A MISCELLANY OF HISTORY
A TEXTUAL WEAVING OF A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
A TEXTUAL SAMPLER
Chapter Seven
The 1825 Riots
These are my memories of what I saw and did, together with others in the Stroudwater Valleys in 1825. I know I am supposed to show remorse but I cannot dissemble. I have no remorse.
My name is Alice Ayliffe Bingham and I am 25 years old.
It was after Eastertide, at the end of April, when we had enough of not having enough. Me and my sisters Charlotte, Sarah and Elisabeth and my mother are spinners. My brothers, Tom and Sam, and my father are weavers. We had been working ever longer time for ever cankered pennies all the year. Something needed doing.
So we laid our shuttles and looms to rest and joined the Stroud Valleys Weavers Union. I straightway joined 50 others at a congregation at Ham Mill. There was 700 of us the next day. We threw some clothier’s official in the brook. We all joined the next assembly a few days later. 200 of us congregated at Vatch Mills. There were 3,000 of us by the following evening. We baptised more strike breakers and master clothiers’ men in Mr. Holbrow’s fish pond. I won’t name names but the same happened at Woodchester, Minchinhampton, Frogmarsh, Chalford and Bisley. It was all over Stroudwater.
The stone masons then joined in. They were angry about the Combination Acts. The carpenters and millwrights joined them too. So the gentry swore in special constables. Then the Hussars rode in a couple of days later. When we re-congregated they read the Riot Act. So we threw stones at them. They dispersed us with horse and swish of sabre. A friend was arrested for selling ‘The True British Weaver’, so more congregations followed: Break Heart Hill near Dursley, then 3,000 on Stinchcombe and then 6,000 on Selsley. If anyone broke the strike then we stuck them backwards on a horse and paraded them through the lanes while we all beat pots and pans in a cacophony of rejection. I think they stuck them on beams from looms in Chalford and then pushed them in the canal and brook. They read the Riot Act there too. We kept it going though.
The next big congregation was in Stroud at the end of August. We called for the release of our friends in prison. But that was nothing compared to what was going on in Wotton-under-Edge. The leader of the weavers there mocked the Hussars by calling himself ‘General Wolfe’. He led several congregations in the open air and in the Swann. Then they set cloth and loom beams ablaze. Stones were thrown and windows smashed. The clothiers replied with muskets.
This is my true and faithful account. I cannot dissemble. The Good Book tells us that we should get our bread by the sweat of our brow. We had the sweat but no bread. What could we do?
Emigration again: from Clay Sinclair of The People’s Republic of Stroud:
“Is Minchinhampton anywhere near Stroud?”
It was my Mum calling from New Zealand, and we’d been living in Stroud for about a year.
“Yeah, not far away. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just got sent our family tree and apparently my Great Grandmother, your 2nd Great Grandma, was born in Minchinhampton in 1833”
“Wow”
This conversation was in 2015, we were new to Stroud, but had settled in well. I had been in the UK since 1996, when I met my wife Milly and lived for many years in London and Oxford, but both cities never really felt like ‘my place’.
Before I got the call from my Mum and found out I had roots in these valleys, I felt like Stroud was my home. I think I had even mentioned to Milly that if I suddenly dropped down dead, she could bury me here rather than sprinkle my ashes over the Tasman Sea, at my favourite New Zealand surf spot. Something felt very right about this place.
With this news I then embarked on a fascinating journey exploring my Stroud family history. Here’s what I found.
It was my 3rd Great Grandparents Thomas and Ann Harman (nee Blick) who left Stroud and arrived in Nelson, NZ in 1843. Along with Ann’s brother Thomas Blick and his family, they were some of the first settlers in this region at the top of the South Island. They purchased some land, and established New Zealand’s first woollen mill. Thomas Harman bought some merino sheep from Australia to provide wool for the mill, while Thomas Blick imported some looms and started creating Blick Cloth. In 1851 it was exhibited at the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace as an example of products produced in the newly established colony.
They had both been weavers in Stroud. In fact, Ann and Thomas met at the King Stanley Mill. Through the 1830’s and into the 1840’s a lot of mills closed in the Stroud area. It’s quite possible that this lack of work was what instigated the Harmen and Blick families to seek new lives in New Zealand.
Looking further into my past I found out Thomas Harman’s parents (my 4th Gr. Grandparents) were servants for around 40 years at ‘The Field’, which is one the most prominent homes in Stroud, situated on Bowbridge Lane.
During my investigations I discovered a letter from William Harman, written to one of his sons. It detailed where and what their various children were up to, including Thomas in New Zealand. I laughed out loud when he complained “but in all his doing well, he have not sent us nothing yet” referring to the absence of Christmas presents that year.
But the most telling line, which maybe gives an indication to why Thomas and Ann made the decision to leave Stroud is when he refers to one of his other sons “your brother John, he’s his own master now with plenty of work”. While when referring to his other children it was apparent that they all had masters that controlled their destinies. Maybe for my ancestors the only way to break free from the class system was to leave the country completely.
I’m glad they did, and I hope they don’t mind that I returned.
Clay Sinclair
A few months later, Clay wrote this on Facebook:
Picked this book up [Joan Tucker’s STROUD ]in a charity shop yesterday. The house at the centre of the front page is the one my ancestors lived in!! They were servants who came with the house for 40+ years. Their ‘masters’ included for a time, the (famous in these parts) Marlings. Their son was the one who left for Nelson, NZ in 1842 and subsequently established New Zealand’s first textile mill with his brother-in-law, who was also from Stroud.
I love the artistic licence of replacing St Lawrence’s spire with London’s Shard.
I wonder where the original image is?
I commented: ‘Dickensian and Hardyesque coincidence indeed …’