Rebel Britannia

4th August 1838:

The modern welfare state began in 1601, when Elizabeth I's government introduced the Acte for the Releife of the Poore, which required each parish to provide various forms of help - money, food, clothes, work, training - to those unable to fend for themselves.

For some strange reason, the idea of taxing the rich to keep the poor alive has never been one that the rich themselves are massively keen on and by the 1830s they'd just about had enough. The industrial revolution meant that there were more impoverished, homeless, workless, landless people every year, all of them entitled to help from the rates. Why, said the rich, should their hard-inherited cash be wasted on subsidising people who were careless enough to get old, or to be born to poor parents?

It was universally agreed amongst the agreeable classes that it was time to make tough choices, to balance the books, to reset the fiscal state, to fill the black hole in the economy.

Since the end of the sixteenth century there had been two types of poor relief: indoor (provided mainly within a residential institution) and outdoor (provided mainly in the claimant's home). The 1834 Poor Law aimed to shift relief as much as possible to "indoor." If you were too old or crippled to work, or you couldn't find a job, instead of being given a loaf of bread or a few shillings to keep you going you'd be moved into a workhouse, separated from your children, spouse, siblings and parents, essentially living in a prison camp for the poor.

The whole point of workhouses was that they were horrifying. You would rather die in the street than live in the workhouse - and that was how the government designed them. The logic was that poor people would stop claiming relief if the relief given actually made their lives worse rather than better.

Under the new Act, any village or small town not large enough to support its own workhouse was required to enter into a union with its neighbours. And that's where the trouble in Todmorden began.

Todmorden is a market town in West Yorkshire, and those who know that part of the world would perhaps be willing to agree that its inhabitants don't always take kindly to being told what to do by outsiders. Each Union was run by a Board of Guardians, and when the first meeting of the Todmorden Union's board was convened, the representatives of Todmorden itself, and of the villages of Walsden and Langfield, declared their intention to defy the new law.

They would not elect Guardians, they would not engage with the workhouse union, and they would continue to support the poor of their community through outdoor relief, paid for from the rates. The overseers of poor relief in the town held public meetings where ratepayers were invited to vote for or against their decision that "resistance" was "not only a virtue but a duty and to shrink from such resistance would be a crime." The meetings resolved to oppose any attempt "to place those poor, whom we love and respect and who have been guilty of no crime, in a Workhouse and under a discipline and restraint more intolerable than is allotted to felons in a gaol."

Todmorden was overwhelmingly united against being forced to contribute towards a workhouse, or to change from their existing system of outdoor relief; demonstrations against the new poor law took place, and businesses whose owners were known to support workhouses were boycotted.

The government's response was to take over responsibility for poor relief in the town. The local overseers were ordered to hand over their poor relief funds to the board of guardians.

In the evening of August 4th, 1838, another township meeting was held to decide their response. Predictably, the reply to the Board of Guardians was essentially "sod off," and by November magistrates had begun issuing orders to seize the personal money and property of the overseers which would be used to pay the town's contribution to the workhouse.

The confiscation attempts began in the hamlet of Mankinholes, at the home of overseer William Ingham. Law officers arrived with a horse and cart to carry off his household goods. Word spread quickly, and the officials were still inside Ingham's house when a large mob of townsfolk turned up. Their cart was burned and their horse chased off, and it was only after an appeal by Ingham that the protestors agreed to allow the law officers to leave the place alive. Alive, but stripped naked, as it turned out.

The workhouse resisters then moved on to a local inn, the Crown at Woodmill, where the board of guardians was meeting. The guardians managed to escape through the back of the pub, while the crowd was busy smashing all the windows at the front, but according to a press report of the time, they "had not gone far, ere every vestige of apparel contributing to decency was torn from their backs, and they literally ran the gauntlet naked, except their stockings, through a continuous crowd, which hooted, pelted, and inflicted on them indignities which are not fit for description."

Then, one afternoon in November the homes and businesses of several members of the board of guardians, and magistrates - the people trying to force through the workhouse plan - were attacked by resisters, their windows, doors, valuables and possessions destroyed. Workhouses were known to their opponents as "Bastilles," and according to evidence later given in court at one house the crowd shouted “Bring him out! Kill him! He’s a Bastille chap!”

Eventually, one of the overseers (the good guys, for anyone getting a bit confused by all the titles) met the mob at the home of one of its intended victims and persuaded everyone to go home. By the time the Dragoons arrived to quell the rioting there was nothing left to quell.

On November 29th a huge party of special constables, infantry and cavalrymen surrounded a mill in Lumbutts (near Mankinholes, if you were wondering) and took 40 prisoners. In the end, though, only one man among the thousand or so who had taken part in the Mankinholes riot was sent to prison, the courts being unable to find townspeople willing to testify against their neighbours.

The resistance won the day - at least for a good while. The government climbed down, and no workhouse was built in Todmorden until 1878. It was the last place in England to open a workhouse.

*

Sources:

www.calderdale.gov.uk/wtw/search/controlservlet?PageId=Detail&DocId=102747

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~todmordenandwalsden/todrebels.htm

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~todmordenandwalsden/workhouse.htm

http://www.calderdalecompanion.co.uk/mmm109.html

https://www.workhouses.org.uk/intro/

www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3tdhv4/revision/5

www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/2015-parliament-in-the-making/get-involved1/2015-banners-exhibition/rachel-gadsden/1601-poor-law-gallery/

www.victorianpoor.org/pages/indoor-vs-outdoor-relief

www.workhouses.org.uk/Todmorden/