wages fell and then there were crop failures that caused very high. bread prices. The riots were known as the bread riots and as so many people in the southwest were starving, in their minds they might as well get hung for rioting as just dying of starvation.
Market towns were effected the most as these were the places the prices were set for the grain and where it was kept, the problems occurred when grain and other good were exported to other parts of England. Plymouth with its dockyard, Bristol and London drained Devon of its food supply and the locals felt disempowered, unable to compete for their own sources of food
Then a few years later word spread that there was going to be a Poor Law and all poor people would be put in prison where they would die of hard labour or be given poisonous bread. Some poor people would not even touch bread fearing they would drop down dead if the did.
Then there was the The Bristol Riots of 1831that took place after the House of Lords rejected the second Reform Bill, which aimed to get rid of some of the rotten boroughs and give Britain's fast growing industrial towns such as Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford and Leeds greater representation in the House of Commons. Bristol had been represented in the House of Commons since 1295, however by 1830 only 6,000 of the 104,000 population had the vote.
Local magistrate Sir Charles Wetherell, a strong opponent of the Bill, visited Bristol to open the new Assize Courts, on 29 October. He threatened to imprison participants in a disturbance going on outside, and an angry mob chased him to the Mansion House in Queen Square. The magistrate escaped in disguise but the mayor and officials were besieged in the Mansion-house.
The rioters numbered about 500 or 600 young men and continued for three days, during which the palace of Robert Gray the Bishop of Bristol, the Mansion House, and private homes and property were looted and destroyed, along with demolition of much of the gaol. Work on the Clifton Suspension Bridge was halted and Isambard Kingdom Brunel was sworn in as a special constable
Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Brereton of the Dragoons led a charge with drawn swords through the mob in Queen Square. Brereton was later court-martialled for leniency because he had refused to open fire on the crowds, but shot himself before the conclusion of his trial.About 100 people involved were tried in January 1832 by Chief Justice Tindal.Four men were hanged despite a petition of 10,000 Bristolian signatures, which was given to King William IV
Well don’t think I will be buying one of those time machines I hoped would be made before I die, think I’ll just stick around here in the 21st centuary as it does not seem so bad after all.
