Six for the Tolpuddle Martyrs

The Epic Struggle for Justice & Freedom

Alan Gallop

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781526712509
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526712523
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

In 1834 six farm laborers from the Dorset hamlet of Tolpuddle fell foul of draconian Victorian laws prohibiting assembly. Today the names of George Loveless and his brother James, Thomas Standfield and his son John, James Brine and James Hammett, who made up the Tolpuddle Martyrs, stand high on the roll of British men who have been victimized for their beliefs but stood steadfast in the face of persecution. They refused to be persuaded to betray their principles either by the promise of release or by transportation to Australia. The Tolpuddle men fought to win their freedom sustained by their passionate conviction that their sacrifices would not be in vain. Their experience and example have proved to be an inspiration for future generations and they remain icons of pioneering trade unionism.The Author has thoroughly researched their story and the result is a fascinating and revealing reexamination of this legendary saga. Their triumph over legal persecution and abuses of power over 180 years ago is told afresh in this comprehensive and attractively illustrated book which delves deeper into their story than ever before.

Part I

‘Captain Swing’

1815/30

Oh Captain Swing, he’ll come in the night,

To set all your buildings and crops alight,

And smash your machines with all his might,

That dastardly Captain Swing!

The early years of the 19th century witnessed difficult times for farming communities and citizens living in Britain’s towns and cities. In the Napoleonic wars of 1801-15 prayers were offered for Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar and the nation lived in fear of an invasion by Bonaparte’s armies. The cost of training and sending fighting men to defend their country from the French plunged Britain’s farming communities into fourteen years of depression. Common lands had been divided up by the Enclosure Acts, a series of Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country, creating legal rights to land that was previously considered common property. Hedges were planted widely to denote new boundaries and, almost overnight, the country began to resemble a patchwork quilt.

With the rise of the Industrial Revolution landowners sought better financial returns with more efficient farming techniques – including introducing new mechanised farm equipment which created lower wages and unemployment. Enclosures also allowed landowners to charge higher rent to the people working on their land. This was at least partially responsible for farm labourers deserting country villages to seek work in city factories. These were hard years for labourers who worked daily for sixteen hours or more on the land to feed their wives and children and survive on a diet of bread, potatoes and turnip tops if they were lucky. Turnips were easy to source, highly nutritious and small enough to slip into a labourer’s smock pocket to bring home for the cooking pot.

o0o

Following the Napoleonic Wars disturbances erupted across southern England. Violent protests were made by farm labourers worried that their wages would be slashed following introduction of mechanised machinery. This meant that fewer men would be needed to operate them and it was estimated that the machines, built to separate golden brown grain from straw and chaff, could achieve a day’s work equivalent to 10-12 individual hand-threshing labourers. As a protest, wheat ricks were burnt, mills smashed to pieces and angry demonstrations held in fields and town squares. For a while, mob rule was the order of the day.

The arrival of mechanised agricultural machinery, such as early threshing machines, meant that fewer men were needed to operate them and machines built to separate golden brown grain from straw and chaff could achieve a day’s work equivalent to 12 hand thrashing labourers. (Dictionnaire d’arts industriels)

By 1830 the rural wars fought by labourers and village artisans had become more serious with some southern counties bordering on insurrection. London was in panic and the Duke of Buckingham told the House of Commons that if disorders continued the government ‘would be beyond the reach of almost any power to control them’.

In Kent masked arsonists attacked farmers’ homes and destroyed wheat ricks. In an agricultural village near Canterbury, 400 labourers turned out to smash a wooden thrashing machine – later known as a threshing machine – into splinters. Before wrecking the device they had heard a magistrate express strong views against mechanisation. He stated that while mechanisation would ‘take the drudgery out of farm labour’ it would also replace farm workers who would no longer be needed. The labourers proceeded to wreck the machine – originally costing its owner £10 – whereupon the magistrate turned on them and sent them to jail. In revenge the mob burnt his hay ricks to the ground.

A Kentish farmer said: ‘Ah, I should be well pleased if a plague were to break out among them, and then I should have their carcases as manure and right good stuff it would make for my hops.’ This remark was probably made in jest but his hop field and stacks were soon ablaze.

Wrecking riots in southern England closely followed similar unrest which had occurred in and around Manchester between 1811 and 1817 when textile workers protested against mechanised labour-saving cotton looms replacing less-skilled and lowly paid labourers. The mill workers, known as Luddites, gathered under cover of darkness and broke into mills and factories and took their axes to the new machines. This was more than simply an act of violence; there was both method and reason in it. Textile workers, like farm labourers, were among the few jobs left for non-skilled men to exist above starvation level.

A landowner wrote to the Kent Herald on 30 September, 1830:

In my parish, where no machines have been introduced, there are twenty-three barns. I calculate that in these barns fifteen men, at least, find employment threshing corn until May. If we suppose that each man has a wife and three children, this employment will affect seventy-five persons. An industrious man who has a barn never requires poor relief; he can earn from 15s and 20s per week; he considers it almost as his little freehold, and that in effect it certainly is. It is easy to imagine what the sight of one of these hated engines might mean to such a parish; the fifteen men, their wives and families would find cold comfort, when they had become submerged in the morass of parish relief, in the reflection that the new machine extracted for their master’s and the public’s benefit ten per cent more corn than they could hammer out by their free arms.

The rise of mechanisation and machine wrecking by radicals continued unchecked throughout October 1830. By the end of the month most active rioters were in custody and magistrates predicated there would be more voluntary surrenders. But the disturbances spread over a wider area. There was a riot at Lyminge, at which the High Sheriff of Kent Sir Edward Knatchbull and the local Rector, Rev. Ralph Price (with a little help from their estate workers and stable lads), succeeded in arresting ringleaders and bound over another fifty men. In writing to the Home Office, Knatchbull stated that labourers claimed ‘they would rather do anything than encounter such a winter as the last’. But the Rev. Price paid his penalty for his part in the affair. His wheat ricks were set alight and burning sprees spread steadily across Kent for another month.

Later that month The Times reported that Sir Edward Knatchbull had been invited to address a meeting of radicals who listened to what he had to say with rapt attention, but before dispersing one of them said publicly: ‘We will destroy wheat stacks and threshing machines this year, next year we will have a turn with the parsons, and the third we will make war upon the statesmen.’

The following month 22 men were brought before Knatchbull at the Special Sessions for East Kent in Canterbury for rioting and machine wrecking. They pleaded guilty and were issued with sentences ranging from transportation for life (one prisoner) or seven years (five prisoners). Others were sentenced to between twelve months and a few days in confinement.

Later in November disturbances led ‘by working men and women demanding a living wage’ had engulfed 22 counties across southern England. Farm labourers pauperised by low wages and made redundant by the arrival of new farm machines were forced into taking parish relief. To receive this, labourers had to jump through a number of legal hoops to prove they had been born ‘of legally settled parents, lived in the parish for three years, been hired by a legally settled inhabitant for a continuous period of 365 days and by the time you were married had proved your worth’. Labourers seeking relief were also required to have ‘served a full apprenticeship to a legally settled man for a full 7 years’.

By 1832 over 400 agricultural machines – mostly used for threshing – had been smashed. Some 350 cases of arson and over 300 riots occurred between January 1830 and September 1832. The final cost of this destruction was estimated to be in the region of £120,000 (equivalent to around £136 million today).

1. The rioting and arson was even noticed by Princess Victoria who wrote in her journal in August 1832: ‘I just now see an extraordinary building flaming with fire. The country continues black, engines flaming, coals, in abundance, everywhere, smoking and burning coal heaps …’

2. And then mysterious letters began arriving at homes of farmers and landowners threatening that their houses, barns and wheat ricks would be raised to the ground if mechanised machines were brought onto their land. The letters were signed by ‘Captain Swing’, a wild, romantic and mythical figure who – it was said – rode through England by night stirring the peasantry into insurrection. The working population believed in ‘Captain Swing’, although not one person ever claimed to have actually seen him. Swing’s name was designed to spread fear among landowners and act as a form of morbid humour that echoed the gallows fate awaiting rebels involved in machine wrecking and arson. ‘Captain Swing’ spread terror over agricultural England as self-organised gangs of labourers continued with the brazen destruction of machinery and wreaked revenge on classes exploiting their labour. There were other demonstrations over wages and tithes when workhouses and factories were set on fire and local parsons, ‘gentry’ landowners, and overseers of the poor were attacked.

Here are two typical threatening letters supposedly written by ‘Captain Swing’:

‘Captain Swing’ was a wild, romantic and mythical figure who, it is said, rode through southern England by night stirring peasantry into insurrection, including rick burning. (British Museum)

Sir – Your name is down amongst the Black hearts in the Black Book and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are Parson Justasses, to make your wills. Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions; Ye have not yet done as ye ought … Swing.

Sir – This is to acquaint you that if your thrashing machines are not destroyed by you directly we shall commence our labours. Signed on behalf of the whole, Swing

Following these ‘Swing’ riots, 252 people were sentenced to death (but only 19 were actually executed), 644 rioters imprisoned and 500 sentenced to transportation to Australia for terms of between seven years and life with little hope of ever returning – the largest group of prisoners ever transported from England for a common crime.

Rioters arrived in Dorset in the autumn 1830 just as post-summer seasonal jobs were starting. After the harvest had been gathered, one of the main seasonal jobs for the county’s farm labourers was hand threshing. Some Dorset farmers had already introduced machines to undertake this work leaving their labourers without jobs or money to buy food, clothing and other goods to see them through the winter months. Poor harvests in recent years also resulted in hunger protests across the county.

Mary Frampton, sister of Dorchester magistrate and squire James Frampton, who kept a diary between 1779-1846, recorded that ‘the first rising took place in this county on 22nd November’ 1830 in Bere Regis, a village close to Tolpiddle. It was here that a large gathering of farm workers and families from surrounding villages – including Tolpiddle – assembled early outside the property of Liberal MP and landowner Henry Portman to demand better wages. Mary wrote:

Mr. Portman immediately promised to raise the wages of his labourers, and by doing this without concert with other gentlemen, greatly increased their difficulties. My brother, Frampton, harangued the people at Bere Regis, and argued with them on the impropriety of their conduct, refusing to concede to their demands whilst asked with menaces. This spirited conduct caused him to be very unpopular, and threats were issued against him and his house.

The Farmer, the Rick Burner and his Family, one of many publications produced in 1830 promoting agricultural insurrection in Southern England. (Author’s Collection)

Frampton, the Lord High Sheriff of Dorset and a Captain in the Dorset Yeomanry, had been tipped off that further ‘intended risings of people at adjacent villages of Winfrith, Wool, and Lulworth were to take place on the 30th,’ recorded Mary.

Mr. Frampton was joined very early on that morning by a large body of (land owning) farmers from his immediate neighbourhood, as well as some from a distance, special constables amounting to upwards of 150 armed only with a short staff, the pattern for which had been sent by order of the government to equip what was called the Constabulary force. The numbers increased as they rode on towards Winfrith, where the clergyman was unpopular, and his premises supposed to be in danger. The mob, urged on from behind hedges by a number of women and children, advanced rather respectfully, and with hats in their hands, demanded an increase of wages, but would not listen to the request that they would disperse. The Riot Act was read. They still urged forwards and came close up to Mr. Frampton’s horse. He then collared one man, but he slipped from his captor by leaving his smock-frock in their hands. Another mob from Lulworth were said to be advancing, and as the first mob seemed to have dispersed, Mr. F. was going, almost alone, to speak to them, when he was cautioned to beware, as the others had retreated only to advance again with more effect in the rear. The whole body of the constabulary then advanced with Mr. Frampton, and, after an ineffectual parley, charged them, when three men were taken, and were conveyed by my brother and his son Henry, and part of the constabulary force, to Dorchester, and committed to gaol.

Although riots achieved nothing, Dorset’s normally docile farm labourers remained unbowed before their employers who now recognised a new independence in the bearing and demeanour of their workers. All around there seemed to be a new awakening; unwillingness on the part of farm labourers to continue working for starvation wages and to voice their support for betterment for themselves and their families.

The life of an agricultural labourer in 1830s England was wretched and levels of wages paid throughout the year varied. They were at their highest during summer periods leading up to the grain harvest w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Why ‘Six For The Tolpuddle Martyrs?’
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue: The Arrest
• Part I: ‘Captain Swing’
• Part II: Either Hand or Heart
• Part III: The House of Correction
• Part IV: The Voyage
• Part V: A Shocking Perversion of Justice
• Part VI: A Stranger in the Colony
• Part VII: The Chartists
• A Postscript
• Bibliography