Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks

by Andrew Wareham

  The magistrates were sanguine, however; it was only a short term difficulty.

  “War is coming, colonel, and that will solve our problems, I doubt not. Another thousand men, or possibly two, taken up by the army will do no end of good hereabouts.”

  They agreed that the war that was undoubtedly due would be a godsend, but for the meanwhile there were riots to contend with.

  There was a problem of jurisdiction to solve before any attempt could be made to bring the disorder to an end. The towns were expanding rapidly and new terraces were being constructed wherever builders could buy land cheaply; almost inevitably this was waste ground, so poor from the agricultural viewpoint that it had never been cultivated, was part of no farm. Being unused previously, the ‘waste’ was normally not included in the boundary of any parish and the terraces built there were not part of any town. Magistrates sat for their parishes; constables and watchmen were employed by the parish; any crime committed outside of the parish was no concern of either Bench or constable. There was a presumption that the Lord Lieutenant must have an overall responsibility for public order in the whole of the County; this he delegated to the Sheriff, who had almost no funds and very few subordinates. The Law did not help, for it stated that a riot might be suppressed only after a Justice of the Peace had read, or tried to read, the Riot Act to the mob; if no magistrate sat for the area, then who was to read the Act?

  The simple solution was to ignore the problem and have the Act read by any magistrate who was willing to stand in front of the crowd, risking a shower of brickbats as soon as he opened his mouth. It was not always easy to discover such a volunteer, and it was absolutely unlawful for the military to take any action against a crowd that had not been officially declared to be a mob. A soldier who bludgeoned or bayonetted or shot a civilian when the Riot Act had not been read would probably hang after trial at the Assizes, no matter how exigent the situation. As a result, the army would watch a town and its mills burn if the formalities had not been complied with.

  Discussions achieved nothing; the colonel would not budge and the Justices of the Peace had been stoned on previous occasions, the mob cheering each hit; they did not fancy repeating the experience outside of their own specific areas. The Lord Lieutenant did not have the legal authority to order the magistrates to assist; he did, however, hold great sway in the disposition of Honours in his county. A whisper in certain ears that there were knighthoods in the offing, for those who were ‘helpful’, did a lot of good. Generally speaking, in the past helpfulness had involved making a contribution to Party funds, sufficient to attract the attention of the prime minister of the day; now, to read the Riot Act was a far cheaper alternative.

  There had to be an attempt to disperse any mob by peaceful means before the soldiers could be deployed; on rare occasions this actually worked, but only if the looting had not yet begun and the liquor shops remained intact.

  The first test of the effective of the use of the military came within the week of the battalion arriving in Lancashire.

  They were billeted in barns around the small village of Billinge, not so far from St Helens, which was a growing industrial town with glassworks as well as cotton and iron and coal in the immediate vicinity. Word arrived that there was a dispute in just one of the pits, the owners having chosen to cut wage-rates and the colliers refusing en masse to accept the lower wages and having been sacked as a result. The mine-owners had evicted their old employees from the cottages they had rented from them – the pit having been opened by a local landowner who had also built terraces of housing on his fields – and had replaced them with a mixture of Irish incomers and displaced farm labourers who were thankful to have a roof and any wage at all and were very willing to fight to keep their new living.

  The mixture was seen as liable to lead to massive disorder and ongoing pitched battles between the different components of the lower orders. Once riot started, then the denizens of the gutter would no doubt crawl out of the rookeries and loot the shops of the well-to-do, and quite possibly their houses as well. Riot on a major scale had allowed the Revolution to break out in France just three years previously. The French King had been weak and irresolute; the same must not be said of the English authorities.

  The Lord Lieutenant in person appeared in Billinge, flustered from journeying behind four galloping horses on very rough roads. He called the magistrates and the senior officers of the battalion into conference.

  “Gentlemen, we are faced with a potentially disastrous situation. There are those who regard our country as a powder-keg, needing only a spark to cause an explosion. We may well be faced with that flame here and now! One might go so far as to suggest that there is a fuze leading to the gunpowder and that a wanton hand has already set it alight! We must, and I repeat, must, extinguish this fire before conflagration is upon us!”

  “One might regard this as an incendiary situation, in fact, my lord!”

  The speaker, an elderly and overweight magistrate, comfortably certain that he would not be called to stand in front of the Mob, was quite taken with his own wit, looked about him for applause. He was disappointed to receive no more than scowls from his neighbours.

  Colonel Stevens of the Sussex Regiment spoke into the embarrassed silence.

  “My battalion is ready to act, my lord, but must require the sanction of the civil authorities. We shall carry out our lawful duty, my lord.”

  The statement made it clear that the onus lay upon the magistrates; the civil power must attempt to end disorder and must be seen to fail before the army would stir.

  The youngest and newest of the magistrates, well awake to the probability that he would be chosen to stand in the front and read the Act, for being the nimblest on his feet by a long way, raised his voice in uncertain protest.

  “My lord, we have but one parish constable and three Charlies in St Helens! The constable is a man of middle years, responsible and very reliable for collecting Land Taxes and organising the ballot for the militia, but not in the way of quelling a thousand of drunken rioters. The Watchmen, the Charlies, are each of them above three score and ten years of age – one foot in the grave, one might say – and good for walking the streets at night with a lantern, slowly one might add, but of no other function at all. The best result of those four trying to restore order will be laughter; the worst I dread to consider! Could it not be the case, my lord, that the military should be ranged in their ranks at the shoulder of the Justice of the Peace as he endeavours to restore tranquillity to the streets?”

  “No, sir. The military may not be called upon until the Act has been read. Only upon the perceived failure of peaceful endeavours may the soldiers be reluctantly called upon. It must not be shown to be the case in court that the army was ready and hopefully waiting for the opportunity to take action.”

  The Lord Lieutenant, not himself a militaristic-seeming gentleman, peered over the spectacles he had donned and reminded them of Cromwell.

  “It is little more than one hundred and thirty years, gentlemen, since the country was ruled by the Army. That must never happen again! It shall not happen again! The price may seem rather high on occasions such as this, but the Army is, and shall remain, subordinate to the Civilian Power!”

  The magistrates glumly agreed, only in their minds pointing out that it was them to pay the price, not the Lord Lieutenant who would be safely in the rear.

  “Colonel Stevens, your battalion must be out of sight of the rioters until after all legal formalities have been complied with. Close, by all means, but invisible, sir!”

  “That was my intention, my lord. I do not wish to lead my men into action against the people of this country, but I shall do so if the need may be conclusively demonstrated to have arisen.”

  “How will your men be armed, Colonel Stevens?”

  The colonel stared in amaze at the speaker, the ancient magistrate previously noted for his wit.

  “Why, sir, with the musket. The Brown Bess, it is commo
nly called.”

  “I had wondered if you might not prefer to supply your men with wooden clubs, pickaxe handles perhaps.”

  “No, sir! If the battalion is to act, then it will apply the full force at its command, vigorously and immediately. If you wish the riotous mob to be beaten with sticks, sir, then I suggest you should hire temporary constables and equip them appropriately. My men will carry their muskets, loaded with ball as it becomes necessary, and with bayonet fixed as well in a last resort.”

  The meeting was adjourned and the battalion was called to parade and then marched down the hills and across the river to the town of St Helens. They halted in the last fields, dirty, litter-strewn and abandoned by farmers, soon to be built upon as the terraces and mills spewed out from the old centre.

  Colonel Stevens gave each company a final and brief inspection, using the opportunity to remind the officers that they must not fire before the Riot Act had certainly been read, and should not do so afterwards except as a last resort to save their own lives or disperse those parts of the mob who refused to be pacified.

  Ensign Turner, seeing the chance to shine and knowing that any senior officer must share his own contempt for the rabble that had dared stir from its kennels, said that he presumed that having once opened fire, they should not cease while any remained alive.

  “No, sir! Under no circumstances will you shoot at any person running away from you, or lying down, or attempting to surrender. Nor will you finish off any wounded. Nor will you ill-treat any prisoner. We are to use such minimum of force as is necessary to protect ourselves and to restore order; that and no more, Mr Turner!”

  Stopping for a word with Captain Weightman, Colonel Stevens commented that his ensign was a nasty little beast.

  “Has he the makings of a soldier, Captain Weightman?”

  Weightman had not wished to acquaint the colonel with his opinion of the young man until he had had a chance to improve. Now, he found he had no particular loyalty to this least of his officers.

  “No, sir. He might possibly make a gaoler, or perhaps a public hangman, but I cannot imagine that he will ever become an officer. He should be encouraged to transfer, sir – perhaps to the Militia, or even into the Revenue where he will still wear a uniform but will be out of harm’s way – and out of my way, too!”

  “I will see what may be done, Captain Weightman. We are not yet at war, after all.”

  In time of war the Army would expand and there would soon be a shortage of bodies, even in the Officer’s Mess.

  “He does not ride well, sir.”

  Captain Weightman’s voice was studiedly uninflected. The colonel nodded; he often had messages to send and would use a young officer as a galloper under stringent orders to make the best time. It was not impossible that Ensign Turner would find himself despatched to take papers fifty or sixty miles at a time, under instructions to change horses frequently and be very sure that he reached his destination inside the day. It was not an unreasonable demand, for outstanding horsemen, changing horses eight or even ten times, could make one hundred miles on a summer’s day – there was an Express service operating out of the City of London which guaranteed to deliver a letter to Manchester inside twenty-four hours, riding by night as well.

  Ensign Turner might well find himself bow-legged and sore and seeking a vacancy in another regiment under such treatment.

  They were close enough to the town centre, the prosperous part where the big shops were to be found, to hear the sounds of a gathering crowd. They strained their ears, could pick out a background mutter, building occasionally into a great cheer, a roar of applause. There was a speaker, they assumed, haranguing the lower orders and turning them into a mob; they were yelling too loudly to be in receipt of a peaceful message.

  A uniformed messenger came shuffling into the field, exhaustedly looking for a senior officer; he was led to Colonel Stevens.

  “Beg pardon, sir…” The man was ancient, grey in the hair, and in the face as well from the strain of hurrying. “James Kentham, sir, Watchman of the Borough of St Helens, sir.” He stopped, coughed, a racking, slow hack, gargled mightily and spat a mouthful of phlegm onto the grass. “Beg pardon, sir…” He took a calming breath and gave his message. “Magistrate, sir, the Justice of the Peace, what is, sir, ‘e done told I to tell thee what the mob is up, sir. Told I to run, so ‘e did, but I ain’t in the way of doing that, sir, not this last ten year and more. Said ‘e were goin’ to read the Act, so ‘e did. You was to bring the soldiers, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but ‘as you got any place an old man can sit down, sir? Feeling a bit on the faint-side, sir, like to swoon, you might say.”

  Colonel Stevens waved to his batman.

  “Look after this poor old… gentleman. Find him a place to sit and a drink of some sort. Then send down to the slaughter yard and get a horse-knacker to put him out of his misery, I would say!”

  The batman shook his head reprovingly.

  “Come on, granddad!”

  “Great-grandfather, that’s what I be, young feller!”

  “Well, whatever you are, let’s get you out of the bloody way!”

  The battalion marched into town, stopping just short of the square, out of sight of the noisy mob, hidden by the church.

  “Captain Weightman, send a bright man forward to find the magistrates and confirm that the Riot Act has been read. No coat or shako – let him not stand out.”

  “Corporal Belper, into shirtsleeve order and run, keeping out of sight, to the magistrates and discover whether they have read the Act.”

  “Sir!”

  Harry stripped off coat, belts and shako and was left at a stand – he was bareheaded, naked to the world. He could not run about without a hat on, it was indecent, he would stand out, every eye noticing and deploring. There was a bystander, the local idiot judging by his vacant, open-mouthed stare; Harry ran across to him, grabbed his broken-down and none-too-clean beaver, salvaged from the dustbin of a prosperous house, clapped it on his head and skipped across into the shadows of the church, close to its wall, hopping from one gravestone to the next.

  As he had expected, the huddle of magistrates was stood high on the steps, visible to the mob and hoping to shelter under the protecting hand of the Lord.

  “Sir! Corporal Belper, sir, Sussex Regiment of Foot. Colonel Stevens wants to know if you have read the Act, sir.”

  “Ah! No red coat! Very crafty, soldier! No need to inflame the mob! Not yet, soldier, we wanted to know that you were close.”

  “Round the back of the church, sir. They haven’t seen us; not yet.”

  “Then I must hurry. I have the Act here, in my hand, do you see?”

  “Yes, sir. I will wait until you have read it, sir, then I can tell Colonel Stevens that he can bring the battalion forward, sir.”

  The magistrate stepped forward and called for silence; the crowd shouted back, giving a number of replies ranging from the rude to the utterly obscene.

  “You must all disperse!”

  There was another set of replies, all of the same tenor.

  “On your own heads be it.” The magistrate held up his piece of paper on which were written the legal words whose utterance turned a crowd into a riot. “’Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth those being assembled immediately to disperse themselves…’” The rest was drowned under the bellow set up by the mob, they believing that if the Act could not be heard then it had no legal effect; they were, however, misinformed.

  Harry slipped back into the shadows and round to the battalion, stopping for a second by the wailing idiot, held by four soldiers and demanding his hat back. He handed over the greasy object and gave the poor man a penny as well before thankfully picking up his shako and running to the colonel.

  “The magistrate has just this minute read the Act, sir, which I saw him to do it.”

  “Well done! Corporal Belper, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I shall remember you. Quick
thinking to get yourself a hat, corporal. Did I see you give that ragged object a coin, corporal?”

  “Yes, sir. Beg pardon, sir, but ‘e ain’t got half of a man’s know, sir. Simple. Thought I was stealing from ‘im, sir, poor soul.”

  Colonel Stevens looked about him, found his batman was not in his normal place behind his shoulder.

  “Where’s Thomas?”

  The Sergeant-Major answered.

  “The member of the Watch, sir, who you placed in his care, has suffered an apoplexy, sir. A cataclysmic failure of the heart, I believe, sir. He has died and your man is making all tidy, sir, for not wanting to leave corpses lying about in the streets all untidy and causing upset to the genteel.”

  “Quite right, Sergeant-Major. Take this shilling and give it to the simpleton and then get him out of the way, too, though remaining alive, of course.”

  The shilling was passed to a suitably lower-ranked soldier and the Sergeant-Major came to attention to signify that all was well and he was ready for the next set of orders.

  “Good. Battalion to column of route and enter the square, there to form into line of companies in front of the church. Companies to form with no gaps; if the square is insufficiently wide then the line is to be doubled. Band to remain here with the Surgeon. Carry on, Sergeant-Major.”

  The Sergeant-Major gave his high-pitched squeals of command and the battalion moved. They came in sight of the mob and there was a great howl of outrage coupled with inventive insults and a general shift out of sight. The square was empty before the companies had completed their line.

  “Very satisfactory, Colonel Stevens!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The colonel smiled at the under-sheriff, stood with the justices, who nodded austerely in his turn.

  “They did not expect to see us, I believe, sir.”

  “They did not, Colonel Stevens. They will next time.”

  “So they will, sir. We should return to our quarters in Billinge, I believe, sir.”

  “You will be required again, I doubt not, Colonel Stevens.”