Reading time: 5 minutes

(If you missed Part Four, click here.)

Unlike his less-fortunate compatriots, George Stapleton and William Francis², James Jewell chose not to wait around at his home in Crowan, so the authorities could issue him with a summons³. As the military surrounded the rioters in Higher Fore Street, Redruth, on June 4, he slipped town. Unlike the many hundreds, possibly thousands, complicit in the looting of Warmington’s Stores that were able to melt anonymously away, Jewell must have realised his foremost role in the events made him a marked man.

We don’t know what route he took, whom he talked who, or who gave him shelter. Quite possibly, he slept rough. Maybe he begged shelter in the mining districts he came across, or at remote farmsteads. Perhaps, as a baptised Methodist⁴, he sought succour among a kind of underground railroad of fellow Bible-Christians. What we do know, is that he was most definitely a wanted man, and that a warrant was out for his capture.

By June 11, two constables had traced their man to St Austell, but enquiries there realised nothing. The elusive Jewell had escaped again, but not for long. Saturday June 12 saw him captured, in Liskeard, and returned to Bodmin Gaol to await trial. He was sentenced alongside Stapleton, Francis, and the others who had been arrested in the wake of the tumult in Redruth. He received nine months hard labour⁵, but not before acquiring a certain notoriety.

It was believed at the time that Jewell was one of

…the leading men…with others from the west [who were] amidst the disorderlies…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, 18 June 1847, p2

The ‘disorder’ under discussion here was not events at Pool or Redruth, or even Helston or Penzance. Jewell, possibly with others from the ‘west’, was believed to have been fomenting unrest in the east of Cornwall too: namely, the riot that took place in St Austell, on Friday, June 11.

Alas, whether or not Jewell (or others) stirred up the miners on his sojourn through Clay Country is unknowable. It’s more likely he kept his head down, and his mouth shut. In fact, it turned out there were plenty of people in the area desperate enough, and hungry enough, to defy the authorities…

The final part of The Food Riots of 1847 can be read here:

Trouble in Clay Country

Thanks for reading

References

1. From the Bodmin Jail website: https://www.bodminjail.org/discover/about-bodmin-jail/historical-timeline/
2. See my previous post, Hellfire Corner, here. Jewell told a flour merchant that he’d be “d____d” if he left the town empty handed. Royal Cornwall Gazette, 9 July 1847, p1.
3. According to the 1841 census, Jewell was born in around 1829, in Crowan.
4. See: England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1936 for James Jewell, Piece 0559, Helston (Methodist), 1804-1837, Ancestry.co.uk
5. Kresen Kernow, Quarter Sessions Rolls 1847, QS/1/14/284.

Reading time: 15 minutes

(If you missed Part Two, click here.)

Redruth first?¹

It may just have been taproom gossip that reached the wrong ears, but by Wednesday June 2, the authorities in Redruth knew trouble was headed their way. Soon. The town’s principal market day was that Friday, the 4th, and two local magistrates, John Penberthy Magor of Penventon House², and Mr S Davey, had been tipped the wink that a “large body of dissatisfied miners”³ were poised to descend on the town. Word was, it was the same band that had caused the recent disturbances in Helston and Penzance at the end of May.

If the whispers were true, Magor and Davey must have realised their town was facing difficulties. After all, a crowd of 5,000 was estimated to have been in Penzance: we can be sure this was a total that would have increased with the telling. Redruth had no police force: the Cornwall County Constabulary would not be formed for another ten years. The maintaining of law and order was normally entrusted to four Parish Officers: George Hicks, Robert Ford, William Nicholls, and John Lander, none of whom were full-time (for example, Lander worked as a grocer). Hastily, Special Constables, all prominent townspeople (and not miners or the rank-and-file), were sworn in. There was a draper, a butcher, and an auctioneer; we do not know the total number of deputised men, the ‘papers only name a half-dozen. Whatever the size of their ranks, they were obviously going to be badly outnumbered, and Magor and Davey were taking no chances. A messenger was sent to Penzance, where the military were still present. Sixty troops of the 5th Fusiliers were mobilised, and marched from Penzance to Hayle, where a chartered train conveyed them the last few miles to Redruth, and they were stationed at West End. (In command, as at Helston and Penzance, was Captain Simmonds.) Forty Pensioners were also pressed into service, their base being what was then the Vestry Room on Falmouth Rd. These hundred or so armed men were in position by the morning of the 4th. Even the coastguard was on standby.

Shops were boarded up. Women hustled their brats inside. Market-traders, especially the butchers, discretely removed their goods (and themselves) from harm’s way. Somewhere, two thousand people from the West were coming. They’d been kicked out of Helston, and received a little relief in Penzance. An army marches on its stomach – or on desperation.

Pool, “…early in the forenoon…”⁴

But maybe the miners had put their own feelers out. Twice now their intentions to fix prices in markets had been stillborn, due to the authorities being made aware in advance of their movements. It’s therefore quite reasonable to assume that those on the stank from the West anticipated, or even knew of, the defensive efforts being made against them in Redruth. Going somewhere else first would give them the element of surprise. And that somewhere was Pool.

By the time the crowd reached Pool, it was around 3,000 strong, more having joined en route. It wouldn’t have taken them long to ascertain the principal corn-factor of the village (indeed, the locals may have saved themselves no little trouble by pointing him out): this was Joel Blamey, from Gwennap⁵. Delegates, spokespeople, were rapidly sent to him, requesting that Blamey sell them his flour at 50 shillings, or £2 10s, a sack. Blamey either felt he could get a better deal elsewhere, or didn’t take kindly to having the value of his goods dictated to him by a bunch of proles. He refused, and was told that

…you raise your flour, and we don’t tell you when to raise it, and why won’t you fall it?

Royal Cornwall Gazette, July 9, 1847, p4

In many ways it was a bad decision, not least because, later, Blamey’s flour was only valued at £2 a sack⁶. There were also no soldiers in Pool, protecting his interests. Several gentlemen of the village attempted to pacify the crowd, who must have realised that, finally, unlike in Helston and Penzance, they were in the ascendant. The speeches, perhaps unsurprisingly, were “of no avail”⁷.

Then all hell broke loose.

Incited by the women present, such as Prudence Thomas, a copper dresser in her 30s from Illogan⁸, the crowd roared and moved as one on Blamey’s stores. William Osborne, 36, was heard to cry that he and several others were carrying gunpowder – just in case. Yet a sledgehammer was passed hand over hand to the front of the crush, and an obliging female walloped the warehouse doors open with several meaty blows. The mob charged in.

Maybe they stopped for a few seconds to withhold the bounty within – but only for a few seconds. A line had been crossed – no forced entry had been even contemplated in Helston, or been successful in Penzance. Plus, these people were starving. Men, women, and children fell on Blamey’s stock and made off with whatever they could carry. Aprons, bonnets, shawls, baskets, tubs and barrels were deemed worthy aids in plunder. Stephen Bennetts, a 17 year-old from Illogan, enterprisingly wheeled out an entire cart of flour and upended it in the road, for others to help themselves⁹.

All items were piled hastily together in the improvised vessels, wastage and ruination of the groceries being the collateral damage. Time wasn’t on the crowd’s side. Mary Ann Craze, a teenaged copper-dresser from Tregajorran¹⁰, quickly loaded her pinny with purloined tea and dashed off. Prudence Thomas was staggering under the weight of flour in her apron. Hundreds of others swarmed the building, taking what they could, as quickly as they could.

The “disgraceful disturbance”¹¹, or, if you will, scenes of people driven to extremes by hunger, couldn’t last.

The militia were rapidly mobilised from Redruth, Pensioners and Special Constables complimenting the detachment of regular soldiers. Magor also rode in on horseback. The troops stood to attention outside Blamey’s now rather sorry-looking place of business, whilst Magor, with a duty befitting his station, read the Riot Act. Under the Punishment of Offences Act of 1837, the crowd now had an hour to peacefully disperse. Anyone remaining at the scene after the expiration of that time, if arrested, could be transported for life.

Dispersing peacefully is one thing; dispersing peacefully after a raid on a corn-factor’s store whilst carrying the fruits of your labour is another matter altogether. Prudence Thomas, still lugging her apron of flour but also now brandishing a large wooden paddle, threatened to ram it into the teeth of one Special Constable if he didn’t back off. Even as Magor had finished reading the Riot Act and was officiously folding the manuscript back into his pocket, Ann Roberts, 45, narrowly sidestepped his mount in her bid to get away with her own basket of flour. Scores of other people must have been making similar sharp exits.

For example, a Parish Constable called William Nicholls was coming out of Pool towards Illogan Highway, when he apprehended Thomas Medlin (or Medlen) and William Dodson, both men carrying what must have been a suspicious quantity of flour. Nicholls manhandled the men and secured them in the Account House at Wheal Agar, but not for long.

Over a hundred men, one of whom was William Osborne, quickly materialised, and demanded of Nicholls that he release their comrades, or,

…d__n your eyes, we will tear the account-house down…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, July 9, 1847, p4

Nicholls said he would do no such thing, and was then subjected to a brutal assault. He was punched, stoned, and finally battered with a shovel, this last item eventually being flung through the windows of the Account House to release Medlin and Dodson. Nicholls staggered off, the cries and insults of Osborne and his cohorts ringing in his ears. Medlin and Dodson were never recaptured – and neither was their flour.

They were lucky. One by one, those prominent in the Pool raid were rounded up. Anonymous faces from out of town escaped with relative ease; it was the locals whom the Constables could readily identify that were in most danger of arrest. They were held at Bodmin Jail awaiting trial, which wasn’t until early July.

Crime and Punishment

William Osborne, Stephen Bennetts, Prudence Thomas, Ann Roberts and Mary Ann Craze were all tried at the same Midsummer Sessions as those who had fallen foul of the law at Redruth. As we shall see, the manner of their indictment was the same as that inflicted upon their Redruth comrades. Put bluntly, the authorities wanted to show those in the dock that

…the laws of England are stronger than brute force.

Royal Cornwall Gazette, July 9, 1847, p4

All were acquitted, however, of the charge of rioting, but were charged with breaking and entering the warehouse of Joel Blamey, and stealing his property, which was itemised as: 10 sacks of flour (value – £20), 10 hundredweight of flour (£20), 20 pounds of tea (£10), and 10 hemp sacks (20 shillings)¹⁴.

Osborne was let off this charge, but was given nine months hard labour for assaulting William Nicholl. Stephen Bennetts: eight months hard labour. Prudence Thomas and Ann Roberts: three months hard labour. Mary Ann Craze, for all her tears in court, recommendation of mercy by the jury, and family’s good reputation, was still given three months, with hard labour¹⁵.

At Bodmin Gaol in the 1840s, hard labour often meant several hours every day on the treadmill, or convict breaker. It could accommodate 26 prisoners at a time and its only purpose was to physically and mentally break its victims, which it often did. The sheer pointlessness of their extreme exertions drove many to nervous breakdowns.

The Chairman of the Magistrates, John King Lethbridge of Launceston, stated that he believed the court had given “mild” sentences, especially to the women. Furthermore, he went on, such magnanimity on the part of the bench had been given in the knowledge that Prudence Bennett had acted more like a “fury” than a woman, and Ann Roberts had indulged in “riotous” disturbances under the influence of the crowd. He hoped these lenient punishments would encourage the lower orders to show gratitude, rather than “hatred” toward the merchants who were endeavouring to import corn into Cornwall, and also to those people who were attempting to secure them aid¹⁷.

But the commotion time of June 4, 1847, was not over yet.

Here’s part four of the Cornish Food Riots of 1847:

Hellfire Corner: Redruth, June 4, 1847

Thanks for reading

References

1. The main narrative of this post is based on the Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG) of June 11th (p2), 18th (p2), 25th (p3), July 2nd (p2), and July 9th (p1&4).
2. Magor was born c1796, and died in 1862. His journal is available at Kresen Kernow, ref FS/3/1130. Unfortunately, the last entries were made in 1846.
3. RCG, June 11th, p2.
4. RCG, June 11th, p2.
5. Blamey was born in 1786, according to the 1841 census, and died in 1868.
6. According to volume two of the 1862 Book of the Household (p511), a sack of flour would weigh 280lb, or five bushels, and could produce eighty loaves. The ten sacks of flour stolen from Blamey were valued at the trial of the rioters at a total of £20, so, £2/sack. See Kresen Kernow, Quarter Sessions Rolls 1847, QS/1/14/288.
7. RCG, June 11th, p2.
8. Kresen Kernow, Quarter Sessions Rolls 1847, QS/1/14/288, and 1851 census.
9. The goods itemised as stolen were: 10 sacks of flour (£20), 10 hundredweight of flour (£20), 20 pounds of tea (£10), 10 hemp sacks (20 shillings) and 10 sacks (20 shillings). Kresen Kernow, Quarter Sessions Rolls 1847, QS/1/14/288. Stephen Bennetts’ actions were described in court as reckless, and “violent”: RCG July 9 1847, p4.
10. 1851 census.
11. RCG, June 11th, p2.
12. See http://www.carnbreaparishcouncil.gov.uk/Pool_29209.aspx
13. See Jackie Freeman’s Photography Blog on Bodmin Jail here.
14. Kresen Kernow, Quarter Sessions Rolls 1847, QS/1/14/288.
15. Kresen Kernow, Quarter Sessions Rolls 1847, QS/1/14/288, 289, 290.
16. See Jackie Freeman’s Photography Blog on Bodmin Jail here.
17. RCG, July 9 1847, p4.

Reading time: 20 minutes

(If you missed Part One, click here.)

…Compell them to sell their corn…at a fair and reasonable Price…march one and all with determined Hearts and Hands to have redress – or vengeance…

Anonymous handbill advertising a march for food, Stratton, 1795. From John Rule, Cornish Cases, Clio, 2006, p50. No miners’ handbills from 1847 have survived

Cornwall, May-June 1847. Locations of unrest, relief, and organisation are marked

Hard Times

The potato blight, and subsequent famine, that decimated the population of Ireland, hit Cornwall (and England) in the winter of 1846-7. It was also a bitterly cold winter, and many other root crops froze in the earth. Relief in the form of an early, mild spring did not materialise. Animal fodder was scarce too, and beasts starved in icy fields. The price of beef, pork and mutton correspondingly skyrocketed, along with the cost – and availability – of wheat and flour. Wheat was £2/bushel; it hadn’t been that dear since the last famine year, 1817. Everywhere in Cornwall was a “pressure of scarcity”¹. Breakfast for a miner was described as

…barley gruel…about three quarts of water and a halfpenny-worth of skimmed milk thickened with barley flour…

From Philip Payton, The Cornish Overseas, Cornwall Editions, 2005, p135

There was nothing for croust, and workers could barely crawl home after coming to grass.

Various solutions were presented. In March the Queen issued a Proclamation for a “General Fast”. The famine was a visitation by God upon the “iniquities of this land”. Her loyal subjects ought to send up “prayers and supplications” to the Almighty and “avoid his wrath” through their humility². And, if prayer and fasting would not bring relief, what would? What would happen to the hungry poor and, perhaps equally importantly, to what lengths would they go to avoid death by starvation? Would they take food by force? Surely not:

We have no fear of any formidable strike among the Cornish miners. Superior to every other class of workmen in the Kingdom…they are beyond the influence of the political agitator.

Royal Cornwall Gazette, January 22, 1847, p2

This complacency was short-lived.

In their cottages, in the barren fields, and underground, people were getting organised.

Although in terms of weight of numbers the most impressive riots took place in Pool and Redruth, disturbances were reported in many Cornish towns through the spring and summer. Localised events, perhaps, but taken as a whole one begins to get a sense of the hardships and privations faced by entire communities across Cornwall, and the several attempts at aid made by the authorities and/or the philanthropically minded.

The Merry Month of May

At first, the merchants and authorities were caught off-guard. At Callington on May 12, around 200 miners from the Stoke Climsland, Holmbush and Silver Valley workings, marched in unopposed and gathered at the Town Hall. They knew what they were about, and went straight to the market. There they forced the unprotected, and no doubt intimidated, farmers to sell their wheat and barley at prices nominated by the miners. But that wasn’t all. Any merchant or trader sniffed out in Callington that day were “roughly handled”, and their goods were closely escorted to the market and then sold for the same knockdown prices. The town was “in an uproar”, and more genteel forms of trade brought to a standstill. After this particular horse had bolted, the local magistrates resolved to take steps against such “lawless proceedings” and swore in a hundred Special Constables. The local miners, for their part, pledged to drink in no Callington pub for the next three months; the first man to break this agreement would “be carried around the town on a pole”. Seven days later, in Liskeard market, the nervous merchants stayed away, and no corn or wheat could be bought⁴.

That very same day, May 12, Wadebridge experienced a similar disturbance. 400 men from Luxulyan and Roche, but later swelling to an estimated 700, entered the town, parading a pasty on a pole in their front ranks, and “using threats of violence”⁵. But the town fathers had heard of their coming from the north: the factors had removed their corn overnight, and the local coastguard was patrolling the town. But this didn’t stop the mob from breaking open and inspecting the stores. In a panic, the local magistrate, Edward Stephens, was called upon to pacify the would-be looters. This is the response he got:

…don’t hear what the old b____r has to say, he’s only going to delude us…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, August 6, 1847, p4

Then, with a cry of “beat his brains”⁶, Stephens was set upon by a group armed with cudgels, and was badly beaten: only when a local constable, Daniell William Lovell, drew his pistol and threatened to shoot the next man that came on, was a shaky peace restored. Prominent among the assailants was a miner called William Tellam, 27, from Carnsmerry, in Treverbyn⁷. He appears again in our story. By the time the military arrived from Plymouth, early the next morning, all was “perfectly tranquil”⁸. Tranquil, that is, until the 19th, when 400 men from Delabole Quarry invaded the town, resulting in the Redcoats being sent for again.

May 14th. “Hundreds” of men in a “starving state” came to Camelford for wheat, but were told there was none to be had in the town. Unperturbed, they went to a local farmer, and threatened to “thrash” him if he did not thrash out his corn in time for the next market. They then purloined all the bread from the Gayers, of Trethin, robbed their hens of eggs, and even took rooks from the trees. They then slaked their thirst in the Camelford taverns, “not paying for their drink”⁹.

Relief

All that said, the authorities and the miners were not quite at daggers drawn – yet. When 1,500 tinners were put out of work at Polberro Consols near St Agnes, several of them came to Truro on May 17, requesting permission to beg. They were sent on their way with a loaf each. Relief committees for miners unable to afford bread were set up in St Austell and Gwennap. At Newquay and the East Wheal Rose Mine at Lappa Valley (whose inhabitants were still recovering from the disaster of 1846¹⁰), corn and flour was arranged to be shipped from Liverpool and purchased by the miners. Ironically, days earlier men from Withiel parish had attempted to halt a shipment of grain from leaving Padstow. J. T. Austen Treffry, owner of both Fowey and Par Consols, established his own relief fund in conjunction with his mines’ adventurers: all his miners whose earnings were not enough to cover their, and their families’ needs, could purchase cheap flour, wheat and barley by means of a ticket system¹¹. At Balleswidden Mine near St Just, tinners coming to grass were presented with a loaf and a bar of soap each¹². Presumably, people starve with more dignity if they’re clean.

These efforts weren’t nearly enough. Indeed, “nothing could be looked for through our mining districts but want and riot”¹³.

The Men of Breage Get Organised

God, keep us from rocks and shifting sands,

And save us from Breage and Germoe mens’ hands.

qtd. in Philip Payton, Cornwall – A History, Cornwall Editions, 1996, p171

As the old nautical prayer above makes clear, the inhabitants of Breage had long enjoyed a certain reputation for lawless derring-do, wrecking and smuggling being their primary interests. In 1847, they turned their attentions inland. Anonymous handbills were posted around the village, calling on local miners to assemble at a certain spot on Saturday, May 22. The reasons for this meeting were unstated and, alas, no copies of the handbill survive. But we do know where the men of Breage were headed for their gathering, and there was a lot of them.

They were going to Helston, on market day¹⁵.

Helston, May 22, 1847

If the handbills in Breage were anonymous, then so was was the tip-off to the authorities in Helston: the miners are coming, get ready. The Mayor, Thomas Rogers, a 55 year-old solicitor residing at Coinagehall Street¹⁶, got busy. Fifty soldiers of the 5th Fusiliers were called in from Pendennis Castle, Falmouth, thirty men of the local coastguard were mobilised, and sixty townspeople were deputised as Special Constables. The militia were stationed at the bottom of Sithney Common Hill, and the Constables were covering the Guildhall in Church Street.

Rogers’ sources proved correct. By 11am, 300 miners entered the outskirts of Helston from the west – straight down Sithney Common Hill, where the Redcoats were waiting. Either they had peaceful intentions all along or, alternatively, once the miners caught sight of a well-drilled, musket-wielding platoon, they opted for diplomacy over threat. Flanked by the soldiers, Rogers and a gaggle of magistrates asked the burly incomers to state their business. The miners stated that they, and their families, were starving, many were out of work, and even those in gainful employment could not afford food, as prices were so high: they wanted to know if “something could not be done to help them”¹⁷.

The Mayor measured the sincerity of their words, and their appearance. Yes, the miners could enter the town and wait, whilst he and the magistrates discussed what relief could be provided – if any. Rogers assured them that everything possible “should be done to alleviate their distress”, with the proviso that any resolution to violence on the miners’ part to achieve their aims would be folly, as “ample means were at hand to repel any attack they might make”.

Rogers had the whip-hand, and everyone knew it. The miners trudged to Coinagehall Street to await a possible handout. The soldiers stayed where they were.

Hours passed. The men were probably bored, doubtless hungry, and still no word had been forthcoming about any relief. Even taking matters into their own hands, and fixing prices to suit their means at the market, was out of the question, what with the army in town. Frustrations must have boiled over, and a confrontation became inevitable. As if by a signal, at 5pm a huge “uproar” was heard in the street by the Coinage Hall, which brought the Special Constables running and resulted in a free-for-all ruck outside the Mayor’s place of residence. Whilst this was going on (and it lasted for thirty minutes of all-in streetfighting), Helston was rapidly put on lockdown. Shops closed and pubs were emptied. The market was rapidly cleared of stock. Unfounded rumours flew about that people had been shot and killed. Thomas Oliver, a boy in Helston at the time, recalled in 1914 that the miners, now thinned down to a total of around seventy, attacked with shovels and pickaxe handles, and that the soldiers actually refused the order to fire a volley over the rioters’ heads, and that the Mayor read the Riot Act¹⁸.

But no contemporary report mentions this, quite the contrary: “The soldiers did not quit the building in which they were stationed”, and blame for the scrap was put down to the “officiousness” of the constables. With both sides battered and bruised, it was the miners who retreated, empty-handed.

Did Rogers eventually provide bread for the miners? No; after all, he’d given them fair warning on the improprieties of rioting. He did, however, ensure the military remained in his town until the 25th, and bumped up his band of Special Constables to a round hundred. Eventually, the Great Work Mine at Breage decided to purchase corn for its workforce – to be sold on to them at a 30% discount.

As for the miners, they probably realised that, if the element of surprise was denied them, a town’s market well-defended, and they encountered a Mayor as wily as Thomas Rogers, there was little they could do. Especially with only three hundred men.

Penzance would be different.

Rise of the Miners: Penzance, May 27, 1847¹⁹

The present season of commercial difficulty ought to unite all classes of the community more firmly together – teach property that it has duties to perform…and labour that it has rights to respect…

“The Anticipated Famine”, Penzance Gazette, June 2, 1847

The above lines may have been written more in hope than expectation. The season of “commercial” difficulty (note the inference here that the problems are linked to business and trade, and that, therefore, is where the readers’ concerns ought to lie), was in fact driving an even bigger wedge between all society’s classes. “Property” was increasingly looking to protect its own interests, and “labour” looking to assert, or perform, their long-held right of marching for food and price-fixing in times of dearth. And so it was to prove in Penzance.

The Mayor of Penzance at the time was Thomas Simon Bolitho (1808-1887), of a powerful family of West Cornwall land-owners, adventurers, and tin-smelters²¹. He would therefore have had ears in high places, and subterranean ones. Subsequently, rumours had reached him and the town’s authorities over a week previously that the miners of the Breage and Germoe region intended to come to Penzance with what he would have viewed as nefarious purposes on market day – the 27th. This may have given Bolitho little cause for concern; after all, their numbers in Helston had only been a few hundred, and the Mayor there, Rogers, had demonstrated what could be done with a decent show of strength. However, on the 26th he received word that Breage’s forces were to joined with that of the miners from the St Just area, and this represented a far more considerable strain on Bolitho’s resources.

(Also, in an anticipatory move, Penzance men with mining interests had rode out to the mining districts, not to dispense charity, but to attempt to convince the miners of the futility of coming to town on the 27th. The pleas fell on deaf – and hungry – ears.)

The soldiers of the 5th Fusiliers had barely dumped their kitbags on the barrackroom floor at Pendennis Castle when they received yet another order to mobilise against civilians. Captain Simmonds (or Simmons) was again in command, as he had been in Helston. By dawn on the 27th, 60 Redcoats were in Penzance. Bolitho then pressed the coastguard, and a number of sailors, into service. Besides this he also deputised a private army of 200 Special Constables. The shops were shut, taverns closed, and market trade suspended. Bolitho obviously feared the Breage and Germoe mens’ hands. The town of Penzance was now utterly “begloomed”.

From 9am, men “in bodies varying from 50 to 200 in number” began appearing at the town’s outskirts. Two local padres, Fathers Punnet and Graham, met many of these itinerant bands and “expostulated with them, but in vain”. By 11am, 3,000 miners, men, women and children, were at large in Penzance. This total later increased to 5,000, as the hungry of St Just joined forces with the hungry of Breage in the town centre.

These were now tense moments. As the crowd turned down Market Jew Street, it became apparent they were marching into a trap. The soldiers had been stationed “in a position to command from the windows the whole of the principal directions of the heart of the town”: the army was covering the marchers with their muskets from an elevated position. It may have been Capt. Simmonds force, but it was Bolitho’s town: he was the man issuing orders in cahoots with his fellow-magistrates, and managing the forces at his disposal, lest “evil ensue”. He hadn’t looked for this situation, but he can’t have wanted it to end in a bloodbath either. The miners yelled at the sight of the Redcoats grimly scrutinising them from above, the women screamed murder, and the mob’s overall appearance “bespoke fierceness”, but, mercifully, nothing happened.

As at Helston, a rampage of looting was out of the question, if it had even been considered by the majority of the miners. Watched, probably from a safe distance, by fascinated townspeople, a halt was called at Eastern Green. Again, as at Helston, it was decided that a deputation of miners should address Bolitho et al, at the Market House on Market Jew Street. Their purpose was to

…lay their case before them, and to ascertain what they could engage to do to alleviate their condition…

Penzance Gazette, June 2, 1847

And so the negotiations began. In a show of good faith, bread and victuals were distributed amongst the crowd by principal townsmen. Eventually, a deal was hit upon, with both sides apparently getting what they wanted. The miners would leave Penzance in a peaceful manner (and with the militia in town, this was something akin to gunboat diplomacy by the town authorities), and the town council would “use their utmost exertions” to secure a supply of barley, distributing said supply to the mining districts for sale at a reduced rate. With their stomachs full (or no longer empty), the crowd dispersed. Peacefully.

Well, not quite. A group of miners stole away from the main body, having heard that corn had been concealed in a nearby warehouse; they found nothing. This same shadowy group then attempted to force the doors of the prison, on Old Brewery Yard, suspecting corn to be hidden there too. However, lacking sufficient resolve (and doubtless mindful of the close proximity of the army), this attempt at breaking and entering was aborted.

Reports state, with some relief, that “no violence…was resorted to” that day in Penzance. Matters had been attended to without serious incident, and supplies would soon be winging their way to the mining districts, courtesy of the town’s authorities.

But such arrangements take time. The bushels would only begin to arrive in the inflicted areas from June 5. For many, this was simply not fast enough. For many strickened families, even buying food at reduced rates was frankly no longer an option. And many therefore decided that sitting tight in their squat cottages waiting for good news was no longer feasible. Talk, and plans, for a longer march, further east, must have been discussed. As would have been what the intentions were on reaching the proposed destination.

Part three of the Cornish Food Riots can be read via the link below :

Commotion Time: Pool, June 4, 1847²²

Thanks for reading

References

1. Royal Cornwall Gazette (hereafter RCG), May 14, 1847, p2.
2. RCG, March 19, 1847, p4. More secular, hard-nosed and politically minded views of the causes of dearth laid much of the blame at the door of Government policy: RCG, 22 January, 1847, p2, and June 25, 1847, p2.
3. From Plymouth Mineral and Mining Club.
4. RCG, 21 May 1847, p2.
5. RCG, 21 May 1847, p2.
6. RCG, 6 August 1847, p4.
7. 1851 census.
8. RCG, 21 May 1847, p2.
9. RCG, 21 May 1847, p2.
10. See: https://www.lappavalley.co.uk/heritage/east-wheal-rose-mining-disaster/
11. See The King of Mid Cornwall: Life of Joseph Thomas Treffry, 1782-1850, by John Keast, Truran, 1982, Chapter 9. I am grateful to Caroline Stephenson for showing me this. A copy of the handbill outlining the proposed relief scheme Treffry issued in his name can be seen in RCG, 21 May 1847, p2.
12. RCG, 14 May 1847, p2, and 21 May 1847, p2.
13. RCG, 14 May 1847, p2.
14. From Helston Hub News.
15. RCG, 14 May 1847, p2.
16. 1851 census.
17. The main narrative of this section and quotes are from RCG, 28 May 1847, p2.
18. From Philip Payton, The Cornish Overseas, Cornwall Editions, 2005, p134.
19. “Rise of the Miners” headed the article from which the main narrative and quotations are taken in this section: The Penzance Gazette, June 2, 1847.
20. See: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp148645/thomas-simon-bolitho
21. See: https://www.bolithoestates.co.uk
22. Taken from the title of Commotion Time: The Anglo-Cornish War of June-August 1549, by Craig Weatherhill, Penwith Press, 2021.

Reading time: 15 minutes

In consequence, however, of the failure of the potato crop, prices had gone up beyond their expectation.

Report of the Annual Meeting of the Wadebridge Farmers’ Club, Royal Cornwall Gazette, 25 December 1846, p1

The history of Cornwall in the 18th and 19th centuries was punctuated by rioting, for various reasons. The Camborne Riots of 1873 were motivated by anti-police sentiment; the later riots of 1882 were motivated by prejudice towards Irish workers². Most riots, however, were generated by hunger.

From the 1720s, to 1847, there were 21 recorded Cornish food riots. The miners, perhaps unsurprisingly, participated in any, and every, incidence of social unrest. So did the other men, women and children of the working class. Where recorded, the number of people prepared to march for grain can be as impressive as it is intimidating: 5,000 on the streets of Truro in 1796, or 2,000 in Manaccan in 1831³.

The moral economy of the Cornish crowd

In times of hunger, rioting was the last resort of the starving poor, an option turned to in desperation, yet the discipline and focus of a famished Cornish crowd is noteworthy. A food riot in Cornwall often featured little violence, and no wanton looting, vandalism, or anarchy – though it can be argued that the mere threat of such practices were enough for a large mob to realise its aims. These were not reckless hordes bullying their way into a town and laying waste to all they beheld, in an orgy of injustice and rage. On the contrary, large groups of malnourished outsiders elected spokespeople to negotiate with town officials to fix corn prices, or to ensure no grain was exported from the area by the corn merchants or corn-factors, as they were known. It was only when these more diplomatic efforts failed, that force was employed. The five stages of a food riot have been identified as follows:

• Invasion of the agricultural districts by miners in search of farmers withholding grain from markets;
• Mob action to force magistrates to fix maximum prices of grain;
• Direct action by rioters to impose lower prices on market sellers;
• Looting of grain warehouses;
• Riots to prevent the export of grain in times of scarcity⁵.

Throughout the May and June of 1847, looting and riots were seen rather a lot.

The causes of the 1847 Riots

The fundamental conflict of a food riot was between builders of Britain’s Empire and commerce, who believed in operating a free inland trade in grain, and the lower orders who maintained that trade should be regulated in their interests, with corn to be sold at a ‘just’, or traditional price: the forces of modern economics meet the forces of folk traditions.

In Cornwall farmers preferred to sell their corn in bulk to factors, rather than piecemeal in local markets. These middlemen, of course, increased the price of corn and looked to export it from the county in an effort to maximise their profits. This is classic capitalism: buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest; or, take your supply to where the demand is willing to pay top mark. Obviously, the Cornish labouring poor could ill afford what they took to be inflated prices, and took a dim view of merchants of any stripe. As the crowd at Redruth told one factor in no uncertain terms that year, they believed that

…all flour-merchants were rogues of the first order…

Royal Cornwall Gazette, July 9, 1847, p1

In years of poor harvests or dearth such as 1847 (the potato blight that resulted in the famine that decimated Ireland also hit Cornwall that winter), farmers would sell all their crops to factors rather than risk them turning bad. Why not? The prospect of a good harvest would lower prices, and their profits, over the summer. More corn was therefore exported from Cornwall in years of bad harvest, and, paradoxically, more was also imported by landlords and mine owners to keep their workers fed. Importing in this fashion of course cost more than simply buying locally. Conflict was perhaps inevitable, between those who sought to maximise their profits – farmers, factors – and those who saw wagons of grain leaving the county and little or none to buy in the local market⁷.

Why write about the 1847 Riots?

…food rioting [in the rest of England] was already a thing of the past. In Cornwall the riots of 1847 were the final fling of this traditional form of protest.

John Rule, Cornish Cases, Clio, 2006, p43

The Cornish Food Riots of 1847 have received little detailed academic attention over the years. In choosing to riot for food in 1847, it’s maybe perceived that the people of Cornwall persisted with outmoded beliefs and value systems, whilst the English have moved on⁸.

There’s more to the Cornish Food Riots of 1847 than the last-gasp attempt of the labouring classes to regulate the new market forces in their own interests. At the time, the people who rioted, the farmers, factors and dealers who they rioted against, the figures in authority who sought to pacify and/or patronise and punish the rioters, the soldiers sent in by the authorities to pacify and/or shoot the rioters, and the citizens caught somewhere in the middle, didn’t know that these were to be among the final uprisings motivated solely by dearth and the corresponding high prices of food in the county⁹.

The Cornish Food Riots of 1847 are worthy of study because, at the time, they had a geographical heft significant enough to be a real cause of concern to the authorities. There were outbreaks in Wadebridge, Callington, Delabole, Camelford, St Austell and Breage. These were not isolated or localised incidents of a few dozen village roughs, putting the frighteners on the farmers and officials, to secure grain at an advantageous price before melting away to their cottages. 300 miners took to the streets of Helston. 3,000 demanded corn in Penzance. 2,000 in Pool. 5,000 faced off against the militia in Redruth. This was a concerted fight for survival, virtually county-wide.

Study of the Riots also give us an insight into the attitudes and culture of the people who lived then, through the reports on the events and individuals involved. There’s emboldened miners, self-righteous women, high-handed magistrates, dutiful constables and victimised merchants. There’s patronising lectures and short, impassioned speeches. There’s cowardice, and bravery. There’s handbills, and tip-offs. There’s negotiation, and violence. There’s fugitives from the law, and harsh punishments. In short, there’s a lot worthy of historical interest.

I’ve broken my work on the Cornish Food Riots of 1847 into four more separate posts:

1. Part two takes in the tumults of Wadebridge, Callington, Delabole, Camelford, and St Austell. As they’re all linked, particular attention is given to the uprisings in Breage, Helston and Penzance.
2. Part three discusses the rioting in Pool.
3. Part four analyses the uproar in Redruth.
4. Part five looks at the disturbances in St Austell, and summarises the events as a whole.

Click here to read part two: Rise of the Miners

With special thanks to Deana Schultz Wade, who recommended I start using footnotes.

References

1. https://www.visitdublin.com/see-do/details/famine-memorial
2. See https://www.camborneriot1873.com, and Louise Miskell, “Irish Immigrants in Cornwall: the Camborne Experience, 1861-1882”, in Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley (eds.), The Irish in Victorian Britain: the Local Dimension, Four Courts Press, 1999, p31-51.
3. See John Rule, Cornish Cases, Clio, 2006, p35-74.
4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-22294189
5. See Rule, Cornish Cases, p35-74. His work draws heavily on what E.P. Thompson called “the moral economy of the English crowd”, in Customs in Common, Penguin, 1991, p259-351.
6. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/london-protest-1840s-granger.html?product=greeting-card
7. See Rule, p35-74. For more on the growth of free trade capitalism, see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital 1848-1875, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962, p36-9. A good general text on Ireland’s suffering at this time is The Great Irish Potato Famine, by James S. Donnelly, Sutton, 2001.
8. John Rule’s fascinating essay on Cornish food rioting in Cornish Cases sadly omits the events of 1847. Ashley Rowe produced an article for The Report of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, vol. 10, in 1942 (p56-67), and this is a worthy narrative. However it lacks any socio-historical analysis, which Rowe himself admits. This will be discussed in a later post. Kresen Kernow hold a research project by Kevin Thomas from 1996, Food Rioting in Cornwall (1727-1847): With Some Comparison to Contemporary Wales, but is relatively short, and employs the same timescale as Rule. Philip Payton discusses the Riots in The Cornish Overseas to develop his theme of the Cornish emigrating on account of the food shortages of the time (Cornwall Editions, 2005, p129-35). There is also an article online by the Penwith History Group, which is really more of a brief survey.
9. Incidentally, the year 1847 didn’t mark the end of food rioting in England. The London Express of January 13, 1854 reports the trial of food rioters in Exeter (p2), and Reynolds’s Newspaper of November 17, 1867 reports a “desperate” food riot in Oxford (p4). For more information on the Exeter riot, it’s discussed on the Devon Radical History Facebook page, and an article is available here. Thanks to Dave Parks for sharing this.