Some Labour Troubles of the 1790's in North East England

Norman McCord; David E. Brewster

doi:10.1017/S0020859000006921

Some Labour Troubles of the 1790's in North East England

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008

Norman McCord and

David E. Brewster

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Abstract

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The period of the great French Wars of 1793–1815 saw a crop of strikes and other disturbances in North East England. The end of the wars in 1815 was followed rapidly by the great seamen's strike of 1815, which turned fundamentally on a question of redundancy. The object of this paper is to consider a series of disputes just before the outbreak of war, and during the war's early years, disputes which turned fundamentally on the equally perennial question of the regulation of wages at a time of rising prices.

Type: Research Article
Information: International Review of Social History , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , December 1968 , pp. 366 - 383

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859000006921 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1968

References

^{page 366 note 1} The principal sources used for this paper have been the Home Office and Admiralty Papers in the Public Record Office (hereinafter cited as HO and Adm. respectively), local newspapers and documents in the Newcastle City Archives. The 1815 strike has been discussed in “The Seamen's Strike of 1815 in North East England”, in: Economic History Review, Second Series, Vol. XXI, No 1, 1968.Google Scholar

^{page 366 note 2} HO 42/22. Thomas Powditch/Pitt, 3 Nov. 1792. This long letter, though written with obvious prejudice, gives a good deal of information about the seamen's strike of October-November 1792, and associated events.

^{page 367 note 1} Adm. 1/2395 contains the letters to the Admiralty for this period of impressment from the Regulating Officer in North East England, Captain Peter Rothe.

^{page 367 note 2} HO 42/22. Cochrane/Dundas, 20 Nov. 1792. This long letter is another of the most useful documents relating to the seamen's strike, and is notably more objective than the Powditch letter cited above.

^{page 368 note 1} Newcastle Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1792.

^{page 368 note 2} Powditch/Pitt, 3 Nov. 1792. Loc. cit.

^{page 369 note 1} Ibid. A number of other letters from the more recalcitrant shipowners echo this bitter resentment at the failure of the local magistrates to use force to break the seamen's strike.

^{page 369 note 2} Some little time earlier, Wallace, the Vicar of South Shields, had been made a Durham county magistrate to fill this gap in authority, but as he was not a very regular resident this didn't help much. After vainly trying to find someone else from the normal categories appropriate for such an office, the authorities concerned, mainly the Home Office and the Bishop of Durham, had to fall back on the appointment to the magistracy of Nicholas Fairies, who possessed neither the social status nor the financial security appropriate to such an appointment in normal circumstances. He proved an energetic, but not always a sagacious, magistrate. On Whit Monday, 1832, when in his seventies, he was brutally beaten to death by two pitmen.

^{page 370 note 1} HO 42/22. Joseph Bulmer/Evan Nepean, 9 Nov. 1792. Though addressed to the Secretary to the Admiralty this letter must have been forwarded thence to the Home Office. Another good example of the employers' reluctance to expose themselves to future reprisals occurs during the Wear keelmen's strike a few months later, in a letter of 19 Feb. 1793 from Thomas Sanderson (HO 42/24.) – “ … a smart Impress among the Keelmen (300 of whom can well be spared) will restore us to peace, but I would not for the world that this hint should fall from our lips, so as to find its way by any means to the North …”

^{page 370 note 2} Powditch/Pitt, op cit.

^{page 371 note 1} Ibid., and letter from Captain Leckey to the Mayor of Newcastle 3 Nov. 1792, in which Leckey ruefully refers to this reaction (Newcastle City Archives).

^{page 371 note 2} Powditch/Pitt, op cit.

^{page 371 note 3} These complaints were by no means without foundation. Newcastle took much more in revenue from the Tyne harbour than was ever expended on harbour works. The struggle against Newcastle's monopoly control was a major local political issue till the turn of the 19th century. Some discussion of the later stages of this struggle occurs in McCord, N. and Carrick, A. E., “Northumberland in the General Election of 1852”, in: Northern History, Vol. I, 1966.Google Scholar

^{page 371 note 4} HO 43/4. Grenville/Bishop of Durham, 7 Nov. 1792.

^{page 372 note 1} HO 42/22. Affidavit of Nehemiah Blagdon, Master of the brig Mary, 22 Nov. 1792.

^{page 372 note 2} The best example is HO 42/22, Joseph Bulmer/Nepean, 9 Nov. 1792, claiming that the shipowners were “quite neglected” by the Newcastle authorities.

^{page 373 note 1} Adm. 2/767. Admiralty/Leckey, 11 Nov. 1792.

^{page 373 note 2} Most of Cochrane's letters during these months which bear on the North East troubles are in Adm. 1/1617, but this quotation is taken from Cochrane/Dundas, 20 Nov. 1792, in HO 42/22.

^{page 374 note 1} Adm. 1/1617, Cochrane/Admiralty, 16 Nov. 1792. In his letter to Dundas of 20 Nov. 1792, already cited, Cochrane wrote of his impression on arriving in the Tyne of the seamen's “utmost degree of civility and regularity” except for the blockade itself.

^{page 375 note 1} HO 42/22. Delancey-Grenville, 21 Nov. 1792.

^{page 375 note 2} 1 Dec. 1792.

^{page 376 note 1} HO 42/24. T. Sanderson/R. Burdon, dated only Feb. 1793.

^{page 376 note 2} Newcastle Chronicle, 23 Febr. 1793.

^{page 376 note 3} HO 42/23. James Rudman (Mayor of Newcastle) /Dundas. A full account of the abortive prosecutions and their treatment at the hands of the county magistrates Bigge and Fenwick is in a letter from Thomas Barnes of 23 Feb. 1793, also in HO 42/23.

^{page 376 note 4} These disputes are mentioned in both the Chronicle and the Courant, and appear as incidental points in many of the letters written by local correspondents during the 1793 strikes in the coal mines and on the Wear keels.

^{page 377 note 1} Rothe's letters on the 1793 impressment crisis are in Adm. 1/2396, the Admiralty's side of the correspondence in Adm. 2/768 and 769.

^{page 377 note 2} For a fuller account of the Impress Service in practice, see McCord, N., “The Impress Service in North East England during the Napoleonic War”, in: The Mariner's Mirror, Vol. 54, No 2, 1968.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 378 note 1} For the March impressment Adm. 1/2396, Rothe/Admiralty 20 Mar. 1793. For the April incident Newcastle Chronicle, 4 May 1793.

^{page 378 note 2} Adm. 1/769, Admiralty/Lieut. William Abbs, in charge of impressment on the Wear. This benevolent fraud seems to have been commonly connived at.

^{page 378 note 3} One of Northumberland's MPs, Grey, was active in trying to induce the Admiralty to relent, and then on 9th May 1793, supported by Lambton, he complained in the House of Commons of the activities of the Impress Service in the North East, receiving only the promise that enquiry would be made into his criticisms; Newcastle Chronicle, 27 Apr. 1793 and 18 May 1793.

^{page 379 note 1} Another good example is provided by Rudman/Dundas, 31 Jan. 1793, transmitting to Home Office information about the seamen's activities, and in particular the cogent and sensible resolutions passed at a meeting of seamen on the previous day. HO 42/24.

^{page 380 note 1} HO 42/23. Rudman/Dundas, 9 Feb. 1793.

^{page 380 note 2} A short biography of Burdon appears in Brockie's “Sunderland Notables”.

^{page 380 note 3} Adm. 1/2399. Rothe/Admiralty, 24 May 1796.

^{page 381 note 1} HO 42/24. Rudman/Dundas, 4 Feb. 1793. For some other useful reflections on the Impress Service, and some strictures, perhaps not wholly unjustified, on some of its critics, see Glascock, W. N., “Naval Sketch Book”, Vol. II, p. 75 et seq.Google Scholar In the early 1830's Glascock, then Commander RN, played a similar part to that of Cochrane in 1792, during strikes on Tyneside.

^{page 381 note 2} HO 42/22. Burdon/Nepean, 16 Nov. 1792.

^{page 382 note 1} HO 42/24. Rudman/Dundas, 31 Jan. 1793.

^{page 382 note 2} HO 42/23.

^{page 382 note 3} Bulmer/Burdon, 18 Feb. 1793. For further discussion of Bulmer's unreliability as a witness in such matters see McCord, N., “Tyneside Discontents and Peterloo”, in: Northern History, Vol. II, 1967.Google Scholar

^{page 382 note 4} HO 42/23, Christopher Blackett/F. Freeling, 27 Nov. 1792.

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Some Labour Troubles of the 1790's in North East England

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