Knowable geographies? The reporting of incendiarism in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English provincial press

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 38-56

  Griffin, C J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Arson; England; Newspapers; Protest; Reporting; Source criticism

Indexed keywords

DOCUMENTARY SOURCE; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; MEDIA ROLE; POPULAR PROTEST;

ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 31144460425     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2005.05.016     Document Type: Article

References (122)

1. My thanks go to Andrew Charlesworth and to the two anonymous referees for their insightful and helpful suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.
2. Sussex Weekly Advertiser 28 February 1757
3. Sussex Weekly Advertiser 14 January 1811
4. See especially, R. Wells, Social protest, class, conflict and consciousness, in the English countryside 1700-1880, in: M. Reed and R. Wells (Eds), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880, London, 1990, 168
5. Griffin C. 'As lated tongues bespoke': Popular protest in South-East England, 1790-1840, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Bristol, 2001
6. K. Bawn, Social protest, popular disturbances and public disorder in Dorset, 1790-1840, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 1984.
7. It was not until the massive wave of incendiarism in the south-east during the so-called 'Swing Riots' of 1830-1831 that many farmers were promoted to first take out fire insurance. So intense was this rush that a petition began to be circulated throughout the south-east calling for a reduction of duty on insurance 'against incendiarism': Sussex Weekly Advertiser 4 February 1833
8. R. Wells Counting riots in eighteenth-century England Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History 37 (1978) 69
9. See Griffin, 'As lated tongues bespoke', 173-202.
10. N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 1679-1760, London, 1984, 211-239
11. T. Hearing, Dorset Justice: A History of the Magistracy in Dorset, Poole, 1999, 41-47.
12. D. Jones Thomas Campbell Foster and the rural labourer; incendiarism in East Anglia in the 1840s Social History 1 (1976) 6-9
13. Bawn, Social protest, popular disturbances and public order in Dorset, 3.
14. Wells, Counting riots, 69;
15. Wells, Social protest, 159.
16. Salisbury and Winchester Journal 16 March 1844
17. E. Billinge, Rural crime and protest in Wiltshire 1830-1875, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1984, 90;
18. Jones, Thomas Campbell Foster, 13.
19. C. Emsley, Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, London, 1996, 21-24
20. For a case study highlighting the importance of newspaper reporting to perceptions and criminal practices see: P. King Newspaper reporting, prosecution practice and perception of urban crime: The Colchester crime wave of 1766 Continuity and Change 2 (1987) 423-454
21. H.R. Fox Bourne, English Newspapers: Chapters in the History of Journalism, London, 1887, 383.
22. The Stamp Duty on papers peaked at 4d. between 1815 and 1836;
23. J. Black, The English Press 1621-1861, Sutton, 2001, 166.
24. Before the turn of the eighteenth-century inhabitants of Kent were central to the Peasant's Revolt (1381), Jack Cade's Rebellion (1450), Buckingham's Rebellion (1483), Wyatt's Rebellion (1554), The Kentish Revolt (1647-1648). See N. Brooks, The organization and achievements of the peasants of Kent and Essex in 1381, in: H. Mayr-Harting and R. Moore (Eds), Studies in Medieval History, London, 1985, 247-270
25. M. Bohna Armed force and civil legitimacy in Jack Cade's Revolt, 1450 English Historical Review 118 (2003) 563-582
26. L. Gill, Richard III and Buckingham's Rebellion, Stroud, 1999
27. A. Fletcher and D. MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, London, 2004.
28. D. Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Edinburgh, 2000, 24.
29. E. Muir, Introduction: Observing trifles, in: E. Muir and G. Ruggiero (Eds), Microhistory & the Lost Peoples of Europe, Baltimore, MA, 1991, vii-xxviii
30. B. Reay, Microhistories: Demography and Culture in Rural England, 1800-1930, Cambridge, 1996, 257-262.
31. For a critique see: C. Griffin Policy on the hoof: Sir Robert Peel, Sir Edward Knatchbull and the trial of the Elham Machine Breakers, 1830 Rural History 15 (2004) 1-22
32. J. May and N. Thrift, Introduction, in: J. May and N. Thrift (Eds), Timespace: Geographies of Temporality, London, 2001, 3-5, 22-27.
33. See the collected essays in: M. Reed and R. Wells (Eds), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880, London, 1990.
34. J. Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth-Century, London, 1987, 11.
35. C. Ferdinand, Benjamin Collins and the Provincial Newspaper Trade in the Eighteenth-Century, Oxford, 1997, 39-41.
36. H. Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society 1695-1855, Harlow, 2000, 44.
37. Black, The English Press, 20, 83.
38. Kentish Post 1 June 1746
39. cited in G.A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700-1760, Oxford, 1962, 28.
40. The decisive role of local news should not be overplayed though: In 1764 1,090,289 London papers were sent into the country via the Post Office, 26 years later in a provincial market with far more local titles on sale, this figure had increased to 4,650,000. As Professor Black has suggested 'evidently many purchasers were dissatisfied with the option of the available provincial papers': The English Press, 119.
41. Kentish Post 4 and 11 April 1750
42. Kentish Gazette 21 September 1800
43. Salisbury Journal 10 March 1746
44. Ferdinand, Benjamin Collins, 149.
45. County Chronicle 7 June 1825
46. This evidence is based upon a comparison between the reportage of all births, marriages and deaths in the Kentish Gazette for rural parishes for the years 1797 and 1807. In 1797 there were 174 reports whilst in 1807 there were 313 reports. Kentish Gazette, all dates 1797 and 1807.
47. Black, The English Press, 73.
48. The best source for the early history of the Kentish press is S. Eagle, Report of the Newsplan Project in the London and South Eastern Region, London, 1996.
49. For a continually updated list of extant papers see: http:// prodigi.bl.uk/nlcat (last accessed 3 March 2005)
50. S. Eagle, Report of the Newsplan Project in the London and South-Eastern Library Region, London, 1996.
51. B. Keith-Lucas, The Unreformed Local Government System, London, 1980, 40-45.
52. Keith Snell has suggested in relation to the poor, that parish attachments were far stronger, though he acknowledges county attachments were important too, not least amongst itinerant and semi-urbanised workers: K. Snell The culture of local xenophobia Social History 28 2003 4
53. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 191, 198-199.
54. Black, The English Press, 112.
55. Kentish Gazette 25 May 1768
56. Ferdinand, Benjamin Collins, 73, 149.
57. Advert for W. Martin's Newspaper and Advertising Office Hampshire Chronicle 28 January 1811
58. R.M. Wiles, Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England, Ohio, 1965, 131.
59. A large proportion of all the reported Sussex obituaries were from the developing south coast resorts.
60. References for the above three paragraphs are drawn from all editions of the Kentish Gazette and the Sussex Weekly Advertiser for 1797 and 1807.
61. According to Thompson, the eighteenth-century consumer was prepared to resort to collective action to enforce certain popularly held, and legally reinforced, tenets concerning the dealing of foodstuffs; E.P. Thompson The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century Past and Present 38 (1971)
62. E.P. Thompson, The moral economy reviewed, in: E.P Thompson (Ed.), Customs and Commons, London, 1991, 270.
63. The most thorough analysis of Kenyon's judgments can be found in D. Hay, The state and the market in 1800: Lord Kenyon and Mr Waddington Past and Present 162 (1999) 101-162
64. Whilst later writers have identified similar beliefs amongst medieval food rioters, Thompson in his witty but stinging reply to his critics complained that by appropriating his concept and placing it in other spatial-temporal contexts, and even outside of the context of market relations, the concept became empty for taking the 'values' or 'moral attitudes', as delineated in his original paper, 'out of the context of a particular historical formation'. R. Wells, The moral economy of the English countryside, in: Randall and Charlesworth (Eds), Moral Economy and Popular Protest
65. K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor, Cambridge, 1985, chapter 2.
66. R. Wells The development of the English rural proletariat and social protest, 1700-1850 Journal of Peasant Studies 6 1979
67. This paper was later reprinted: In M. Reed and R. Wells (Eds), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880, London, 1990, 131.
68. A. Charlesworth, The development of the English rural proletariat and social protest, 1700-1850: A comment, in: M. Reed and R. Wells (Eds), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880, London, 1990, 59-60.
69. D. Mills B. Short Social change and social conflict in nineteenth-century England: The use of the open-closed village model Journal of Peasant Studies 10 1983
70. This paper and all other replies to Wells' original paper appeared in: M. Reed and R. Wells (Eds), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880, London, 1990, chapters 2 to 7.
71. See R. Wells, Social conflict and protest in the English countryside in the early nineteenth century: A rejoinder, in: M. Reed and R. Wells (Eds), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880 (London, 1990), 66, 64.
72. This appreciation of the complex ways in which various protest forms were deployed has lead Wells to state that as food rioting 'was not an automatic response to intolerably high prices' but rather acted to enforce a particular 'moral economy' tenet, so arson varied in both incidence and location according to whatever grated against the popular consciousness. Moreover, the defeat of unionism in the countryside and the apparent decline of food rioting allied to the increased reliance on the mechanisms of social provision in town and countryside alike helped to partially shift the focus from expenditure to income and as such led to the development of poor relief as a major new theatre of violent altercations.
73. R. Wells, Wretched Faces: Famine in Wartime England 1763-1803, Gloucester, 1988, 161-167.
74. Wells has made further refinements to his thesis in: Social protest, class, conflict and consciousness, in the English countryside 1700-1880, in: M. Reed and R. Wells (Eds), Class, Conflict and Protest in the English Countryside 1700-1880 (London, 1990), especially 156-158
75. and, The moral economy of the English countryside, in: Randall and Charlesworth (Eds), Moral Economy and Popular Protest, 227-231.
76. Jones, Thomas Campbell Foster, 13-14.
77. Archer, By a Flash and a Scare, 68-69.
78. Kentish Gazette 5 October 1810 and 13 January 1832
79. Kentish Gazette 26 February 1790
80. Griffin, 'As lated tongues bespoke', 43, 99 and chapter 9. It is important to state though that such attacks were overwhelmingly concerned with the destruction of workhouse buildings and contents and that care was taken to ensure individuals were not at risk.
81. Sussex Advertiser 25 August 1823
82. Times 6 September 1827
83. Maidstone Journal 7 September 1842
84. Rochester Gazette 4 January 1848
85. Dover Telegraph 28 April 1849
86. Black, The English Press, 54-55
87. Wells, Counting riots, 69.
88. Sussex Weekly Advertiser, 7 April;
89. Justice Shadwell, Ringmer, to Duke of Portland, 17 April 1800, enclosing threatening letter sent to Cosham, PRO HO 42/49, f.315-318
90. Duke of Richmond, Whitehall, to Portland, 22 June, enclosing a letter from Mr. Lee, Lewes, to Richmond, 15 June; Portland to Richmond, 24 June 1795, PRO HO 42/35, ff.29e30 and 43/6, 476.
91. E. Jones, Seasons and Prices: The Role of the Weather in English Agricultural History, Bury St. Edmunds, 1964, introduction.
92. Maidstone Journal, 22 September 1795
93. Kentish Gazette 25 September 1795 and 8 May 1807
94. Sussex Weekly Advertiser 11 November 1805
95. Jones, Thomas Campbell Foster, 13.
96. Dickson, The Sun Insurance Office, 96, 137
97. H. Klopper, To Fire Committed: The History of Fire-Fighting in Kent, Tonbridge, 1984, 8-26
98. B. Drew, 'The Fire Office' Being the History of the Essex and Suffolk Equitable Insurance Society Limited 1802-1952, London, 1952.
99. C. Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, Vol. I, 1782-1870, Cambridge, 1985, 141, 142.
100. D. Philips, Good men to associate and bad men to conspire: Associations for the prosecution of felons in England, 1780-1830
101. J. Styles, Print and policing: Crime advertising in eighteenth-century provincial England, in: D. Hay and J. Snyder (Eds), Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750-1850, Oxford, 1989.
102. Salisbury and Winchester Journal 22 September 1817
103. Wells, Social protest, 159
104. Wells, Resistance to the new poor law in the rural south, in: J. Rule and R. Wells (Eds), Crime, Protest and Popular Politics in Southern England 1740-1850, London 1997, 106.
105. Bawn, Social protest, popular disturbances and public order in Dorset, 109-110.
106. Kentish Gazette 27 July 1768, 19 April 1769, 4 April 1770, 22 September 1773, 17 February and 8 September 1779, 30 June 1784, 17 June 1785, 9 June 1786, 10 and 27 April, 29 June, 17 August and 4 December 1787, 20 February, 4 September and 3 November 1789
107. Wells, Development of the English rural proletariat, 42
108. Wells, Wretched Faces, 164-167, 441.
109. Kentish Gazette 8 May, 25 August and 25 September 1795 and 21 February 1800
110. Sussex Weekly Advertiser 7 March 1796
111. Kentish Chronicle 25 July 1800
112. Esher Vestry Minute, 4 August 1800, Surrey History Centre, 2383/9/2.
113. Sussex Weekly Advertiser 5 January 1795
114. Kentish Gazette 6 February 1795 8 April and 21 November 1800
115. For a useful introduction to some of these debates see: M. Fulbrook, Historical Theory, London, 2002, especially chapters 1 and 2
116. K. Jenkins, On What is History? From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White, London, 1995, 15-42.
117. For a critical appraisal see: B. Nicholson, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, London, 2001.
118. Archer, Social Unrest, 94-95
119. T. Shakesheff, Rural Conflict, Crime and Protest: Herefordshire, 1800-1860, Woodbridge, 2003, introduction.
120. Daily Report from the Metropolitan Police, 6 July, PRO HO 62/6, no.778. Brighton Gazette, 21 October and 11 November 1830
121. Sussex Advertiser 8 November 1830
122. Sussex Agricultural Express 1 February 1840