by Maggie Craig
On April Fool’s Day 1820, a Sunday, churchgoers found themselves confronted by an ‘ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND’. Purporting to be from the ‘Committee of Organisation for forming a Provisional Government, Glasgow, April 1, 1820’, it was a call to arms: ‘Liberty or death is our motto, and we have sworn to return home in triumph or return no more!’
Disinformation spread by the government spies makes it hard to get at the truth of the Radical Rising, but the discontent and the desire for change were real and profound. Having provoked the fight, the government readied itself to meet the revolution with lethal force. Tom Johnston again:
Local eruptions were disregarded; the Government was in no hurry; the troops could bide their time until a Radical army of ill-armed, ill-disciplined rebel weavers had been gathered, and then, in one great carnage, would be taught a lesson that would serve to humiliate two or three generations of the discontented common folk.
One of those rebel weavers was Andrew Hardie, a young Glasgow man. He and about 80 other men rendezvoused on the hill which is now the Necropolis, behind Glasgow Cathedral. There they were met by government spies masquerading as fellow Radicals and persuaded to march to the Carron Iron Works at Falkirk to seize cannons and meet up with a rebel army marching up from England. This army did not exist, an invention of the agents provocateurs.
The Radical army marched via Condorrat and Castlecary. At Condorrat Andrew Hardie met John Baird, the local smith, and the two men found themselves elected leaders of their small force. It grew smaller still as the government spies gradually peeled off. Fear also thinned the ranks, so that only about 50 men reached Bonnymuir, where the next bloody act of the drama was played out. As ever, Tom Johnston tells it beautifully, describing what happened when this ill-equipped army of weavers marched ‘straight into the arms of the 10th Hussars’:
What followed is well-known. How the troops dashed upon them, and how they crouched behind a dyke and fought desperately until almost every man of them was wounded and some were killed, and how nineteen weary and wounded men that night lay prisoners of war in Stirling Castle. That was the great battle of Bonnymuir . . . the ‘revolution’ fell to pieces in a single night.
Blood was shed in Paisley, and in Greenock where six men died when the jail was stormed in a successful attempt to free Radical prisoners.
In Strathaven in Lanarkshire James Wilson, a stocking maker in his 60s, marched with another band which had been filled with false promises of a new dawn by the agents provocateurs. Wilson had carried a banner which read ‘Scotland free or a desert! Strathaven Union’. They arrested him and hanged him in Jail Square in Glasgow at the end of August 1820, afterwards giving him a pauper’s burial ‘as a last mean mark of contempt’. That night his daughter and niece disinterred his body and took him home to Strathaven. He had wanted to be buried ‘in the dust of his fathers’.
John Baird and Andrew Hardie were hanged at Stirling just over a week later, on Friday, 8 September 1820. Eighteen other Radical leaders had been transported to Australia, but Prime Minister Viscount Castlereagh had called for a ‘lesson on the scaffold’. Now in the National Library of Scotland, a contemporary broadside costing one penny gave a report of the execution:
Yesterday, 8th September, 1820, the preparation for the execution of these unfortunate men having been completed the previous night, this morning the scaffold appeared to the view of the inhabitants. On each side the scaffold was placed a coffin, at the head of which was a tub, filled with saw-dust, destined to receive the head. To the side of the tub was affixed a block.
The prisoners, it was noted, were ‘respectably dressed in black’. Decency at executions was much prized. This was not bloody murder. This was justice. Well guarded by soldiers, they were marched out of Stirling Castle and down to the prison. The authorities were nervous, fearing trouble from the crowd. Although they had ensured that was smaller than it might have been, people did have to be there to witness the proceedings. How else would the lesson be taught?
When they reached the scaffold, ‘Hardie looked up and smiled – Baird surveyed the dreadful apparatus with earnestness, but composure. Both prisoners, but especially Hardie, looked eagerly and keenly at their veiled companion, but did not address him.’
Their veiled companion was the executioner.
Three ministers were also in attendance. Prayers were said and a few verses of the 51st psalm, from the 7th verse, were ‘sung by the prisoners and others present, Hardie giving out two lines at a time, in a clear and distinct voice, and sung the same without any tremulency’.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Make me to hear joy and gladness;
That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
Hide thy face from my sins,
And blot out all mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God;
And renew a right spirit within me.
This was the same psalm which James Wilson had asked the crowd who witnessed his execution to sing with him before he was hanged.
‘Some refreshment being offered,’ says the broadside of the Stirling executions, ‘Hardie took a glass of sherry, and Baird a glass of port.’ Both men then mounted the scaffold. It was now about half past two in the afternoon. John Baird addressed the crowd first, advising them to study their Bibles. Andrew Hardie told them, ‘I die a martyr to the cause of truth and justice.’ Instead of going to the pub to drink to him and Baird, people ought to go home and pray. At about ten to three, on a signal from Hardie, the men were hanged:
After hanging half an hour, they were cut down and placed upon the coffins, with their heads upon a block; the headsman then came forward; he was a little man, apparently about 18 years of age; he wore a black crape over his face, a hairy cap, and a black gown. On his appearance there was a cry of murder. He struck the neck of Hardie thrice before it was severed; then held it up with both hands, saying: ‘This is the head of a traitor.’ He severed the head of Baird at two blows, and held it up in the same manner, and used the same words. The coffins were then removed, and the crowd peaceably dispersed.
In The King’s Jaunt, John Prebble says that this young headsman was a medical student. It was a long time since anyone in Scotland had been hung, drawn and quartered. The last in Britain had been the Jacobites executed after the ’45, and they were all put to death at Carlisle, York and London. Perhaps Tam Young, the hangman at Stirling, baulked at carrying out the butchery.
The two men were buried in a single grave outside Stirling Castle. Almost 30 years later a group of Glasgow Radicals exhumed them and took them back to Glasgow. They reburied them in Sighthill Cemetery and raised a monument there to the Radicals of 1820.
Only 12 years after Wilson, Baird and Hardie were so barbarically and publicly put to death came the Great Reform Act of 1832, the measure which led the way to parliamentary democracy in Britain. Andrew Hardie’s mother put these lines up on a card in her window:
Britons, rejoice, Reform is won!
But ’twas the cause
Lost me my son.
In the 1840s the Chartists took up the fight. Seventy years on from their struggles there remained plenty of work for the Red Clydesiders to do, still a muddy and rough road to be travelled until real democracy was achieved. Some might say we’re still on it.
Scotland’s Radicals continue to inspire. They always have. In 1938, the Camlachie branch of the ILP produced a huge banner in support of the people of Spain fighting a civil war against fascism. It can be seen today in Glasgow’s People’s Palace. In large red letters, the legend reads:
THOMAS MUIR
BAIRD AND HARDIE
DIED
THAT YOU SHOULD BE FREE
TO CHOOSE YOUR GOVERNMENT
WORKERS IN SPAIN
ARE DYING
BECAUSE THEY DARED TO
CHOOSE THEIR OWN
GOVERN
MENT
UNITE FOR THE STRUGGLE!
9
Halloween at the High Court
It was afterwards found that the hard missiles thrown at the Judge were apples.
In 1911 suffragettes’ hopes were both raised and dashed. First came the announcement that a parliamentary committee was to draft a bill to give women the vote. Towards the end of the year, Prime Minister Asquith announced the bill was to be shelved for the time being.
As the frustration of many suffragettes boiled over into anger, direct action and much smashing of windows, one Glasgow glazier famously found a silver lining. James Caldwell’s advert in the Forward in 1912 advises potential customers that ‘SUFFRAGETTES MAY BREAK WINDOWS, BUT I AM THE WEE BOY [THAT] CAN PUT THEM IN.’
The destruction soon escalated way beyond the breaking of windows. In Scotland, militant suffragettes burned down the railway station at Leuchars in Fife and the mediaeval church of Whitekirk in East Lothian, planted a bomb at Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens and tried to blow up Burns Cottage at Alloway. In June 1913 English suffragette Emily Davison stepped out in front of the King’s horse at the Derby and sacrificed her life to the cause.
Many women were appalled by violent tactics and set their faces completely against them. Others seem to have been ready to carry out acts of terrorism without a qualm. Others again had to do some real soul-searching before they could contemplate less violent but still destructive acts. Helen Crawfurd of Glasgow was one of those. Militant suffragettes were planning a window-smashing raid in London, to take place over three days in March 1912. When Scottish suffragettes started talking about heading south and joining in, she sought guidance in her husband’s church.
Alexander Crawfurd was a powerful preacher, with a sonorous voice and a dramatic delivery. That Sunday he chose to weave his sermon around the story of Christ throwing the moneylenders out of the temple. All unknowing, he led his wife to her decision. If Christ could be militant, then so could she. She went to London, smashed a few windows, was arrested and tried and sentenced to one month in Holloway. It was another eye-opening experience for her and often a distressing one, giving her an insight into the lives of the poor London women who were her fellow inmates.
While all this breaking of glass might sound pointlessly destructive, the suffragettes did have a point to make. The law dealt very severely with crimes against property. In contrast, crimes against people, especially young girls who were raped or sexually abused, were often dealt with very leniently. In their destruction of property, the suffragettes were making a lot of noise to draw attention to their cause but also protesting against this injustice.
Helen Crawfurd was in Holloway with other suffragette friends from Glasgow, including Janie Allan and Frances and Margaret McPhun. When Janie Allan went on hunger strike, she was force-fed for a week. Ten thousand people in Glasgow signed a petition protesting against her imprisonment and ill treatment.
The government which had not had time to discuss a bill bringing in female suffrage found time to pass a new law which became known as the Cat and Mouse Act. This allowed the authorities to release suffragettes on hunger strike on licence. Once they had spent time at home eating normally and regaining their health, they were re-arrested and the whole cycle began again.
Ethel Moorhead was one of those who did time in Holloway after the window-smashing raid. Born to Irish parents, she lived for many years in Scotland, working as an artist at her studio in Dundee. She earned a fearsome reputation as one of Scotland’s most militant suffragettes, as her entry in The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women relates:
When her father died in 1911, Ethel Moorhead joined the WSPU. Using a string of aliases she smashed windows in London and a showcase at the Wallace Monument in Stirling; threw an egg at Churchill and pepper at the police; attacked a teacher with a dog whip; wrecked police cells and was involved in several arson attempts.
It was attempted fire-raising which brought her to the dock at the High Court in Glasgow in October 1913, on trial with her co-accused, Dorothea Chalmers Smith. Helen Crawfurd was one of their many friends filling the public gallery.
Dorothea Chalmers Smith was a doctor, mother of six children and wife of the minister of Calton Parish Church, in Glasgow’s East End. She and Ethel Moorhead stood accused of having attempted to burn down a large empty house in Glasgow’s West End. As the indictment read:
. . . the charge against you is that you did, on July 23, 1913, break into an unoccupied dwelling-house at No. 6 Park Gardens, Glasgow, and did convey or cause to be conveyed thereto, a quantity of firelighters, firewood, a number of pieces of candles, a quantity of paper, cotton wool, cloth, and a number of tins of paraffin oil and did place these, along with three venetian blinds, at or against a wooden door in a passage on the first floor of said house, and this you did with intent to set fire to said door and burn said house.
Dr Chalmers Smith and Ethel Moorhead refused to plead either guilty or not guilty. The judge told them he’d take that as a plea of not guilty and suggested they ought to have got themselves a legal adviser. Ethel Moorhead’s sharp retort drew laughter from their friends in the public gallery: ‘We generally find that they make a muddle of it. We prefer to defend ourselves.’
The trial proceeded. One witness testified that he had been taken to Duke Street Prison to see if he could identify the woman who had called at the solicitor’s office where he worked asking to be shown around the big empty house in Park Gardens. He couldn’t be sure; when he had visited the prison, both of the accused had been in bed and had refused to get up. Not to be outdone by the troublesome females in the dock, the judge tried for a laugh. Now he saw her fully dressed, could the witness identify the woman who had called at his place of employment? The witness could. The two would-be arsonists were found guilty and sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment. It was at this point that pandemonium broke out in the court.
The suffragettes in the public gallery had risen to their feet as soon as the judge had pronounced the sentence. Now they began shouting, ‘Pitt Street! Pitt Street!’ They yelled the name over and over again. They hurled projectiles down into the court. The Glasgow Herald was horrified by what it called this ‘scene of indescribable disorder and confusion . . . creating a disturbance probably without parallel in a Glasgow Court of Justice’.
Some two weeks earlier, a much more lenient sentence had been handed down in a Glasgow court. A brothel at Pitt Street near Charing Cross had been raided and the rumour going the rounds was that several of Glasgow’s prominent citizens had been found there enjoying what the house of ill repute had to offer. Yet they had suffered no censure and the husband and wife who ran the brothel had been sentenced to only two weeks in prison.
The Glasgow Herald’s sister paper, the Evening Times, gave a less formal account of the noisy protest at the court. ‘Judge Pelted’, read its headline. Under a subtitle of ‘Pelting the Bench’, it described the uproar which broke out as soon as the sentence was passed:
A storm of protest from most of the women present was immediately raised. In chorus they shouted ‘Shame, shame,’ and, without further warning, a missile was hurled at the bench by someone near the front of the area. It struck the woodwork below the judge’s seat with a resounding blow and fell to the floor.
So sudden was the attack that Lord Salvesen involuntarily raised his arms as though to protect his face. The first missile was followed by a second which just missed the head of the clerk (Mr. Slight) and also struck the front woodwork of the bench.
A scene of wild confusion followed.
Neither the Glasgow Herald nor the Evening Times reported that the women had shouted ‘Pitt Street, Pitt Street!’ as well as ‘Shame, shame!’ What the Evening Times did solemnly tell its readers was, ‘It was afterwards found that the hard missiles thrown at the Judge were apples.’
So the suffragettes had gone prepared. Helen Crawfurd did note that the apples were small ones. Whether they chose these because the tr
ial took place a fortnight before Halloween and there were plenty around or because small apples might hurt less – or perhaps more – she doesn’t say. Glasgow, as it always does, saw the humour in the situation.
Like the other Glasgow newspapers, the Glasgow News carried a report on the trial the day after it took place and, the day after that, a cartoon depicting the scene in the courtroom. The story was obviously too good to let go. Whoever drew the cartoon must have witnessed the mayhem at first hand. The drawing perfectly depicts Mr Slight, the clerk of the court, ducking to avoid the flying apples. Some artistic licence allows both the wigged and gowned judge and prosecuting lawyer to get one in the eye while gripping a fork between their teeth as though they were dooking for them at a Halloween party.
What happened after that was not so comical. In February 1914 Ethel Moorhead, who had been released and re-arrested under the Cat and Mouse Act, became the first woman in Scotland to be force-fed. This happened at Perth Prison. Many had believed Scotland would never resort to such horrific treatment of prisoners, especially when those prisoners were women. When, in the summer of 1914, it emerged that two suffragette prisoners in Perth had been force-fed per rectum, the public recoiled in horror. A vigil was held outside the prison to protest, and Helen Crawfurd was one of those who took part.
Freed by her husband’s death in May 1914 to become more active in her political endeavours, she was now living in the West End of Glasgow with her brothers William and John and her sister Jean. They had put their money together so as to be able to rent a flat in Hyndland and hire a housekeeper to look after them. She was in Perth in July 1914 when the King visited the fair city as part of a Scottish tour. One placard displayed at a window extended a mock invitation to the royal visitor: ‘Visit Your Majesty’s Torture Chamber in Perth Prison.’ Then the news came through that two suffragettes had tried to blow up Robert Burns’s cottage in Alloway.
