The Swing Riots of 1830 to 1832 were a set of sporadic uprisings that began with the destruction of threshing machines at Elham in Kent in the summer of 1830 and spread across southern and eastern England. As well as machine breaking, rioters destroyed workhouses, barns and hayricks and maimed animals. It was the largest episode of social unrest in the 19th century. Nearly 1500 acts of protest took place in thirty-six English counties and this is probably an underestimate.
The name Captain Swing was
first used in graffiti on walls in Kent, following the arrest of the
Elham gang on 6 October and it was widely shared in the press. It had
the double meaning of the swinging of the threshing flail and the
violent threat of the gibbet.
Swing became the mythical figurehead adopted by the rioters, who often used the name to sign letters to farmers, magistrates and members of the clergy.
These letters called for a rise in wages, a cut in tithe payments to the church and the destruction of threshing machines or else there would be dire consequences.
They caused widespread alarm. Farmers feared losing all their farm buildings and stock or even being burned alive. Very few had insurance for losses and those who did were charged double premiums in Kent, Sussex and Surrey.
Agitation for political reform was widespread at the time and the authorities feared a wider political revolt. However, most rioting was not overtly political but phrased in terms of ‘traditional rights,’ and the riots were largely improvised and spontaneous in nature.
It has often been said that the Swing rioters were largely intent on the destruction of property rather than violence to people and nobody died. There was, nevertheless, a great deal of highly intimidating language and hundreds of individual acts of physical aggression which helps explain the widespread terror that Swing brought about.
Several causes have been identified for the Swing Riots.
Between 1815 and the accession of Queen Victoria, agricultural employment became more uncertain. Farming was in a severe depression following the inflationary bubble of the Napoleonic wars, and Surrey was particularly badly hit. Agricultural practice was less advanced than in other counties and its relatively poor soils needed more investment to make them workable.
By the 1820s, tenant farmers were paying rents to their landowners that did not reflect their reduced circumstances. Rents were not far from double the pre-war level, while crop prices had fallen back to a level only 10 to 20 per cent higher than pre-war. Some tenant farmers in Surrey fell into rent arrears. Other farms ceased production and sold out to professional city men.
Visiting Mr Charington’s farmhouse near Horley in October1825, (Court Manor Farm), the political campaigner, William Cobbett, wrote, ‘There was hardly any family in that house where formerly there were in all probability from ten to fifteen boys and maids. Why do not farmers now feed and lodge their work-people, as they did formerly? Because they cannot keep them upon so little as they give them in wages.’
This inevitably led to more insecurity for agricultural workers as farmers cut their wages bill. Before the 1780s there had been annual hiring fairs for labourers to serve for an entire year and they were given bed and board. By the 1830s these contracts had been replaced by piecework - shorter cash-only contracts.
This led to seasonal and structural unemployment which weakened the ties between the farmers and their workers. There was very little in the way of alternative employment to take up the slack in the labour market, which was swelled by large numbers of demobilised soldiers following the end of the Napoleonic wars and an influx of migrant Irish workers in 1829.
The decline in farmers offering food and lodging made it harder for agricultural labourers to survive periods of economic hardship. From 1828 to 1830 there were three wet summers with very poor harvests. With low domestic supply and foreign grain locked out by tariffs the price of a standard loaf of bread rose to one shilling.
This was too expensive for the poor as rural Surrey was generally a low wage area. Farm workers’ weekly wages were an average of only 6 or 7 shillings over winter, so bread absorbed their entire income, making them more dependent on poor relief. Worse still, as farmers were also under financial pressure, they were at the same time pushing for a reduction in poor relief.
In Reigate the farmers could
not or would not pay their workers a living wage. Landowners and better
off tenants were charged a parish rate to fund local poor-relief to
supplement workers’ wages when bread prices were unaffordable. This was
largely paid as outdoor relief to the poor in their own homes.
Any help the parish gave was restricted to families.
As more and more poor people became dependent on outdoor relief, the poor-relief rate-payers came to see parish spending as profligate. They sought to reduce its burden and expenditure per capita fell.
Newly invented threshing
machines spread rapidly from the late 18th century,
threatening the livelihood of many thousands of agricultural workers. On
average they replaced 5-10 workers. Manual threshing had employed many
agricultural workers over the slack winter period when there was no
alternative agricultural work.
All types of rioting, (arson, physical attacks, and machine breaking) were more common where threshing machines were adopted. The most intense phase of the riots peaked in the winter.
The early threshing machines were only used to thresh wheat so farms producing oats, barley and rye had fewer riots in 1830-32. Surrey grew less wheat than elsewhere and was backward in adopting the new technology. This helps explain why it had less rioting than East Anglia and Kent.
Captain Swing came to Surrey in the autumn of 1830. During September and October fires were set around Oxted and Godstone, burning the outhouses and property of a farmer named Thompson at Oxted, totally destroying his stock of hay and potatoes. On 5 November, three barns at Caterham full of barley and oats were burned. When a fire occurred in an area previously free of protest, the sense of panic increased.
On 16 October, The Brighton Herald reported that a labourer had been robbed in Reigate. He said that the robbers told him, ‘You have been very quiet in these parts but we shall give you a burn before the winter is out.’ They mentioned the names of several of the principal landowners and farmers in the neighbourhood.
The clerks to the Reigate Bench wrote to the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, to say that these threats were heeded; local farmers kept a strict watch both day and night.
Despite the increased vigilance, there were more incidents of arson in the immediate area the following months. In Merstham, arson occurred on 11 November 1830 but there are no details of what happened. In Reigate a single rick belonging to Mr Neil, a baker, brewer and farmer, was burned on 19 November 1830.
Burning in SurreyA short time since, a barn upon the farm in the occupation of Mr. MAYNARD, at Reigate, was totally destroyed by fire. Mr. MAYNARD filled some parochial office, and had been applied to by a pauper for money on the evening of the conflagration. This had been refused; and in little more than an hour afterwards the barn was discovered to be in flames, which consumed the building, as well as the stock of grain which it contained. The latter only was insured. The pauper was taken up and examined, but no proof was obtained that he was the destroyer of the property. These things dispose us to melancholy reflections. The Sun, 22 February 1831
Another attack happened the following February and this one was reported nationally.
In cases of arson, it was often very difficult to prove who was responsible. Landowners and farmers did not always want to accept that their own labourers could have been involved in burning their crops.
The magistrates of Reigate wrote to the Home Secretary on 19 October 1830, stating their belief that an organised group must have come from London ‘stirring up the labouring classes throughout the county to acts of insubordination and the destruction of farming stock by fire which is now becoming so prevalent.’
Despite the magistrates’ fears of a organised political dimension, the Swing incidents in Surrey seem mostly to have been highly local events, spreading like a contagion from village to village. An exception was the riot at Dorking in November 1830 which seems to have been instigated by a radical group from Horsham which sought to agitate labourers and small farmers in nearby parishes. Open rioting like this was more dangerous for the participants than rick or barn burning because the likelihood of being caught was much greater and the punishments severe.
A mob of about forty people following ‘a leader dressed in a smock frock,’ marched to Dorking, shouting, ‘Down with the tithes! bread or blood!’ Some of those later taken before the magistrates later claimed they had been pressured into taking part in the disturbances, or else they ‘must abide by the consequences,’ (deposition to the Reigate magistrates by William Fisher of Charlwood).’
The number swelled to eighty, many armed with sticks and bludgeons and when the ‘respectable inhabitants’ started being sworn in as special constables they attacked the Red Lion Inn in retaliation, forcing their way in to where the magistrates were sitting.
A riot of a serious nature took place on Monday night in Dorking, and although no lives were lost there were a great many heads broken. The mob did considerable mischief, and made a violent attack on the inn where the Magistrates had assembled to discuss measures for the public safety. A flint stone, hurled with great violence through the window of the apartment, struck one of the magistrates, Mr Ryall, on the head, and laid him senseless on the floor. The arrival of the military from Horsham soon afterwards dispersed the rioters, and the town shortly afterwards assumed its usual tranquility. PS I have just heard there is to be an immense assemblage at Riegate today.English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post, Thursday, 25 November 1830
In the same month, the Government issued a proclamation offering a reward of £500 for bringing rioters and incendiaries to justice. Posters and handbills were put up to advertise this incentive but they did not encourage the local population to come forward with information.
The authorities recognised
that there had been a breakdown in relations between landowners and
labourers and there were limited short-term measures to offer more
generous relief to alleviate hardship. In the longer term, the rioters
achieved very little for their efforts. The rioting had strengthened the
authorities in their belief that the poor relief system should be more
punitive and a tougher poor law regime soon followed with the new Poor
Law of 1834.
In the aftermath of the uprising some participants were tried for assault even when no blows were exchanged but many of the Swing activists who were tried did have previous convictions for assault. Nineteen men were executed, more than 600 were given jail terms of hard labour and an estimated 505 men and women were transported to Australia.
Special Assizes were set up to prosecute rioters in Surrey. Only 18 men were tried for riotous assembly of whom eight were found guilty and imprisoned for up to 18 months. One man was executed and there were no transportations.
Rural Rides, (1830), William Cobbett
Poverty, unrest and the response in Surrey, (2006), Judith Hill
As lated tongues bespoke: popular protest in south-east England, 1790-1840, (2001), Carl J. Griffin
The Violent Captain Swing, Past and Present (2010) Carl J. Griffin
Rage against the machine: lessons from the Swing Riots in England, LSE Business Review, (2020), Bruno Caprettini and Hans-Joachim Voth
West Sussex Record Office blog on the Swing Riots
An Original Portrait of Captain Swing, hand-coloured lithograph (1830) The Trustees of the British Museum
Agriculture: two threshing machines, (1810), J. Pass, from the Wellcome Collection
The Home of the Rick-burner, Punch (1844), Wellcome Images
Swing! taken from the Life. Dedicated to Messrs Cobbett, Carlisle, & Co, The Trustees of the British Museum.
Mob burning a farm in Kent, 1830 from Cassell's history of England, Volume 5, (1909), Paul Hardy