The Swing Riots

Prior to 1834 the poor were provided for under the auspices of the "Old Poor Law," introduced in the Tudor period, which was funded by a parish rate levied on landowners and tenants. From this fund, each parish provided relief payments to residents who were ill or out of work. As the population grew – increasing by two thirds to almost 15 million between 1801 and 1830 – more and more people became dependent on parish relief, ratepayers began to complain about the costs, and increasingly lower levels of relief were provided.^[1] Three and a half "one gallon" bread loaves (each weighing 8 pounds and 11 ounces) per week were considered necessary for a man in 1795.^[2][3] By November 1830, the ration in the Andover area had been reduced to one quarter of a loaf per day (i.e., reduced by half).^[1] There was also a feeling amongst the middle and upper classes that they were paying the poor to be idle and avoid work.^[4] The way in which poor law funds were disbursed led to a further reduction in agricultural wages, since farmers would pay their workers as little as possible, knowing that the parish fund would top up wages to a basic subsistence level (see Speenhamland system).

The introduction of mechanical threshing machines, which could do the work of many men, further threatened the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmworkers.^[5] Following poor harvests in 1828 and 1829, farm labourers faced the approaching winter of 1830 with dread. The Swing Riots – which had begun in Kent in June 1830 – finally broke out in Andover and the surrounding parishes on 19 November 1830, coinciding with the Annual Fair when the town was full with labourers.^[1] Over the next two days gangs of labourers set fire to haystacks and destroyed threshing machines while demanding an increase in wages and a reduction in rents. On the afternoon of 20 November a mob of 300 labourers set off from the Angel Inn public house and attacked the Waterloo Ironworks in Anna Valley on the outskirts of the town, pulling down walls and part of the roof, smashing some half-made ploughs and damaging the foundry's crane and waterwheel.^[6] The town's magistrates wrote to the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne on 20 and 21 November requesting military support to restore order. By 15:00 on 21 November, The Times reported, "an immense multitude" had assembled in the town centre and, "flushed with liquor" proceeded to break down the gates of the gaol and release one of their leaders who had earlier been arrested. Armed with clubs, staves and flails they threatened to burn down the properties of anybody who refused to give them money, saying that they had been "starving with their wives and families on potatoes and bread long enough."^[7] On 22 November the 9th Lancers were deployed to Andover and the riots were quelled by 23 November.^[1][8] By 29 November, Winchester gaol was full to capacity with arrested labourers, and more prisoners were being held under guard by the Lancers in their barracks.^[9]

In the trials that followed, held before Mr. Baron Vaughan, Mr. Justice James Parke and Mr. Justice Alderson at a Special Commission of Assize at Winchester in December 1830, the accused were not allowed counsel to represent them, and the jury consisted entirely of magistrates, three of whom had been directly affected by property damage during the riots.^[1][10] The charge laid against the majority was one of "riotous assembly." Ten Andover labourers received the death sentence, subsequently commuted to transportation to Australia. Two Hampshire labourers were hanged and the other convicted men were made to watch the executions.^[6]

Poor Law Amendment Act 1834

In the wake of the Swing Riots which had swept the South of England between June and November 1830, the Prime Minister, Earl Grey, established the Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws 1832 to decide how to change the Poor Law systems in England and Wales. The Commission took a year to write its report, which proposed a "New Poor Law" governed by two overarching principles:

• the "workhouse test" – that relief for the able-bodied should only be available in the workhouse.^[11]
• "less eligibility" – that the pauper should have to enter a workhouse with conditions worse than those of the poorest 'free' labourer outside of the workhouse.^[12]

The report also recommended that parishes should be grouped into "unions" in order to spread the cost of workhouses and a central authority should be established in order to enforce these measures. The subsequent legislation, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 passed easily through Parliament supported by the leadership of both main parties, the Whigs and the Tories. It did not directly impose the recommended new regime, but set up the Poor Law Commission (PLC) as a central authority (with wide-ranging powers and minimal oversight by Parliament) to bring about the desired changes. There were three Poor Law Commissioners; under them were a number of Assistant Commissioners, each responsible for a designated area of the country, within which they inspected and advised the poor law authorities.

The Poor Law Commission required that the diet of able-bodied workhouse inmates be worse than that of the working poor locally; since the latter varied across the country, the PLC had a number of standard 'dietaries' and specified for each workhouse the appropriate dietary: the specified dietary was the most generous the PLC would permit, but local guardians were free to feed their paupers less. Able-bodied inmates had to perform work to earn their rations; the work should not compete with that which could be done commercially, nor should it be degrading or essentially penal (this excluded activities with no usable product − such as the treadmill − but not such activities as picking oakum or stone-breaking). Even so, the centrally-sanctioned rations were strictly observed: "The Guardians under this Act dare not give one spoonful of porridge more to the inmates of a workhouse then their great three masters chose to order" was how the Revd G.S. Bull, a critic of the PLC and 1834 Act, chose to highlight this.^[13]

Following the introduction of the new poor law regime in the South of England, the poor-rate fell by twenty per cent and the system was credited with having achieved this (and having made agricultural labourers less surly to their employers). However, the introduction of the new regime had coincided with a "surge of prosperity" nationally; this ended about 1837^[1] and a series of poor harvests together with the European Potato Failure due to potato blight that struck Northern Europe in the mid-1840s led to "the Hungry Forties",^[14] a period much more testing of the provisions for poor relief.

Bone-gnawing

In February 1845, Hugh Munday, one of the Poor Law Guardians elected by Andover (a cornfactor, magistrate for the borough, and formerly involved with administration of the old poor law) raised at the weekly meeting of the board of guardians rumours that paupers set to work to crush animal bones (to produce bone meal fertiliser) were in the habit of eating marrow and gristle still adhering to the bones. The board discounted the rumours, but Munday persuaded a few of the doubters to accompany him when he interviewed some of the paupers. The workhouse master produced ten or twelve paupers, who confirmed the tale; they said that they fought each other for the bones if they were fresh, but they were so hungry that they ate the marrow even when the bones were putrid.^{[25][lower-alpha 5]} Munday had urged a subsequent board meeting to report the bone gnawing to the Poor Law Commission and ask for an inquiry, but this was rejected without a motion being formally put. Munday had therefore written to Etwall, and to two other MPs^[25] (both vehement opponents of the New Poor Law). Etwall did not immediately raise the issue, but in August 1845, nearly at end of the parliamentary session, Thomas Wakley MP for Finsbury asked the Home Secretary Sir James Graham what the Poor Law Commission had told Graham of the practice. Graham had had no information, doubted that the report was true, but promised an immediate investigation.^[35] The next working day Mr Parker, the assistant-commissioner whose area included the Andover Union, was sent to Andover to investigate; he took a sworn statement from Munday and then – as he had told Munday he would – returned to London.^[34] The next two days, however, he held an inquiry on the workhouse premises; the inquiry (which, formally, was not to allow the assistant commissioner to reach a judgement, but to allow him to ascertain facts and report them for the consideration of the commission) was not held behind closed doors, but it was not publicised;^[34] the following week's Hampshire Advertiser reported (briefly) that the enquiry had taken place, but its result was not yet made known.^[36]

Charges against the master

Further accusations followed rapidly; the Times^[37] and the Evening Mail.^{[38] [lower-alpha 6]} reporting that the 9 August meeting of the Andover Union guardians had heard allegations that the workhouse master had failed to supply sick paupers with the dietary extras ordered by the medical officer, and had been diverting workhouse provisions for his own profit. Mr Parker returned to Andover to hold hearings on these further charges;^[40] after agreeing that the inquiry would be held in public, he adjourned proceedings for a week to give the master (who remained in post) time to prepare his defence. Thomas Westlake, the medical officer, who had made these allegations then wrote to the Poor Law Commission making yet further allegations: that there had been persistent peculation to support the household of a married daughter of the master, and that McDougal had 'frequently taken liberties with the younger women and girls in this house, and attempted at various times to prevail upon them, by force or otherwise, to consent to gratify his wishes; that he has actually had criminal intercourse with some of the female inmates, and for a length of time has been guilty of drunkenness and other immoralities'^[41] When the inquiry resumed, Parker refused to take any evidence on the additional charges until he had further instructions from the commission. Furthermore, he would only hear evidence of paupers not getting what they should; evidence of pigs being fed potatoes billed as paupers' rations was irrelevant. Parker repeatedly criticised Westlake for not recording his extras in the form (and on the forms) prescribed by the commission;^[42] he also put the responsibility for formulation and prosecution of charges entirely on Westlake; Westlake's supporters therefore engaged a barrister ^{[43] [lower-alpha 7]} The barrister had been senior to (and more successful than) Parker at the Bar and relations between the two became progressively more strained. After yet another criticism of Westlake's laxity in record-keeping, his barrister retorted that if Westlake had been at fault, then there were others whose duty it was to see that the books of the union were in order; the union's auditors, its guardians, and its supervising assistant commissioner, and it might be that in due course that charges would be brought against them.^{[lower-alpha 8]} The prosecution alleged that MacDougal was intimidating witnesses under the nose of Parker; Parker denied this, but it was acknowledged on all sides that workhouse inmates who had testified that MacDougal had 'taken liberties' with them had subsequently been verbally abused and physically assaulted by Mrs MacDougal. After eleven days of hearing prosecution witnesses, Parker announced that he would hear no new cases or witnesses; the prosecution had listed over a hundred witnesses, and it would take three months to hear them all. It took another two days to complete the prosecution case: Parker announced that he would hear the defence against the charges relating to diversion of goods to the married daughter in two days time, then adjourn proceedings to allow the defence against the other charges to be prepared. However, the following day Westlake received a letter from the Poor Law Commission suspending the inquiry.^[45]