Before we begin, it may be useful to refresh yourself on the Poor Law. For now, it’s enough to say that welfare was reformed in 1834, and rather than being organised by the parish, it was organised by a conglomerate of parishes, known as a Union. The Union was administrated by the Board of Guardians, a collection of local dignitaries, and relief was given to the poor through Relief Officers. The poor had to find their local relief officer and put their case forward for welfare. In the early days of the new workhouses, the Board were told that if the father of a family needed to go into the workhouse, the whole family should go in. It was a punitive system. It was…unpopular.
In Bedfordshire in the 1830s, one of the major occupations was lacemaking. Everyone made lace. Men, women and children, in family groups, spent their entire lives hunched over a pillow, losing their eyesight, ruining their backs. In the 1820s, the bobbinet machine was developed in Nottingham, plunging lacemakers into poverty as their work became virtually worthless. Lace adapted – Bedfordshire lacemakers started using different methods that machinery couldn’t copy – but never really recovered.
Philip Ashwell was born in Kempston on 19th December 1798. He married, and had a brood of children, and they moved to Lidlington. He may have worked on the land, he may have been a lacemaker. By the mid-1830s, he was listed as a labourer. His wife and children made lace as soon as they were old enough – three was the usual age to begin lacemaking and lace schools popped up all over to teach the children lacemaking.
Philip appears to have been a man with a sense of injustice – in 1829, he was fined for smashing up wheelbarrows belonging to the parish relieving officer, for reasons I have been unable to determine. However, the timing and the target suggests Philip had an issue with how poor relief was being doled out to suddenly impoverished men.
Ampthill Union was formed in April 1835, pulling together nineteen parishes under one umbrella of welfare. Philip Ashwell, his wife Ann, and their six children were living in Lidlington. On 11th May 1835, the newly appointed Relieving Officer rode to Lidlington to take a register of paupers and meet with the overseer – an induction day, if you will.
History is written by the victors, or in this case, the entire governing class. The local magistrates, clergy and the parish constable told this story in the press, not Philip. Philip’s version may have been quite different, but we don’t have it. So, here’s the version that comes to us through the newspapers. The Relieving Officer, a Mr Osborne, arrived in Lidlington, and was met by a group of furious women. Mary Walker, Amelia Gulliver, Hannah Reed and Elizabeth Henman told him that “We don’t want you here. We want money or blood“. Apparently they told him that they’d have the money out of the pockets or the blood out of his veins. Mr Osborne told them he had no money, but on having his life threatened, he gave the assembly the money he had in his pocket.
The next day, a Tuesday, Mr Osborne travelled to Millbrook, three miles east of Lidlington. He recieved a more terrifying reception here, and was forced to hide at Reverend Cardale’s house. Reverend Cardale was a magistrate, and attempted to disperse the crowd using force of personality and threats alone. Mr Osborne, Reverend Cardale and Cardale’s son attempted to escape Millbrook, and were chased. They hid in a house until it was dark, and then escaped.
On Wednesday, a group of constables went to Lidlington to arrest the women already mentioned, and were met by two hundred paupers. The village’s total adult male population was less than two hundred in 1831, so this represented a considerable chunk of the locals. The constables were outfaced and outnumbered, and left without arresting anyone.
The local government tried to muster a stronger police force, by conscripting special constables. But the local men were having none of it, and most preferred to pay the fine for refusal than sign up to try and break this disturbance up.
Thursday. The Guardians were due to meet at midday at Ampthill House of Industry, the precursor to the union workhouse, which was under construction and not completed until 1836.
They’d barely got down to business when the mob assembled at the front of the building. Depending on source, there were up to five hundred people there, including children. The men were armed with sticks. They demanded money rather than food/fuel in relief. When they were told this was impossible, they attacked the building, smashing the windows with stones, bricks, sticks and er…cabbage stalks.
At 1:30pm. Mr Musgrave, a magistrate and the head of the Board of Guardians, read the riot act. This was no turn of phrase – once the Riot Act was read, the mob had an hour to disperse, on pain of death. Mr Musgrave was taking no chances – he moved among the mob, reading the Act twice, to make sure everyone heard it. And then he hid back in the House of Industry and waited.
Some of the mob did disperse. The power of the law would have been well known to many of the labourers in the crowds, who had spent time in prison or seen family transported for breaching game laws or theft. However, in general, things deteriorated. The mob moved to the Market Place and there were straight-up fights between the mob and the special constables that had been drafted in to control the disturbance. Mr Adey, another member of the Board, left Ampthill at this time and went to London, presumably by stagecoach as there was no railway line at this early stage. He went to request government assistance.
Earlier that morning, the auditor of the Union, Mr Graeme, had also travelled to London to request Metropolitan Police aid. The Metropolitan Police were formed in 1829, and used across the country as riot police. Twenty-two Met policemen, some mounted, arrived in Ampthill on Friday morning to break the disturbance up – an astonishingly speedy response.
The riot had mostly dissipated by this point – it’s hungry work, walking and yelling all over Bedfordshire for several days, particuarly if you have children with you and you’re living on subsistence earnings. The summary trial of the women above happened on Friday afternoon, once they’d been rounded up by the Met. Five men were also arrested and tried at the same time. All were sent for Assize trial, along with some other men who were caught in the subsequent days. All of them were tried just over a month later. The women were sentenced to three months in prison each. The twelve men who were tried in June 1835 were sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.
But what about Philip Ashwell? He wasn’t arrested in the first crop of prisoners. In fact, I suspect he ran away and hid. He was not arrested until September 24th, and he was arrested in Langford, some sixteen miles from Lidlington and in another Union. God knows where this left his pregnant wife and six children…
Philip, and his co-accused James Sherwood, were held in Bedford old gaol for six months before trial. James was accused of smashing windows and lingering after the riot act had been read. Philip was pointed out as one of the ringleaders in the riot – his earlier conviction for smashing up wheelbarrows suggests that he was known to the magistrates and that he was a reasonably likely candidate to be the ringleader.
On 10th March 1836, Philip stood trial at the Lent Assize, was found guilty and sentenced to death.
A couple of weeks later, his sentence was commuted to two years in prison. He spent his sentence in Bedford Old Gaol. However, the end result was the same – he died on 19th January 1837, probably from a gaol fever. His youngest son died a few days later on his first birthday.
His wife Ann remained in Lidlington. She gave birth to another child in 1841, after having two of her sons die in quick succession. As a widow with an illegitmate child, she was theoretically barred from poor relief, but the records show that she claimed relief for her dying daughter Abiatha for several years. Abiatha died in 1844, aged twenty-one. Ann later remarried, and died in the 1870s.
When this story is told today, the usual reason given for the violence is that the paupers wanted to be given their welfare in cash, rather than in food or fuel, an innovation of the New Poor Law. Having read the source material, it seems that this disturbance originated with women. Previously, the wives of pauper labourers had been generally supported at home. Now, they were at risk of being incarcerated, separated from their homes, support systems and their children, every time money was scarce. And money was scarce – Lidlington was described as having a ‘surplus of labour’, possibly redundant lacemakers, but there was no effort to find these men work that didn’t dilute the wages of other labourers. This fight started with angry, powerless women, and once the momentum was gathered, it terrified the powerful.
I came to this story through Philip’s son, Zachariah. He was coming up for nine when all this happened. He moved away from Lidlington after his father died, probably to work in farm service, and eventually found his way to the fens around Thorney. He married there, and spent his life farming on Whaplode Drove. There is a small, but interesting detail in his life that perhaps gives a hint to how the Ashwells felt about their rioting father. Zachariah and his wife had at least thirteen children, although only six reached adulthood. His children were named after himself, his wife, his dead brother, his mother, his dead sister.
But not one was named Philip.
SOURCES
‘Serious Riots in Bedfordshire – The New Poor Law Bill’, The Times of London, 19th May 1835, p.5
‘Bedford Assizes’, Northampton Mercury, 26th March 1836, p.4.
Bedford Gaol Register and other parish records
Sophie Michell 