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Urban Conflict and Popular Violence The Guildhall Riots of 1740 in Newcastle Upon Tyne*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Joyce Ellis
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On 26 June 1740 the “very beautiful and sumptuous” Town Court or Guildhall of Newcastle upon Tyne was systematically wrecked by a crowd of angry townspeople, keelmen and local ironworkers, who smashed the woodwork and windows, tore the paintings, and ransacked the archives and treasury. Contemporary observers were stunned by this unprecedented orgy of destruction, because the campaign of intermittent and fairly orderly protests against the high price of grain which had preceded the 26th had not prepared them for the scale and ferocity of the assault on the corporation's most ostentatious monument to its wealth and authority. The outbreak of popular violence confirmed some people's suspicions that “respectable” grievances served only as a pretext for the mob's brutish desire to loot and plunder: to others it vindicated the traditional argument that it was not only unjust but also unwise “to provoke the necessitous, in times of scarcity, into extremities, that must involve themselves, and all the neighbourhood in ruin”.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , December 1980 , pp. 332 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1980

Footnotes

*

All dates cited refer to the year 1740, unless otherwise specified.

References

1 Bourne, H., The History of Newcastle on Tyne (Newcastle, 1736), p. 125Google Scholar; Brief against all the prisoners, 4 August, Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle (hereafter TWA), 394/56.Google Scholar

2 Carr to Burnett, 1 July, Northumberland County Record Office, Newcastle (hereafter NCRO), ZCE 10/13; Chandler, E., A Charge Delivered to the Grand-Jury (Durham, 1740), p. 4.Google Scholar

3 Ashton, T. S. and Sykes, J., The Coal Industry of the Eighteenth Century (Manchester, 1929), pp. 118–19, 131Google Scholar; Ridley's Account of the Riots, NCRO, ZRI 27/8, p. 10, quoted but misattributed in Thompson, E. P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century”, in: Past & Present, No 50 (1971), pp. 126–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; there is no independent evidence for this statement, and Ridley had an interest in representing the crowd in the worst possible light, see below, pp. 344, 346.

4 Thompson, loc. cit.; Williams, D. E., “Were ‘Hunger’ Rioters Really Hungry? Some Demographic Evidence”, in: Past & Present, No 71 (1976), pp. 70–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Walter and K. Wrightson, “Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England”, ibid., pp. 22–42.

5 Carr's correspondence, April 1739 – June 1740, NCRO, ZCE 10/12; Manley, G., “Mean Temperatures in Central England 1698–1952”, in: Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, LXXIX (1953), pp. 254, 256Google Scholar; Jones, E. L., Seasons and Prices. The Role of the Weather in English Agricultural History (London, 1964), pp. 138–39Google Scholar; Ashton, T. S., Economic Fluctuations in England 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1959), p. 19Google Scholar; Newcastle Courant, Nos 768–71, 774.Google Scholar

6 Carr to Coutts & Co., 11 March; Williamson, to Bishop of Durham, 24 05, Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO), SP 36/50/432.Google Scholar

7 Bourne, The History of Newcastle, op. cit., p. 158.

8 Carr's correspondence, January-June.

9 Brassley, P. W., “The Agricultural Economy of Northumberland and Durham in the period 1640–1750” (B.Litt. thesis, University of Oxford, 1974), pp. 16–34Google Scholar; Bishop Chandler's Visitation, 1736, Newcastle City Library, L 253/21245; Bourne, The History of Newcastle, p. 54.

10 Carr to J. Pelletrau & Sons, 14 March.

11 Brassley, “The Agricultural Economy”, op. cit., pp. 47–48; Carr to Messrs Simpson, 25 March.

12 Carr's correspondence, esp. Carr to Messr Parker, 12 February.

13 Ibid., esp. Carr to Haliburton, 7 March; to Cookson, 28 March; to Petrie, 4 January; to Duffus,21 March.

14 Ashton, Economic Fluctuations, op. cit., p. 146; Carr's correspondence, 16 and 21 March, 6 April.

15 Petitions & c, May 1738, TWA, 394/9.

16 Liddell to Ellison, 14 January 1729, Gateshead Public Library, A 32/21; id. to Cotesworth, 21 November 1710, ibid., A 25/9.

17 Bowes Papers, ff. 156, 179, John Regenstein Library Manuscripts, University of Chicago.

18 Fewster, J. M., “The Keelmen of Tyneside in the Eighteenth Century”, in: Durham University Journal, L (1957–1958), pp. 24–33, 66–75, 111–23.Google Scholar

19 Petitions & c, May 1738.

20 Mayor to Duke of Newcastle, 19 July, TWA, 394/11.

21 Chandler, A Charge, op. cit., pp. 10–11; Walter and Wrightson, “Dearth and the Social Order”, loc. cit., p. 41. The government's reaction to the 1719 strike is typical, see PRO, SP 44/281/60,62–3,66–7.

22 Ashton, , Economic Fluctuations, p. 46Google Scholar; Newcastle Courant, Nos 786–88; Carr's correspondence, June.

23 See for example PRO, SP 36/50/432,454. Both the Mayor, Cuthbert Fenwick, and his brother Nicholas, one of Newcastle's MPs, were boothmen (corn merchants). On the other hand, the customary efficiency of the local market may have blunted the magistrates' reactions to dearth.

24 From N. Ridley, 23 June 1710, PRO, SP 34/12/101.

25 From Williamson, 10 June, PRO, SP 36/51/28; Isaac, D. G., “A Study of Popular Disturbances in Britain 1714–54” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1953), pp. 286–92.Google Scholar

26 Chandler, , A Charge, p. 6Google Scholar; Thompson, , “The Moral Economy”, p. 76.Google Scholar

27 Hayter, Tony, The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England (London, 1978), chs 1–3.Google Scholar Captain Porteous was convicted for murder and lynched after the Edinburgh city guard under his command had fired on an unruly crowd.

28 Williamson to Bishop of Durham, 10 and 15 June, PRO, SP 36/51/28, 92.

29 Ridley's Account. The Porteous case was also mentioned in connection with the Bristol riots in 1740, see Hayter, The Army and the Crowd, op. cit., pp. 31–32.

30 Williamson to Bishop of Durham, 24 May.

31 Poll at the election of Members to serve in Parliament, 1741, NCRO, ZAN M17/38.

32 Ellis, J., “The Taming of the River Dragon: Newcastle upon Tyne in the Eighteenth Century”, in: Cardiff Studies in Local History, forthcoming.Google Scholar

33 Chicken, E., No. This is the Truth (1741?), p. 5.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., p. 4; J. Ėllis, “The Poisoning of William Cotesworth, 1725”, in: History Today XXVIII (1978), pp. 752–57Google Scholar; Poll at the election, 1741.

35 Ridley to Dobson, 30 November 1739, NCRO, ZRI 35/12, Vol. 1.

36 PRO, SP 36/50 and 51. Trouble was also reported in Colchester, Peterborough, Kettering, Pembroke, Rhuddlan, Flint and Holywell, always in connection with the movement of grain. See Isaac, “Popular Disturbances”, op. cit., p. 9.

37 Minutes of proceedings at sessions, 21 May, TWA, 394/11; Sessions riot, ibid., 13, p. 1; Newcastle Courant, no 788.

38 PRO, SP 36/51/92 and 154.

39 Ridley's Account, p. 1.

40 The coal allowance had been one of the keelmen's main grievances in 1738, Petitions & c, May 1738. It is perhaps significant that one local coal-owner described the Allies', Grand employees as “starved”, The Correspondence of Sir James Clavering, ed. by Dickinson, H. T. [Surtees Society Publications, CLXXVIII] (Gateshead, 1967), p. 213.Google Scholar

41 Carr to Coutts & Co., 22 June.

42 Subsequent investigations of these disturbances confirmed the prominent part played by pitmen, but seem to have understated the role of women and children, see below, pp. 346–47.

43 Massingham or maslin was a mixed grain, often consisting of wheat and rye.

44 From the Mayor, 20 June, PRO, SP 36/51/127; TWA, 394/10 (subscription by 7 pitmen), 12 (proclamation, 20 June, and confessions), 51 (informations), 52 (examinations); Brief against all the prisoners; evidence of N. Fenwick, TWA, 394/56.

45 From the Mayor, 20 June; TWA, 394/12 (examinations and confessions), 15 (publication of corn prices, 20–24 June), 51 (informations), 52 (examinations); Brief against all the prisoners; brief against Trotter, TWA, 394/56; evidence of Fenwick.

46 TWA, 394/12 (confessions), 51 (informations); Brief against all the prisoners; evidence of Fenwick; Ridley's Account, pp. 2–4.

47 The Correspondence of Sir James Clavering, op. cit., p. 213.

48 TWA, 394/12 (advertisement, 24 June), 52 (examinations).

49 Ridley's Account, pp. 5–6; minutes of rioters' proceedings, TWA, 394/11; Carr to Messrs Frigg & Gordon and to Trotman, 24 June.

50 Ridley's Account, p. 7.

51 Minutes of rioters' proceedings; Ridley's Account, p. 6; Carr to Coutts & Co., 1 July, and to Yelloly, 5 July; J. Sykes, Local Records; or, Historical Register of Remarkable Events (Newcastle, 1866), I, p. 166Google Scholar, quoting manuscript notes by Ald. Hornsby.

52 From the Mayor, 27 June, PRO, SP 36/51/198; minutes, 1 July, ibid., 229; Ridley's Account, pp. 6–9; TWA, 394/10 (examinations), 51 (informations), 52 (examinations); minutes of the rioters' proceedings; Brief against all the prisoners; evidence of Fenwick.

53 The Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, preserved at Castle Howard [C. 8551] (London, 1897), p. 195.Google Scholar

54 Chandler, A Charge, pp. 10–11.

55 Ridley's Account, pp. 10–11; Carr's correspondence, 1 and 5 July; The Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, op. cit., p. 195. At least one observer believed that the crowd would have remained orderly had it not been for the killings: NCRO, ZSW 212/8.

56 Evidence of Fenwick.

57 Ridley to Dobson, 6 July; Chicken, No, op. cit., pp. 3–4, 8. Ridley, who stood a fair chance of being identified as the local Porteous, was protected by his colleagues. None of the accounts of the events of the 26th sent to London or used at the trials mentions the shootings, and Ridley's name was omitted from the final versions of indictments listing those magistrates present in the Guildhall at the time of the attack. From the Mayor, 27 June; Draft and copies of indictments, 4 August, TWA 394/53 and 56.

58 See Tables 1 and 2. “Crowley's Crew” are probably overrepresented in the official records thanks to their willingness to supply the investigators with the names of colleagues.

59 To Secretary at War, 19 July, TWA, 394/11; Carr to Burnett, 8 August; Newcastle Courant, No 799.

60 See above, pp. 337–38:

61 Order in Council, 26 June, PRO, SP 36/51/183; Carr's correspondence, July-August.

62 Walter, and Wrightson, , “Dearth and Social Order”, p. 41.Google Scholar See also Thompson, , “The Moral Economy”, p. 126Google Scholar