Bristolians were famous for one thing above all in the late 18th and early 19th centuries: rioting. They had the reputation (rightly or wrongly) of being ready to assemble a mob and light a fuse at any moment and for any reason.
The burning of Bristol city centre in 1831 is probably the best remembered example, because of the important effect it had on parliamentary reform. But the lesser-known Bristol Bridge Massacre of 1793 was itself a pretty extraordinary episode.
A new bridge opened in Bristol’s harbourside in 1768 to cope with the growing city’s growing traffic. Its high cost was partly paid for by tolls charged for each crossing. The people of Bristol had been assured that the much resented tolls were temporary, and would be abolished in 1793 when the existing contract came to an end.
But a combination of greed and incompetence led the authorities to announce that they were auctioning the rights to a new period of toll collecting. This blatantly corrupt decision (along with the refusal of the bridge commissioners to publish their accounts) led directly to what historians list as one of the bloodiest civil disturbances of the century, anywhere in Britain. Convinced that law as well as justice was on their side, and suffering at that time through a serious financial crisis, the Bristolians had had enough.
According to an old law, any bridge on which tolls were not collected for nine consecutive days could no longer legally be run as a toll bridge without renewed permission being granted by an act of parliament.
All that was needed, clearly, was a way of producing such a hiatus. The workers and small traders of Bristol went very much Route One: they burned the bridge’s gates. The response of the authorities was likewise pretty straightforward: they put up new gates and started charging a toll again. Rather like one of those periods of aerial ping-pong you sometimes see in rugby union, the game continued with the protestors destroying the new gates. At that point, the city corporation summoned a militia from another county, and suddenly it wasn’t a game any more.
A volley (supposedly fired over the heads of the crowd as a warning to disperse) injured a couple of people, and killed one. As news of the fatality spread, the Bristolians took their gloves off. By now the military were in charge of collecting the tolls, reinforcing their requests for payment with drawn weapons. Daily there were clashes on the bridge, which was repeatedly occupied by large mobs, the toll houses were burned down and bonfires lit on the bridge.
It was the army itself, rather than a militia force, which carried out the massacre. Some accounts say that soldiers lost their discipline and their tempers as they were heckled and had rubbish chucked at them by the citizens; others suggest that the ruling class was determined in advance to set an unforgettable example. Either way, the army opened fire without warning directly into a crowd.
The following day, October 1st, the people vented their fury in a gale of destruction through the city centre. Symbols and facilities of power were targetted, including the Council House and the Guildhouse. A face-saving formula was rapidly cobbled together, and the tolls were dropped. The people of Bristol had won the battle of the bridge, but at terrible cost: at least eleven dead, and around 50 injured.
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Sources:
www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/look-back-bristol-bridge-massacre-1672550
https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/bristol-past-and-present/the-bristol-bridge-riot/
A revolution of feeling by Rachel Hewitt (Granta, 2017)