Dark Days of Georgian Britain
Page 27
When the law was changed in 1823 it was made illegal for coroners to issue a warrant for burial of a felo de se in a public highway. The suicide was to be interred in a churchyard or public burial place instead. This was a change in attitude and sensibility about the methods of burial and not a new acceptance of all forms of suicide. It was also a practical move to protect the integrity of the law; the punishment for felo de se was now regarded as unacceptable and juries were more regularly reaching verdicts of insanity, reducing the deterrent effect of the punishment. These changes did not change the religious concerns. A felo de se was still to be buried without Christian rites and at night, between the hours of 9 pm and midnight. Goods were also still subject to forfeiture, although that was regularly waived as long as the death had not been planned to prevent prosecution for unrelated crimes.
Postscript
So, why do we need to rethink the Regency?
It is quite remarkable that such a short period of time – strictly speaking a period of less than a decade – has such a strong historical identity. No matter how memorable this version of the Regency is, it leaves too many people out of the picture and over-emphasises the experience of the elite.
We shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming the people at the time for the glossy romantic myth of the Regency. We invented it. The worship of the rich and glamorous comes easily to us, and we are still doing it in the twenty-first century.
Hollywood will always love the Regency elite; romantic novelists, quite rightly, use the Regency to produce books that their readers understand and want to read, but the poor and powerless needed their voice back. By the time of Queen Victoria, sufferings of the poor were being regularly documented by a political establishment who started to care a little more. There is no real Regency Dickens or late-Georgian Elizabeth Gaskell. Perhaps that is why there is no adulation of the Victorian elite.
This book has re-visited the poor without condescension or contempt. Jane Austen’s character Emma did this, with some admirable motives and aims:
She understood their ways, could allow for their ignorance and temptations, had no romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from those, for whom education had done so little; entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and always gave her assistance with as much attention as good will.
This book shares Emma’s ambition, if not her motivation. She felt the desire to help them practically; this book writes them back into history. This bias is our fault, not the people who lived at the time. It is subsequent generations that have caused this imbalance. As this book shows, people knew that they lived in extremely difficult times, and it was only more recently that the fluffy and cosy view of the Regency prevailed.
Another reason to rethink the Regency is to prompt us to worry about the twenty-first century. When the structural weaknesses of the Regency are examined, they look quite frighteningly similar to our own. The good news was that the problems of the Regency were solved: painfully, but mostly resolved. Will we, in the twentieth-first century, be able to say the same?
We should be more appreciative of the reformers who risked prison, and the thousands who organised, protested and rioted. In 200 years time, will the historian comment that, in the face of misery, powerlessness, and exploitation, everybody in the twenty-first century signed a Facebook petition? Perhaps a book about the Regency should to do more than entertain and divert. The Regency needs to regain the power that it had at the time – the power to alarm, to make people worry about the future and to plan for a better one.
End Notes
Chapter 1
1. The currency at the time was pounds, shillings and pence (£ s d). £1 was 20s, a shilling was 12d; so there were 240d in £1. A newspaper cost 6d in 1816; a poor person’s wage was around 12s per week, depending on their job. Dr Lucas was worried that the quartern loaf is 1/6; that was 1s 6d, or 18d. The ‘d’ is Latin (denarius).
2. Dr Lucas’s diary courtesy of the Stirling Council Archives. Dr Lucas was more interested in money and the state of agriculture, but he could be relied on to get a bit reflective every New Year’s Eve.
3. Most newspapers attributed the poor weather of the darkness years to bad luck. Recognising climate change needs long-term data, as we now know.
4. In 1816 there was a feeling amongst many that the world was about to end. Church attendances rose and there was a panic that the sun would go out on 18 July 1816. The most remarkable aspect of that day was the good weather in the afternoon.
5. In Our Time (BBC iPlayer) is a good description of the science behind the Tambora eruption. It explains the global impact of what is now called ‘The Year Without A Summer’. The next few summers were not much better.
6. According to M. J. Trow, (Enemies of the State, Pen and Sword, 2010) Cobbett hated ‘Pitt, his paper money, Robert Peel, Thomas Malthus, William Wilberforce, Americans, tea, corruption, Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians and the Landlord of the George Inn, Andover’.
Chapter 2
1. William Radcliffe: Origin of the New System of Manufacture, commonly called Power Loom Weaving, 1828.
2. Lots of sources suggest the Bolton weavers showed off like this but the details seem unlikely. A £5 banknote would be hard to find and hard to earn. It was a story often repeated by the Victorian establishment as criticism of workers’ vanity.
3. Lancaster Gazette, 27 August 1808 and lots of other papers. There was a considerable amount of direct lifting of reports from one newspaper to another.
4. Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser 17 August 1812 – a more sympathetic source.
5. www.lancastercastle.com gives more information about Thomas Holden. He is an important example for the voice of the working man in the transportation system. Diary quotations from www.ludditebicentenary.com.
6. The Morning Post 16 November 1819; this was by far the most anti-reform newspaper in the capital; in the provinces that accolade would be for the Stamford Post or the Carlisle Patriot.
Chapter 3
1. Morning Post 10 January 1815, which, unusually, gave significant space to Hunt’s view.
2. Kentish Post 29 March 1815. Newspaper reports constantly use the expression ‘some of the persons called Quakers’.
3. After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Wilberforce was asked what needed to be abolished next, his reply was ‘the Lottery’.
4. Byron Don Juan (1819), Canto Nine. Byron was a regular and trenchant critic of the Regency establishment, as they were of him.
Chapter 4
1. Eric Hobsbawn – the great historian of the mob from The Machine Breakers (1964)
2. Bath Chronicle 30 May1816 has an extensive report. The fact that it was an event in Essex shows how important these riots were.
3. Charles Wilkins History of Merthyr Tydfil (1867).
Chapter 5
1. Taunton Courier 18 June 1814
2. John Saines of Masham Royal Cornwall Gazette 21 December 1816 and other newspapers.
3. Morning Post 9 August 1816. I believe this to have been a serious suggestion.
4. Stamford Mercury 6 December 1815. Many patriotic newspapers carried articles about how life was worse in France and the USA than Britain as a warning against emigration.
5. Morning Post 29 August 1817.
6. Cobbett Rural Rides (1830). Cobbett seems to be linking the potato with illness by associating it with the catholic last rites (extreme unction).
7. Sussex Gazette 11 December 1815.
8. Morning Post 26 August 1819.
Chapter 6
1. Huntington Quarter Sessions as reported in the Stamford Mercury (15 October 1815)
2. Norfolk Chronicle. Much of the anguished letters about the cost of the Poor Law were from the South and East Anglia. Pen names in papers were always capitalised.
Chapter 7
1. Leeds Intelligencer 1 November 1819; Carlisle Patriot 19 November, and others.
2. Online History of Parliament – historyofparliamentonline
.org is full of wonderful stories of morally dubious members of parliament.
Chapter 8
1. Oldfield, Thomas: A key to the House of Commons (London, 1818) has a constituency-by-constituency report and a scathing commentary on the state of the system.
2. historyofparliamentonline.org is packed with dry descriptions of quite outrageous behaviour of politicians and is used throughout Chapter 8.
Chapter 9
1. Evidence of pluralism and absenteeism can be seen in the definitive database of the Anglican clergy – Clergy of the Church of England Database: theclergydatabase.org.uk.
2. You needed to be 5ft 4in to join the militia. Many advertisements asked for substitutes from 5ft 2in – they were clearly going to lie, or get them to stand up very straight.
3. John Wade, Corruption Unmasked.
4. historyofparliamentonline.org
Chapter 10
1. John Morley, The Making of the Royal Pavilion Brighton.
Chapter 11
1. A full, but often inaccurate account of Thistlewood’s life is contained in GT Wilkinson, Authentic history of the Cato Street Conspiracy (1820).
2. davidcsutton.com (Spa Fields) and the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, both produce evidence that he joined the militia in Yorkshire in 1797.
3. There seems to be little doubt that this is the same Arthur Thistlewood. His wife held property in Lincoln; he lived there and the date of sale was the point at which he needed money (or gambled away the proceeds) and ran away.
4. Thistlewood v Darley and Craycraft as reported in the Examiner, 26 February 1815.
5. Leeds Mercury 16 March 1811 and other papers report a 20 February meeting chaired by Burdett with ‘A Thistlewood’ fulfilling a humble role as secretary. This looks like his earliest political activity in London.
6. Examiner, 8 February.
7. European Magazine Volume 77, 1820.
Chapter 13
1. Archibald Prentice – Historical Sketches and Personal Reminiscences of Manchester.
2. The pro-reform Examiner, but reported similarly in many papers.
Chapter 14
1. The political Quixote of Don Blackibo Dwarfino and his squire Seditiono, (1820)
2. Thomas (‘TJ’) Wooler’s radical paper Black Dwarf. Wooler was another strong supporter of female participation in the reform movement.
3. Carlile, Republican Volume 22.
4. The Morning Post 19 August 1819. This paper could always be relied on to start a rumour, and actively sought hostile witnesses.
5. The Morning Chronicle 15 September 1819; more sympathetic than the Morning Post, but that was not difficult.
Chapter 15
1. Quoted from E.P. Thompson, The making of the English working class, which tells the story of Joseph Swann in loving detail.
Chapter 16
1. Meticulous statistics were kept by the state and they were regularly reported in the newspapers with alarm.
2. Information from oldbritishnews.com.
3. Information from capitalpunishmentuk.org.
Chapter 17
1. Quoted from bodmingaol.com, tells a story similar to many Georgian prisons, although Bodmin is one of the better ones.
2. James Hardy Vaux, Memoirs and his Dictionary of the Criminal Slang. Two remarkable pieces of primary evidence. The latter was written to aid magistrates to understand the language of criminal classes.
3. James Hardy Vaux, as above.
4. James Hardy Vaux, Memoirs.
Chapter 18
1. Blincoe’s diary was reprinted in the 1820s by Richard Carlile and is now the mainstay of many key stage three British history textbooks.
Chapter 19
1. In 1867, this note was an exhibit in Northampton Museum. The idea of county bank notes disappeared very quickly and became a historical novelty.
2. Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue 1811. Available as a free kindle book. It offers lots of insights into life in the Regency.
3. Cambridge Chronicle 27 September 1816.
Chapter 20
1. Kentish Weekly Post 10 August 1810. Local newspapers rarely published people’s names. Newspapers further away had fewer inhibitions.
2. Chester Courant.
3. Suffolk Chronicle, August 1812.
Chapter 21
1. See the Australian Dictionary of Biography for more details of Chapman’s life in Australia.
2. Morning Post, May 1832.
Chapter 22
1. The Bury and Norwich Post in October 1814 reported it first and this seems to be the only original source.
Chapter 23
1. Aberdeen Journal 10 January 1810.
2. Another letter to the papers with a capitalised pen name. Many of the names seem to us to be unintentionally ironic.
3. Bell’s Life in London.
Bibliography
Websites
Bodmin Gaol: bodminjail.org
British History Online: british-history.ac.uk
Capital Punishment: capitalpunishmentuk.org
Diary of Dr Thomas Lucas of Stirling: thedrlucasdiaries.wordpress.com
Gay History and Literature: rictornorton.co.uk
Lancaster Castle: lancastercastle.com
Peterloo Witness Project: peterloowitness1819.weebly.com
Spa Fields 1816: davidcsutton.com
The History of Parliament: historyofparliamentonline.org
The Victorian Web: victorianweb.org
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