Let them eat stale bread. The diet of the poor in the Regency

James Hobson

Britain was running out of bread in 1800.The Napoleonic blockade was beginning to have an effect and British domestic production had not yet started to increase. Bread filled the bellies of the poor; children had dry bread for breakfast; workers had bread and cheese for their lunch; the workers wife’s had bread and lard ; drinkers had a salted herring and a slice of bread in the pub; everybody had  bread was the main accompaniment for scraps of bacon. Only on Sunday afternoon did bread not rule the house.

Something needed to be done, so in 1801 the government passed the Stale Bread Act. This did not, as the name may suggest, ban the sale of bread that was old and hard. Indeed it was the opposite; it was fresh bread that was banned. Bakers had to keep all loaves for 24 hours before selling them. This logic here was sound, but brutal. Stale bread did fill people up more, and added about 20% to the stomach filling capacity of the loaf. The government believed that up to 50% of all bread sold in the streets of London was hot, and eaten immediately as a snack. This indulgence by the poor could no longer be allowed

Bread consumption fell. Stale bread was also less pleasant to eat, so the government was also able to stop poor people being greedy. However, the Act lasted less than a year. Like many governmental panic measures through the ages, it turned out to be impossible to enforce. The government did try; they had draconian punishments for bakers and offered rewards to people offered fresh bread. They would receive half of the 5 shilling fine; the other half would be given to the poor. A second offence would mean that the bailiffs would take all   of the baker’ property. Many criminals made a living entrapping bakers into breaking the law.  

News of the arrest of bakers was always popular. People were very suspicious of them throughout the eighteenth century.  They were accused of   giving short weights (hence the bakers dozen being 13). Local city authorities, not usually ready to interfere in business, were more than happy to raid bakers and check their weights and measures. Some towns like Derby insisted that the bakers put their initials into each loaf so the bakers could be tracked down if necessary.

People did not, as a rule bake their own bread, so the bakers had a near monopoly. Most fireplaces in Britain were calamitously   inefficient   and it made no economic   sense to use fuel to bake at home. By 1800 poor people could no longer buy small amounts of flour at a reasonable price, as it was more profitable for millers, who were as unpopular as the bakers, to sell it to middlemen.

Bread consumption was reduced by people starving and living off other staples. The potato was unpopular; some people still believed that it was poisonous   and many resented the link with the Catholic Irish. It was regarded as watery and tasteless; outside of Lancashire, it was merely boiled to death. The North West had the advantage of a potato   industry in from the early eighteenth century, and then later on, am Irish diaspora which knew slight more about the tuber through regular and monotonous contact.

 By 1812, large numbers of farmers in Scotland were saved from death by the potato, and the working classes of Manchester were living off potatoes, bread, bacon, gruel, tea and beer- a similar diet to the Irish farmer, who had the same but probably a little more milk.

 Millers and bakers were still the scapegoats after 1815, when the government artificially maintained the price of wheat by banning imports until the price reached a level that could maintain aristocratic rents and profits. Most   rural riots in the period 1815-1817 would converge on the millers. Armed with sharpened agricultural implements, they would demand that prices returned to an earlier level. In towns, sellers in the markets would have their food stolen as a protest at the price. The normal cry was   “Bread or Blood” , often with a loaf on a stick as a symbol of the problem and a way of breaking windows.

 

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Killed by Beer; the Meux brewery flood of 1814

 

At about 5.30 pm on Monday October 17^th 1814, a clerk inspected the huge vat of Porter- a strong black beer- at Meux’s Brewery, near the Tottenham Court Road in London. A large iron hoop supporting the outsize barrel had fallen off an hour earlier; however, there was no real concern- this had happened before. The barrel was huge – the size of a two storey building. And, as it turned out later, rotting away.

The huge fermenting barrel then exploded, and a million pints of beer, mixed with bricks and timber, streamed through the brewery at waist height and spread into the nearby streets of New Street and George Street. The lethal stream of beer, beer fumes, bricks and wood filled the basement cellars of New Street where people where having their tea, and destroyed three houses in George Street. Bricks from the brew house also rained down on New Street. The explosion weakened the facades if the houses and the inundation destroyed the walls, partitions and roof supports.

Eleanor Cooper, aged about 14 was working in the Tavistock Arms public house at 22 George Street. She was scouring pots and pans at a water pump when she was drowned by the incoming wave or crushed by a collapsing 25 foot wall. The beer wave filled the cellar first and then smashed into the yard where she was working. She was found at 8.20, clinging to a water-butt. The Surgeon Ogle was present to help but Eleanor was quite dead.

The newspapers added to the distress by lamenting that 60 pans were smashed beyond recognition. Early newspaper reports gave Eleanor’s age as 10; while this turned out to be incorrect, it did not seem implausible to the press that ten-year old would be working as a servant in the pub. Other reports suggest she was nearer 16; once again the lack of knowledge shows how important a young woman like this was to Regency Society. Her body was sent to the local workhouse and her aged was settled at a guess of 14.

At the partially demolished 3 New Street, the body of the child Sarah Bates was discovered at 1 am in the morning. She was between 3 and four years old .This was part of a heroic campaign by the locals and the brewery servants to locate bodies in the rubble. As today, there were constant calls for silence as people listened to noises from the destroyed buildings. The local working class poor behaved well throughout.

In another part of the house, a Mary Banfield, wife of a coal heaver, her daughter and another child was   having tea and the wave of beer washed the mother out of a tenement window and pushed the daughter into another room, where she was smashed into a partition and killed. Her name was Hannah Banfield and she was about 4 years old; the other child was found nearly suffocated but alive; the mother was sent to the Middlesex Hospital in a serious state but eventually recovered.

Most of the deaths were in New Street.  This was the home of many poor, predominantly Irish families, many of whom lived in cellar dwellings.  At midnight, the corpse of Elizabeth Smith was found on the first floor of one of the two houses in New Street that was completely destroyed.  Elizabeth was a 27 year old bricklayer’s wife. Elizabeth had been in the cellar of No 2 New Street with other local Irish at a wake for a child who had died 2 days before. He was John Saville and his mother Ann Saville was one of the victims. Ann was found floating but drowned in the actual brew house itself at 7.30 on the first evening; her house was immediately behind the brewery.

She was placed with her son in one of the 5 black coffins put in the open air to solicit donations for the funeral of these victims who were drowned in the cellar-   Mary Mulvey (30), her son by an earlier marriage, Thomas Murray (3) and Catherine Butler , a widow(65) . There were no adult men in the cellar for the wake of John Saville; however, if the explosion had happened two hours later, the men would have  been back from work. However, John Saville, wife of Ann, John Bates, father of Sarah and Thomas Smith, husband of Elizabeth, were present at the coffins of their loved ones. They formed, according to the papers “a doleful group”

Anne and her child were buried at St Giles Churchyard on 21 October and the other coffins lay a bit longer at the Ship Inn, Banbury Street, were £33 was raised for their burial.

This was more than enough money for pauper funerals; however the money was more or less extorted from the crowd rather than being a charitable donation. It was more of an entrance fee; two police offers were stationed at the door with a plate in hand to collect sixpences and shillings.  The money was to be used for the general welfare of the local poor too, who had lost an estimated £3000 in property- which puts the £33 into some perspective.

The local working poor who survived were soon forgotten; and the backlash began a little. On October 25^th the Bury and Norwich Post reported that the “lower class of Irish” that lived in the area were seen by Wednesday “busy employed putting their claim to their share…every vessel from kettle to cask were used…many were seen enjoying their share at the expense of the proprietor”

However, there was, on the whole a lack of victim blaming in this case. Many of the reports of drunkenness and beer looting do not originate from the primary descriptions and I was unable to find the claims of about the Irish repeated in any other papers. The newspaper could-shock horror- have invented the story to pander to the prejudices of its readership.

By November, the emphasis continued to turn away from the victims. The inquest jury at St Giles workhouse had taken only a few moments to declare that the eight were killed “accidently, and by misfortune”   The newspapers reported with relief that the Horseshoe Brewery of Henry Meux was insured, and that in November 1814 the company successfully asked the Treasury for the rebate of £7664   of excise duties that had already been paid for the beer

Another £800 in aid was raised in the next two months from local people, including a substantial donation from the Young Brewery at Wandsworth. Meux’s brewery made no contribution. The victims were, after all, merely the poor, and the Irish poor at that.

More about the treatment of the Irish, and the grim reality of the Regency generally, in my book.

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Regency Stagecoach Accidents, 1816

 

Death and injury on the road are not new. For the whole of the regency period people were being thrown about and thrown out of wheeled vehicles.

The most common form of wheeled transport was the gig- A two- wheeled one horse device that would carry one or two people. If people were thrown out of them, then their fate depended on the surface on which they landed. Mrs Parsons of Warsash (carefully described in the newspapers as   “the wife of Mr F Parsons” ) died when her gig overturned. Mr Parsons himself was merely bruised. It was a random event.

Mrs Mary Kirby and 15 months George Kirby were killed at Hyde Park Corner when a coach tried to overtake them and the gig turned over. This was the type of dangerous driving that cyclists know about today, and the Coach driver was accused of manslaughter; however, he had absconded   and a warrant was put out for his apprehension.

Overtaking was a danger point. The worse accident of 1816 was the collision of the Dart and the Phoenix. They were both travelling from London back to Brighton and were doing the last leg from Patcham   when the Phoenix tried to overtake the Dart at Preston, near their final destination.  Both coaches were full of passengers, inside and out.   The Phoenix overturned and the passengers on the outside were thrown clear.  Those inside were smashed against the side of the coach and arms and legs were snapped, ribs bruised and teeth smashed out. The Landlord of the Golden Cross, Princes Street, Brighton broke his arm. His Inn was a major Brighton coaching house; his overturned coach may well have been destined for there. Mr Mayhew, solicitor, lost teeth.  “A German gentleman”, with the highly unlikely name of Mr La Skirk,cracked his ribs.

The Driver and proprietor of the Dart, Snow, was also the owner of one of Brighton’s main coach companies, but these not stop him behaving dangerously. The competition based on speed and price probably encouraged   reckless overtaking. Both stage coaches were being driven by their owners.  Overtaking at Preston would led to the winner getting to the coaching Inn first

There was some public disquiet about the way the industry was organised. The “Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser” (17 October 1816) welcomed the competition and the lower prices, but worried about the stage coach owners travelling to fast and carrying too many passengers and too much luggage. The newspaper mentioned the London and Brighton route as one of the main perpetrators. There was also a slight hint that the horses were being driven furiously and there was some growing interest in animal welfare.

Poor quality roads and gradients were another problem. In 1816, the Royal Mail was travelling through the night -as they always did, to increase their speed from about 10 to nearer 18 miles an hour. They were between North Wales and Holyhead, when a rock overturned the vehicle and the driver was thrown off as the coach was going down a very steep gradient. The newspapers  made it clear that it was not the drivers fault. He was sober. The Lamps were lit. But it was hurtling down a narrow road on a step gradient.

The driver fell off the coach at a narrow part of the road and smashed himself into a low wall. This was actually a good thing as beyond the wall was a 2oo feet sheer drop into a river. He broke his leg but lived. The guard was thrown into the road. As it was a Mail coach, there were no outside passengers and only one inside. It took 200 yards for the Mail Coach to stop; had it been an overcrowded Stage Coach, there fatalities would have been much worse.

 

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Joseph Crouch- “A Body Snatcher since a child”

 

Joseph Crouch was fortunate in his timing when he was finally found guilty of stealing dead bodies. His career was over anyway; the new Anatomy Act of  1832 was to provide the anatomy schools with a regular supply of bodies  and body snatching as an organised, lucrative trade was about to come to an end. He and his accomplice David Baker were found guilty of stealing the shroud from one of the bodies that they had stolen from   St John’s,   Horsley down in Southwark. They   were intercepted with two bodies still lying on the ground, one without a shroud, on 8 April. Crouch’s last words  before arrest were “Don’t hurt me. I will go with you quietly; this way I have got my living for the last twenty years”

There is no reason to doubt the claim. Joseph was a relative of Ben Crouch, a famous resurrectionist and the leader of the Borough gang; and Joseph himself had made headlines on at least three occasions. In January 1832 he and a David Baker were accused by a William Dunelly of stealing his rope and ladders. Dunelly was away from the weekend and found his equipment missing.  Crouch had a solid defence. Dunnelly was, like him, a body snatcher. It was by no means a coincidence that Dunnelly’s lodging had a view of St George’s Burial grounds in Southwark. They worked in a gang of six- a plausible number. Two to carefully remove the body (without disturbing any property, which would be a crime) and four to take them away to a teaching hospital. The rope and ladders were owned in common, according to the defendant. Crouch was dismissive. Dunnelly was such a bad character that “ne’er a decent body snatcher would ‘sociate with him”. ( Morning Post, May 1832)

Joseph appears in the newspapers twice in 1832 but before that had 10 years of what we must presume to be a decade of not getting  caught. There are a few possible reasons for this; it seems that he was a professional, full time body snatcher rather than an occasional one, as his admission in January 1832 proves .He was a relative of Ben Crouch and a known associate of Patrick Murphy, who took over the Borough Gang when Ben Crouch retired to run a hotel in Margate. This was hard core criminality, and well organised.

It was also very easy to evade arrest.  The graveyard watch was more designed to deter than to catch; in a gang of six it would take only two to remove the body; the rest could scarper.  Grave diggers and deacons were poor and could be bribed. At the worst, a surgeon at the anatomical hospital could give them bail. Unless property was damaged or stolen they were safe from serious punishment.

Joseph Crouch appears in the newspapers again in 1828 with an abortive attempt at raiding the mortuary of St Mary’s  church workhouse Newington. They had forced an entrance into the building and removed two male and four female bodies.  An Irishman called Fitzgerald seems to have been sub- contracted to move the bodies to St Bartholomew’s and Guys in his pea green cart. He claimed to have no idea about the possible contents of the six unwieldy sacks. Even his admission that he had dropped the two sacks off at the famous anatomical hospital had not given him any clues. By the time the authorities has tracked down the bodies they had been dissected to the point of not being recognised. The police tried to use Kent to point the finger at Crouch, which he duly did. The judge was not impressed by the police admission that Kent was certainly drunk when he implicated Crouch. The judge asked them to find bail.

Grave robbing was a treacherous world, with little loyalty. When Joseph Crouch reappears in the newspapers again it is as a witness for the prosecution. In the Morning Chronicle in February 1820, Crouch explained that he had seen Patrick Murphy, Michael Wood and a man named Wild, remove three bodies from the St Clement Danes burial ground near Portugal Street.  Notice the different  ways that Crouch uses to  suggest his  high level of knowledge.

 

The defence case was simple. Crouch had been a body snatcher “since being a child” He was presenting this evidence due to motives of revenge. This all sounds very plausible- perhaps the gang had fallen out over the distribution of money, or Crouch had been cut out of a deal. It could have been that Murphy supplanting his relative as the leader of Borough Gang was the problem.

 They were told to by the judge find bail

 Whatever the situation, it is clear that Crouch was a major criminal (he would need to be very brave to take on Patrick Murphy), he was associated with the leading resurrection  gang,  and was able to act with near-impunity in Regency  England.

 

 

An extended version of this blog is part of my new book – The Dark Years of Georgian Britain

Available from Amazon, Pen and Sword and Waterstones

Waterstones

https://www.waterstones.com/book/dark-days-of-georgian-britain/james-hobson/9781526702548

Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Days-Georgian-Britain-Rethinking/dp/1526702541/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498943703&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+days+of+georgian+britain

Other blogs by me on the same subject

https://about1816.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/israel-chapman-body-snatcher/

https://about1816.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/two-body-snatchers-ben-crouch-and-joseph-naples/

https://about1816.wordpress.com/2015/06/21/grave-robbery-1816-a-bad-year-to-be-alive-or-be-dead/