The records show numerous occasions when riot and rebellion occurred in Devon. The reasons for disorder were many and included food shortages, price rises, and opposing religious views.
Background
Between 1790 and 1801, bread prices quadrupled and wages failed to keep up with rising prices. Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Corn Laws were introduced to counter the effects of cheap grain imports flooding into the country. The laws restricted grain imports. While they enriched landowners and merchants, they also increased prices and therefore increased poverty. The following year, 1816, was known as the ‘Year without a Summer’. Poor weather led to widespread crop failures across Britain and Europe, resulting in food shortages, rationing, and price rises.
Rising prices led to protests and riots throughout the country, including in Devon. In 1795, the ‘Ilsington Bread Riots’ ended with Thomas Campion, one of the alleged ‘ring leaders’, being hanged. Yet, a pamphlet from the time, now in the collections of Newton Abbot Museum, declares Campion was a victim who was bullied into participating. In April 1801, further disturbances took place in Totnes. Records in the local archives show that the discontent quickly spread until ‘unrest was brewing across the region from Plymouth to Exeter, Tiverton to Brixham’.
Guy Fawkes Riots, 1848
The 1840’s were a time of want and privation across Britain. In 1848, the Exeter Flying Post reported how religious disputes in Exeter escalated into violence on Guy Fawkes Night. The Bishop Henry Phillpotts attempted to enforce the wearing of surplices by clergy in order to ‘deprive the vestment of its significance as an Anglo-Catholic symbol’, yet not everyone approved of this decision. He was already deeply unpopular, and his effigy had been burned on Guy Fawkes Night in 1831. In 1848, anti-Catholic ‘No Popery’ demonstrations blended with protests regarding surplices. One clergyman appealed to the Mayor to suppress the demonstrations but was told he had ‘brought it upon himself’.
1854 Exeter Bread Riots
In 1854, a bitterly cold, harsh winter exacerbated shortages and prices rose. The Exeter Flying Post reported that, on the afternoon of 9 January, a crowd of 200-300 people protesting the price of bread rapidly escalated. Men, women and children smashed the windows of bakeries and bakers were attacked.
The mayor summoned the military. Many were arrested and the main crowd dispersed, although some moved on to the nearby village of Ide, where there was ‘some mischief’. The following day, the Mayor requested ‘respectable inhabitants to attend at the Guildhall to help keep the peace and to put down all tendency to riot and disorder’. In court, women and children denied they rioted, although many witnesses gave evidence to the contrary. It was also reported that all the rioters who appeared at Exminster Court were younger than 20, and that the ‘young ones cried bitterly’.
The Exeter Flying Post reported that the following day, the mayor called a meeting of the General Relief Committee for Relief of the Poor, to deal with the ‘extraordinary pressure of a famine year’. Although a long discussion ensued, no decisions were made, and distress continued, which was exacerbated by an outbreak of cholera in April that year.
1867 Bread Riots
In November 1867 riots broke out in Teignmouth, again provoked by rising prices of bread and meat. Butchers’ and bakers’ premises were targeted, and police reinforcements were sent from Exeter. Trouble quickly spread to the towns of Newton Abbot, Torquay, Crediton, and Barnstaple. After attacking shops the ‘angry mob’ threatened to burn down a mill owner’s property; in turn, he opened fire on the crowd.
At Exeter, the magistrates decided to allow the ‘Bonfire Revels’ of 5 November to proceed, but, anticipating disturbances, installed a strong police and militia presence. However, The Times reported that, during the event, ‘windows of every butcher and baker in the city were smashed’. Soldiers were brought from Plymouth, in addition to militia and special constables, to restore order. The following day, the Exeter Flying Post reported that the rioters were, ‘a couple of thousand ruffians protesting vehemently against price rises of bread and meat’. The ‘senseless destruction of property’ was the work ‘of an ignorant and perhaps “supper less” mob venting their anger’. The most dangerous elements of the mob were deemed to be ‘roughs, boys and women’.
‘Anonymous Strangers’ were blamed for inciting the riot. A former mayor of the city declared, in a letter to the Home Secretary, that there was ‘nothing in the price of Provisions here to justify the outbreak’.
Conclusion
In addition to protests about prices, there were fears regarding the religious divide between Catholics and Protestants, and the perceived rise of Catholicism, which were inflated by the local press. The events of 5 November in 1848 and 1867 are an example when emotions were inflamed by prejudice, and possibly alcohol.
But there were also other causes of civil disorder, when those who had the means to effect change, failed to address the plight of the people. It was only when those driven by hunger and want, with justifiable grievances, were forced to vent their anger, that authorities were pushed to act to alleviate suffering.
By Pat Comber, a U3A Shared Learning Project researcher for the Citizens Project
Sources:
D. G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (1992)
Totnes Historical Archive
Mary Jones and William Snell, The History of Chudleigh, Devon… (1875)
Philip Carter, Newton Abbot (2004)
‘Spectator’ Archive (online)
Image:
‘The Bread Riots at Exeter,‘ Illustrated London News, 21 January 1854, p. 56
