On 16th April 1771, Daniel Clarke, a pattern drawer in the silk weaving trade, was chased by a crowd through the streets of Spitalfields, & then stoned to death in the Hare Street Pond. This came some 15 months after he had testified in the trial of silk weavers accused of being involved in organised sabotage and intimidation in a work dispute against their employers. The shocked reaction of the authorities to Clarke’s death was mirrored by a feeling among some East End locals that Clarke had deserved his fate. The incident was only the latest twist in a long-running war that had erupted into regular violence and brought the army onto the streets of the East End.
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The Work of the Weavers
As previously related on this blog, the silk weavers of Spitalfields, in London’s East End, fought a long volatile and violent class war against wage cuts, mechanisation and ‘dilution’ of skilled work, a struggle that lasted a century and a half. While it broke out sporadically between (roughly) the 1670s and the 1820s, the most intense battles were fought throughout the 1760s. The disputes were sparked by attempts by employers to reduce wages and pay rates, and organised attempts by their journeymen to maintain or raise them. The war came to a head as groups of ‘cutters’ came together to target wage-slashing masters, extending a campaign of threats, intimidation and assault to workers who worked for lower rates – such breaking ranks threatened the livelihoods of all by undermining the solidarity the journeymen weavers were trying to build.
The ‘cutters’ were so-nicknamed one of their favoured tactic was to slash silk on the loom, rendering the normally high-value fabric worthless. The silk-weaving trade was mostly conducted through home-work – weavers took silk belonging to a master to their homes, which doubled as workshops, and wove it there, and were paid by the piece finished. This method of mostly artisan production was, by the 1760s, beginning to evolve into a larger-scale more factory-based system, but in London’s East End, silkweaving was very much a complex mesh of self-employment, patronage, and interwoven relationships of work, friendship, and community. Journeymen could rise to be masters; though most did not. Attempts to replace long-established skilled work with more mechanised production methods that enabled hiring weavers at lower pay had been going on for a century, constantly resisted by a self-consciously skilled and sometimes well-paid workforce determined to extract the maximum from their labour (partly because periodic trade slumps and cloth imports made their position not always secure).
This situation was further complicated by the increase in middlemen and agents interposing themselves between workers and masters, a bit like the employment agencies of today, though often emerging from the ranks of the silk weavers themselves.
Like the later Luddites of the midlands and the north, the weavers’ battle to defend their livelihoods consistently involved collective violence; and like them, was viciously repressed by the authorities, who in the main lined up behind the master weavers. But the silkweavers’ struggles were complex and contradictory: sometimes they were battling their employers and sometimes co-operating with them; to some extent they won more concessions than their northern counterparts, holding off mechanisation for a century, and maintaining some control over their wages and conditions, at least for a while.
After decades of skirmishing over prices, by the 1760s tensions between masters and workers had grown to eruption point. Dissatisfaction over pay among journeymen silkweavers was increasing; a slump in the trade partly caused by smuggling had left 7,072 looms were out of employment. In 1762, the journeymen wrote a Book of Prices, in which they recorded the piecework rates they were prepared to work for (an increase on current rates in most cases). They had the Book printed up and delivered to the masters – who rejected it. Increasingly masters were turning to machine looms, and hiring the untrained, sometimes women and children, to operate them, in order to bypass the journeyman and traditional apprentices and their complex structure of pay and conditions.
As a result of the rejection of the Book, two thousand weavers assembled and began to break up looms and destroy materials, and went on strike.
There followed a decade of struggle by weavers against their masters, with high levels of violence on both sides. Tactics included threatening letters to employers, stonings, sabotage, riots and ‘skimmingtons’ (mocking community humiliation of weavers working below agreed wage levels: offenders were mounted on an ass backwards & driven through the streets, to the accompaniment of ‘rough music’ played on pots and pans). The battle escalated to open warfare, riots, attacks on the houses of wealthy silk masters and politicians and justices seen as instituting repression against the weavers’ combinations or passing laws that threatened their position. As well as huge unruly demonstrations, secret subversive clubs of weavers were organised to conduct sabotage, and intimidate wage-breakers and employers. These were often run from the taverns of Spitalfields, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green where weavers gathered and drank (many trades were effectively organised through such establishments, which doubled as community centres, meeting places and union halls).
One committee allegedly called the Bold Defiance, (or Conquering and Bold Defiance, or the Defiance Sloop), who met at the Dolphin Tavern. The Bold Defiance started raising a fighting funds for their dispute, as part of which they attempted to levy a tax on anyone who owned or worked a loom. Their methods of fund-raising bordered, shall we say, on extortion, expressed in the delivery to silk weaving masters of Captain Swing-style notes: “Mr Hill, you are desired to send the full donation of all your looms to the Dolphin in Cock Lane. This from the conquering and bold Defiance to be levied four shillings per loom.”
The violence of the weavers’ agitation through 1762-8 led to the army being sent in to occupy the Spitalfields area several times, and to an Act of Parliament being passed in 1765, declaring it to be a felony and punishable with death, to break into any house or shop with intent maliciously to damage or destroy any silk goods in the process of manufacture. This law was to be used with devastating effect four years later.
In the Summer of 1769, some of the masters attempted to force a cut in rates of pay, further inflaming the situation.
Summer of ’69
One major silk boss threatened by the cutters was Lewis Chauvet, a master on an increasing scale. Chauvet had set up a factory for silk production, which stood in Crispin Street, Spitalfields. A leading manufacturer of silk handkerchiefs, who had already been involved in bitter battles against striking weavers in Dublin, Chauvet banned his workers from joining the weavers’ clubs or paying any levies, and organised a private guard on his looms.
Through the summer of 1769, cutters’ groups gathered in large numbers and visited workers weaving Chauvet’s silk, both to destroy their work, and to ask for contributions to the fighting fund. Fights broke out.
On the night of Thursday 17th August, cutters assembled in gangs and went to the homes of Chauvet’s workers, cutting the silk out of more than fifty looms. Four nights later, on Monday 21st, and in even greater numbers, cutters slashed the silk off more than a hundred looms. Throughout the month, the streets of Spitalfields resounded to the noise of pistols being fired in the air. Chauvet was eventually forced to pay a levy to the cutters to prevent further sabotage…
But he also advertised a reward of £500 for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. But for several weeks the people of Spitalfields remained silent, from solidarity, because they did not wish to give evidence that might send a man to the gallows, or from fear of reprisals from the cutters. The atmosphere had become bitter, rife with confused anger and rumour – weaver against weaver. People who lived cheek-by-jowl and worked together were at odds; weavers who had accepted lower rates of pay or worked for masters like Chauvet were seen as scabs by others. Many who had no time for employers breaking wage rates were unnerved and scared by the vehemence of the cutters and their tactics; on the flipside, many who would not normally have endorsed law-breaking felt informing on their neighbours and their fellow weavers was beyond the pale. Everyone knew that the harsh penal code meant workers ‘combining’ for any aim of maintaining wages or work conditions was illegal, and that going disguised to intimidate or sabotage was a capital offence. Whether they approved of the cutters’ methods or not, many would not have dobbed them in. And given the closeness of the communities, many would have known who was doing what.
And community anger against informants was also a powerful and widely shared element of the social code, and this rage was often acted on, and violently – as we shall see.
Poor Show
However, on the 26th September 1769, a minor master weaver, Thomas Poor, and his wife Mary, swore in front of a magistrate that a few weeks before in early August, their seven looms, in their home in ‘Stocking-frame Alley’ in Shoreditch, had been slashed by a group of cutters. Thomas and Mary Poor swore these men had come to their home/workshop about eleven at night and slashed to ribbons silk they had been weaving, belonging to Joseph Horton.
Altogether they identified seven men – John Doyle, Bill Duff, Joe Colman, (known as Jolly Dog,) Andrew Mahoney, Thomas Pickles, William Horsford and John Valloine. All of these men had been known to the Poors beforehand for several years; as must have been common in the tightly knit communities where people worked with and for each other, often out of their own homes.
However, before giving evidence the couple had inquired with Lewis Chauvet about receiving the reward he had offered – and Doyle had already been arrested by the time they went to the magistrates. Possibly the Poors may have been prompted to name men already marked down as agitators… The accused were arrested, protesting their innocence of the sabotage. other men who worked for the Poors and had been present said they could not identify the men, as it had been almost pitch black when the incident took place.
Four days later, on 30 September, after a tip off from a master weaver who had had the squeeze put on him, magistrates, Bow St Runners and troops raided the Bold Defiance’ HQ at the Dolphin Tavern, finding the cutters assembled in an upstairs room, armed, and “receiving the contributions of terrified manufacturers.” A firefight started between the weavers and the soldiers and runners, which left two weavers (including a bystander) and a soldier dead; but the cutters escaped through the windows and over rooves. Four weavers who were drinking in the pub downstairs, and one found in bed upstairs were arrested, and held for a few weeks; though no-one was brought to court over the deaths.
However, Valloine and Doyle were convicted of the attack on the Poor’s looms and sentenced to death under the 1765 Act, despite very dubious identification evidence. They were hanged on the 6th December 1769, at corner of Bethnal Green Road and Cambridge Heath Road opposite the Salmon and Ball pub. Though Tyburn was the usual place of execution, the major silk manufacturers pressured the authorities to have them ‘scragged’ locally; this was often done in an area seen as troublesome or crime-ridden, to put the fear onto others who might be thinking of breaking the law. The aim here was to overawe the rebellious weavers and intimidate them into backing down on their agitations.
Initially this attempt at a show of state force looked like it might backfire. An organised attempt to free the two was planned, and the men building the gallows were attacked with stones:
“There was an inconceivable number of people assembled, and many bricks, tiles, stones &c thrown while the gallows was fixing, and a great apprehension of a general tumult, notwithstanding the persuasion and endeavours of several gentlemen to appease the same. The unhappy sufferers were therefore obliged to be turned off before the usual time allowed on such occasions, which was about 11 o’clock; when, after hanging about fifty minutes they were cut down and delivered to their friends.”
Doyle and Valloine died proclaiming themselves not guilty of the silk cutting in question. After their execution an enraged crowd tore down the gallows, rebuilt them in front of Chauvet’s factory in Crispin Street, a clear threat to the man many saw as responsible for the two weavers’ deaths. An estimated 5,000 people gathered, smashing the windows of Chauvet’s premises and burning some of his furniture.
On the day the hanging took place, William Eastman, William Horsford and John Carmichael went on trial. Horsford had also been implicated by the Poors in their evidence; however, Daniel Clarke, another Irish silk pattern drawer and small employer, had claimed Eastman, had slashed his work in a similar attack; Clarke had also received money from Lewis Chauvet’s reward to give evidence against him.
Clarke had already made himself unpopular with the East End weavers’ community, having previously tried to undercut collectively agreed wage rates. He had possibly also informed or given evidence against insurgent weavers before, in his native Dublin: a letter sent from weavers in Dublin to ‘The Committee of Silk Weavers London in London’ in 1768 refers to a Dan Clarke as an ‘ignorant master’, calling him a ‘cat’s-paw’ who had been ‘villain enough to swear false’. Chauvet also had been operating looms in Dublin and come up against organized workers there – whether Clarke and he had had a previous association there, and if this relates to the Dubliners’ accusations against ‘Dan Clarke’, is unclear.
Cutters had by Clarke’s account broken into his home and cut silk from his looms on 11 September 1769. Although Clarke had originally told friends that he couldn’t identify the men who’d cut his silk, after contacting Lewis Chauvet, his memory miraculously altered; medical experts say being offered large sums of money can have that effect. Clark changed his story, identifying the men who sabotaged his weaving as being part of a weavers’ combination organised out of the Red Lion Tavern, including William Eastman, locally thought to be the chairman of one of the cutters’ committees, and one Philip Gosset. It is possible Eastman, as a local cutters’ leader or organiser, was present at Clarke’s on the night in question, or it may be that he was an agitator that that Chauvet simply wanted out of the way. Philip Gosset, however, was never caught.
The evidence against Eastman, Carmichael and Horsford was contradictory and confused; but this was relatively unimportant when severe examples needed to be made to cow the rebellious workers. Protests, a weavers’ march on Parliament to ask for pardon, all fell on deaf ears. This time, though, afraid of the local reaction after the riots that followed the deaths of Doyle and Valloine, the authorities made sure the three were executed outside the area. They were hanged at Tyburn on 20th December 1769.
Although the reaction to Doyle and Valloine’s hanging had been fierce, the vicious repression did in fact have its intended effect for a while. The cutters’ acts of sabotage largely stopped and the wage agitations died down for a couple of years.
But the bitter dispute and the rage fanned up by the hangings, perceived as a burning injustice locally, still had a twist to throw up. Fifteen months later, revenge would be taken against at least one informant whose testimony had made sure that the weavers would be convicted.
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The Hare Street Pond
On 16th April 1771, Daniel Clarke, the grass who had sent William Eastman to the gallows, was spotted walking along Norton Folgate; a crowd quickly gathered, which seems to have mainly consisted of women and boys; among them Anstis Horsford, the widow of William Horsford. The crowd chased Clarke through Spitalfields streets, and, after some attempts to take refuge failed, he was finally caught, and dunked in the Hare Street Pond, a flooded gravel pit in Bethnal Green. The crowd stoned and abused him, and soon after they let him out of the pond, he collapsed and died.
Benjamin West, a weaver of Fleet Street, gave evidence later that: “Clarke the deceased used to draw patterns for me: I saw him about twelve o’clock, the day he was killed, at his own house; he was coming with me up Half Nichols street, Spital-fields, to look at some work; we were attacked by two men, the people increased very fast; they called after him, ” There goes Clarke, that blood-selling rascal” or to that effect; he turned round to speak to them, and expostulated with them; I told him he had better come along; they threw stones at him; after he had turned up a little street, I saw two men knocking him down; we ran; I did not look behind me till I saw him upon the ground, after I came into Cock-lane.
Q: Which way did you run?
West. Strait forward; he turned up a little turning which leads into Cock lane: I saw him upon the ground: then he and I went different ways.
Q: But the way he and you went, both came into the same street again?
West. Yes, in Cock-lane; there I saw him down, with his hat and wig off.
Q: Was nobody with him when you saw him down?
West. I saw two or three men: I saw one man kicking him: I cannot tell what kind of a man he was; I saw Clarke get up, and he ran into Mrs. Snee’s house: that is all I saw of him; then I came away.
Q: Did they follow him to Mrs. Snee’s house?
West. I saw several people about the place.
Q: Where did you go?
West. I went to his house, and told the person he lived with, which I understand now is not his wife; that he was at Mrs. Snee’s, that he had been attacked and lost his wig: I desired her to take him a wig.
Q: Did you desire her to carry any thing else to him?
West. I told her I thought it would be necessary to take his pistols, for fear he should be attacked again; he was desired by the justices to carry pistols in his pocket, for fear of being attacked.
Q: Did any of the stones hit him?
West. I cannot say.
Q: What o’clock was it then?
West. Between twelve and one.
Q: What time was from the time he was attacked till you went off?
West. Not above half an hour.
Q: What kind of weather was it, that day?
West. Scorching weather, afterwards I fancy it rained.
Q: What o’clock might it be?
West. Near one: it was half past twelve when we left his house.
Mary Snee . I live in Cock-lane.
Q: You knew Clarke, I believe?
Snee. Yes; I had seen him five times.
Q: Do you remember his coming to your house?
Snee. Yes.
Q: What time was that?
Snee. I thought about twelve; my people tell me it was about one.
Q: Was your door open?
Snee. He opened my latch and ran in he was bloody: he was cut over his eyes, and had no wig on; I said Lord have mercy upon me what is the matter Mr. Clarke: he said, I beset; I said who has beset you? know says he: he walked about the house, we gave him water and washed him, he said when he came in,
“Lock the door, for God’s lock the door.” I did, and shut the inside shutters of my windows: he was very disconsolate. After he had been there some time, he desired me to send for his wife: he said, “this is the finishing stroke; this crowns “the work:” he desired me to send for his wife, for he had no wig, he asked me to let my daughter bring his pistols: my daughter went and met Mrs. Clarke coming in Shoreditch with his pistols; she brought them, he desired her to go back and fetch him a wig, and bring his powder box with his gun powder, which she did.
Q: How long was she before she returned again?
Snee. Half an hour, to be sure.
Q: In the mean time did you hear any noise at your door?
Snee. Yes, now and then; but they turned down the corner of the streets; and our door was pretty clear when she came the last time.
Q: Before that, did the people call out?
Snee. Yes; several times, they peeped thro’ the window and said,
“D – n him, there he is: turn him out, let us hang him, or burn him, or any thing, let us do something with him.”
Q: When the wife came, it was pretty quiet then?
Snee. Yes; and he came out then with his hands one in one pocket and the other in the other, upon his pistols; he went out with his wife.
Q: How long was he in the house, in the whole?
Snee. Upwards of an hour.
Q: Then he and his wife went out together?
Snee. Yes, and a little boy; they went a little way, not half a stone’s throw, and when the mob saw the corners of the streets beset they came running round him; I was at my own door, I saw a great mob, then he run back again.
Q: With his wife and boy?
Snee. No; they came back no more.
Q: I suppose that was but a few minutes after they had left your house?
Snee. Yes, a very few minutes; then he stood at my door, he took his pistols out; a fellow coming up to him, he said, “I will shoot you,” the fellow took his stick and held it up to his face, and said, “D – n you do.” Mr. Clarke could not let the pistol’s off, so he pushed into the house, and I shut the door and locked it.
Q: How many people might there be then?
Snee. I do not know; a great number of people.
Q: Were there some hundreds?
Snee. There were I believe, a hundred; I said, for God’s sake what must I do; the outside shutters were not shut at all; they throwed a great brickbat at the door, and when they had done that, they throwed another and broke four panes of glass and the frame, and all of the windows. They said, “D – n him, turn him out, and they would hang him, or burn him, or drown him, or do something or other to him; d – n him turn him out;” I asked Mr. Clarke whether he knowed them or not, that beset him, he said no I don’t, but I know them that does. They kept knocking and beating at the door and window, I did not know what to do; he said, “For God’s sake do not open the door;” then he asked me if I had any cellar; I said, yes; he went down into the wash house, and then down into the cellar; when he was in the cellar, I opened the door, one of the fellows came in; as soon as he came in he pushed into the kitchen to me, and said, “D – n you, where is he.” I said he is not here.
Q: Look at the prisoners and recollect if you saw either of them there?
Snee. No; I was in a great fright.
Q: How came you to open the door?
Snee. I opened it to let a friend in; I thought he was a pretty safe in the cellar; the man ran up stairs and met my daughter and said, “D – n my blood, if I don’t kill all in the house if they don’t find him; “my daughter said, as I hope to be saved, he is not up stairs; (for he was then in the cellar;) he saw my daughter go over a garden wall, which put him in mind to do so; the poor creature heard the man swear he would kill all in the house. While he was in the kitchen, the deceased came out and got over the wall. Then they called out in the street, “There he goes, there he runs;” then they left me, and run out into the garden.
Q: That is not a garden belonging to your house, I believe?
Snee. No; a great garden, belonging to a gardener; they all ran after him.
Q: Did they go over the wall too?
Snee. There is gates and places; they can go every way from the street.
Q: Did you hear a pistol go off after this?
Snee. I did not; I was so frightened I heard nothing more.
Q: How long had he been in your house; you say the first time he was in your house, about an hour; how long was it from the time he first came into your house, till he got over the wall?
Snee. About an hour, or upwards.
Q: Then the hour includes the whole time from his coming into your house till he finally went away?
Snee. Yes.
John Marsh of Norton Folgate “had just dined and heard an extraordinary noise, which occasioned me to look out of my window; there I saw a man, which they tell me, was Clarke; I saw him at the corner of White Lyon street, at Mr. Woodrow’s corner, surrounded by a number of people; I saw nobody strike him then; I went to my other window, and there I saw a man with a whip, like a carman’s whip, there was a circle of people; I suppose the man was under; I saw the whip up several times; it seemed to strike at some object below, that I could not see; but it was within a few yards of where I had seen Clarke before; I saw no more…”
Another Norton Folgate resident, Thomas Gibson, also observed Clarke being mobbed:
“he went and stood up at the corner, going to White Lyon-street, with his back against the wall; he dropt with his back-side upon the ground; a man came by with a dray, and said, Clear the way; he took a whip and began whipping of him.
Q: How long did he whip him?
Gibson. Perhaps a minute; I went away to my shop; I work in Blossom-street: he got up, how I know not; I lost fight of him then, I got fight of him again in about four or five minutes, in Wheeler-street, the next street to White Lyon-street; the people were pursuing him; they had got him up in a corner and were throwing dirt at him, and striking him, that was about one hundred yards from White-Lyon-street; then they went away down Quaker-street with him; he never seemed to try to get away, but seemed to go with them; he was in the middle of a great number of people: about the middle of Quaker’s-street somebody came and gave him a blow, and said, D – n your blood: and Clarke fell down. I followed him to the Broad way.
Q: What was done there?
Gibson. He kept going before the mob; I saw nobody meddle with him there; he was before that in a very deplorable condition; his head was bloody: then they went to Hare-street: he was going down Hare-street; somebody came and asked me what was the matter; I stopped to tell him it was Clarke: they stopped him against the brew-house; there they stripped him; it is about the middle of Hare-street; I cannot say how much they stripped him; he had his breeches and stockings; then they went into the field, called, Hare-street field, that is at the end of Hare-street: I went into Hare-street field with the mob: when he came into Hare-street field , whether they knocked him down, or kicked him down, I cannot say, but he was down, and they were beating him upon the ground while he was down; some got hold of his legs; some his arms, and they dragged him along upon the ground; then they said, “We will throw him into a pond, or a ditch;” one said, This is not deep enough; and another, This is not deep enough: at last they carried him into the Brick-field, where there is a pond, occasioned by digging out the bricks.
Q: What did they do with him then?
Gibson. They forced him into the water; whether they thrust him in by the back, or took hold of him by the arms, I cannot say.
Q: What distance might you be?
Gibson. One hundred yards, or farther.
Q: What number of people might be gathered together at this time.
Gibson. There might be two or three thousand; there were people out of number.
Q: How long did you stay after he was shoved into the pond?
Gibson. Till the very last of all. They kept pelting him with earth and brick-bats, and any thing they met with whilst he was in the water.
Q: How deep was this pond?
Gibson. Where he stood he seemed to be about three feet in the water: whether he stood, or kneeled down in the water, I cannot say.
Q: How high did the water come?
Gibson. About the middle of his belly.
Q: What kind of weather was this?
Gibson. It snowed at times as fast as I ever saw it in my life.
Q: How long did he continue in this pond?
Gibson. It was a considerable time; half an hour, or three quarters.”
Gibson and others pulled Clarke from the pond, but this was only a temporary respite:
“I got hold of him; we dragged him four or five yards from the place; some of them said, He is one of his confederates or some such word, and pushed the man in and all; and they were going to push me in with him; I slipped away at a distance from the mob; some advised me to go home, and said I should get myself ill used; but I staid.
Q: Where was Clark at this time?
Gibson. About nine or ten yards from the water.
Q: In what condition?
Gibson. He was down upon the sand-heap, and they were throwing sand on the top of him.
Q: How long did this treatment continue upon the sand?
Gibson. It might be a quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes.
Q: What became of him at the end of this quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes?
Gibson. They made a sort of a hallo themselves, and then they came and throwed him into the water again.
Q: How high was the water then?
Gibson. He was crawling like upon his hands and knees, at times, striving to keep himself from drowning; they kept throwing brickbats and stones at him; brickbats were the chief; there was not many stones; I saw half a brick, as it appeared to me, come and strike him on the left side of his temple, and the blood poured out as fast as if he had been pricked with a lancet, and the water was discoloured with the blood.
Q: Did you observe Clarke do or say any thing?
Gibson. He put his hand upon his head, and wiped the blood off and said, “Oh, gentlemen, you use me cruelly:” I went to get to the side of him to try to get him out of the water, but could not find any body to help me. Somebody cried, By and by; here is Justice Fielding’s people coming; with that they drawed back. Somebody said, No, it is not; it is the keeper or White chapel prison. I saw a man coming, a turnkey, or something belonging to the prison; then they drawed back; there was another man there, one Clarke; I asked him to help me to get the man out of the water; he was going to take hold of him; Clarke refused him; whether he thought he was going to push him in further or no, I do not know; but we got him out the second time; that Clarke is a fisherman.
Q: When you had taken him out of the pond, what happened then?
Gibson. We got him out of the pond five or six yards, I put him down upon the ground; he got up upon his backside; there I left him; I got away from him; by and by I came up to him again; I think he was leaning down upon his elbow, sitting upon one side; somebody said, Get him to an hospital; I said, It is impossible without a coach; I will assist for one; I left him: soon after somebody came up again, and said, He is dead; I said, How can that be, I saw him just now.
Q: Did he speak after you took him out the second time?
Gibson. I don’t remember hearing him speak.
Q: Did he groan?
Gibson. No; I thought he seemed pretty hearty.
Q: How were his eyes?
Gibson. He was pretty full in the eyebrows; his eyes were considerably swelled.
Q: Could he see?
Gibson. I did not perceive but that he could; I got in between the mob again, and looked, and then he was laying straight upon the ground, with both hands out; I stood awhile, and saw him fetch breath: the mob were very strong; I got away again; I could not stand it: somebody cried out afterwards, He is dead: when I went to look again, I saw he was dead; we drawed him away from there to the sand house.
Q: How long was it after he came out of the pond the second time that you observed he was dead?
Gibson. I cannot tell; but it must be after four o’clock.”
According to Francis Clarke, another witness, Daniel Clarke tried at the last to suggest the real villain was Lewis Chauvet, and that he would say nothing to the authorities if the crowd would let him go. Not unreasonably, given his record, the mob refused to believe him:
“Q: When he was pulled out where did they take him to?
Clarke. They left him near the side of the pond, about six feet off.
Q: it was at that time the people talked to him about hanging the cutters?
Clarke. Yes, and about Chevat; he made answer and said, Chevat is worse than me.
Q: Did they talk to him about any body else.
Clarke. He said, “Let me go home, for God’s sake; I will freely forgive you:” some of them said, “D – n you, you said you would swear against twenty.” Some of them said that to enrage the people the more, I believe; he said he would freely forgive them if they would let him go home, and shook his head; some of them d – d and cursed him; very saw was for him; all the mob were against him; I heard very saw people that were pitying of him; they said, “He was a very bad man, and would swear peoples lives away.”
Francis Clarke also alleged that Anstis Horsford had called out “Clarke, Clarke, I am left a widow, my child is fatherless on account of you, and more of your companions” and calling him to him ‘like a vengeful spirit; while he stood naked in the pond, asking him “Do you remember poor William Eastman?”
As with many community punishments there’s a feeling of a ritual element to the attack on Clarke; the questioning of him as he was being dunked evokes cross-examination in a trial setting; the dunking in water itself brings to mind the older ducking of scolds or witches. Whipping him through the streets and making him wear a halter around his neck were also legal punishments designed to humiliate an offender, engage the community in joining in chastising transgressors, and warn others. Self-consciously or sub-consciously, collective actions often adopt ritual elements – sometimes drawn from law, religion, even theatre; because people are looking for a form that legitimises their actions? Gives them a meaning they can get their heads around? Just because memory brings forward what you’ve known and seen? All of the above, mingled together, probably…
Revenge which the law would not admit of
In Spitalfields the killing of Clarke was clearly seen, at least by some, as community justice. Local Magistrate David Wilmot put out adverts asking for information on who had been involved in the attack on Clarke. The first response was not quite as hoped: Wilmot received a series of threatening letters. A missive dated 17 April signed ‘one of ten thousand’ informed the justice that ‘the fellow we kill’d on Tuesday swore away the life of my dearest friend and if he had a thousand lives I would with pleasure have taken them.’ It also suggested Wilmot, his home and family would be targeted if he pursued the case. A later letter (dated 21 April) firmly set the ‘lynching’ of Clarke in a context of a community morality which did not exactly line up fully with morality and law as imposed by the state, expressing the view that the crowd had ‘taken that just revenge which the law would not admit of [against] that detestable late object [Clarke] who was thirsting after their blood not thro’ any motive of justice but merely for reward.’
Informing for a reward was widely detested, especially among the poorer classes, most likely to be at the sharp end, but in fact, this sentiment extended to various levels of society. This alternative morality expressed both a sense of solidarity – there was nothing in fact wrong with what the accused were doing, or if there was, death was too severe a punishment – but also a practical objection – paying for information leads to people lying, for the money. This problem was not unique to late-18th century East London, and alternative moralities which reject grasses are alive and well… Whether punitive action is then taken against informers tends to vary. In eighteenth century London, the lively plebeian culture included a general willingness of large numbers to come out and take part in riots, disturbances and unruly activity, to try to achieve results that weren’t available to most of them through legal means. Large swathes of society saw nothing wrong in this, so long as it chimed with some form of consensus of what was right and what was wrong. So seizing consignments of food being sold at high prices during food shortages/had harvests, and ensuring it was sold at a more affordable price, was widely accepted as socially just, by all except those profiting from it. Action against informers may have a much less wide groundswell of support, but a substantial social base saw nothing immoral about having a go at someone who had given evidence that had led men to be executed – certainly, as in this case, where the hanged had proclaimed the evidence false and money had changed hands.
Obviously, however, the official ‘justices’ had to squash another blatant challenge to law and order: culprits had to be fund and severely dealt with. Despite the threats, names were named and fingers were pointed. two more weavers, Henry Stroud – William Eastman’s brother in law – and Robert Campbell, together with William Horsford’s widow, Anstis, were arrested by Wilmot, and charged with murdering Clarke. Campbell was held to be the man who had ducked Clarke and held his head under water. Stroud was identified as one of the crowd; witnesses claimed he had pelted Clarke with half bricks while he was in the pond.
Witnesses had to be bribed to testify, however. Those who gave evidence against the three at the trial were all paid; Francis Clarke, a fruiterer, and Sarah Scales admitted they had been paid a total of £80 to give evidence against Campbell. Joseph Chambers, David Higgins and William Watts identified Stroud; all were forced to concede that they had done so with the promise of sharing a £100 reward. Constable John Pagett also openly hinted he had been paid to testify. Reading the trial transcripts, it seems fairly clear that blatant bribery was at work: the accused were in the frame and no expense would be spared to convict them. As so often was when the justice system was loaded against the plebs, and money talked (how things have changed… wait…er…)
Campbell and Stroud were found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged on July 8th, 1771. Once again, local punishment was deemed necessary to overawe the uppity weavers, and they were stretched at the scene of the crime, in Hare Street.
Anstis Horsford, however, disappears from view here; it is possible she received a lesser sentence than execution; or was executed but not so publicly; maybe she was maybe even acquitted. Frustratingly, the records seem to dry up.
As had taken place when Doyle and Valloine were executed, the hanging of Campbell and Stroud provoked a violent emotion locally, though reports are contradictory about whether there was similar trouble or not. A hundred soldiers had to be posted to ensure the hanging took place.
As noted above, the repression of the cutters contributed to a lull in the silkweavers’ struggles for a while. Attempts were also made by magistrates to prevent more disorder by suggesting that masters keep to the wage agreements and listing the going rates for weavers’ work; a further agitation in 1773 (after some masters again tried to break these rates) led to this being codified and set into law. A series of Spitalfields Acts set out the agreed rate and also the punishments for masters or journeymen who tried to break them – up or down. The Acts largely kept the peace and ensured peaceful wage negotiations, until they were repealed in the 1820s, though they also hobbled weavers’ self-organisation.
Questions of Violence
The collective violence involved the silkweavers’ many disputes is hardly unique; this kind of collective bargaining by riot has not died away in our own times. In the 1760s the law was overwhelmingly and blatantly loaded in favour of the propertied classes, and without money or property your chances in the legal system were slim. Organising trade unions or any kind of ‘combination’ to even ask for higher wages or better conditions were illegal. Any attempt at getting together was by default outside the law, and the law was not only for sale to the highest bidder, but its higher echelons were by definition men of property, who stuck by their own.
Elsewhere we have written about the different kinds of physical force employed in disputes around Spitalfields silkweaving in the eighteenth century.
- Disputes that engaged the rank and file of the weavers – in alliance with the masters, for instance against imports of cheap cloth; demonstrating and rioting with the tacit approval of their bosses, a cross-class industry-wide unity (an example being the Calico Riots of 1719-20, more on which we will publish in June)
- The type of full-scale warfare AGAINST the masters described above
- By the 1760s yet a third struggle emerges, as groups of workers start to fight between themselves, machine loom weavers against hand loom weavers.
If at some points employers were willing to back journeymen weavers’ violence and identify themselves as having interests in common (in defence of the East End whole silkweaving trade), this didn’t prevent them from shafting their workers when felt it was in their interests.
It’s worth remembering that the silk trade consisted of many different levels of manufacture; there were many small masters, operating just above the journeymen, sub-contracting for larger manufacturers like Chauvet. As with many craft-based trades from the middle ages to the nineteenth century, there also existed a mechanism for apprentices to rise to become small or even larger masters, through the recognised structures, which could complicate any naïve vision of a simple division of class interests. Sometimes small masters like Thomas Poor could be virtually united with a mass of journeymen, later they were driven by class struggle and the increasing bitterness of the 1760s into collusion with the major employers.
The masters’ drive to cut wages, notably through mechanisation, was partly driven by the need to reduce costs, itself stimulated by the strength of the weavers’ organisations and their preparedness to use force, and by the widespread resistance to work in the form of absenteeism. A further incentive was the increasing threat to their profits coming from silk and other fine cloth smuggling, which had reached a chronic scale: lowering wages and production costs through mechanisation was seen as a way to undercut the cheaper smuggled cloths, since protectionism and legislation was failing.
For the journeymen’s part, willingness to front for the masters on the one hand didn’t blind some of them to the fundamental difference in their interests; the emergence of cutters’ groups like the Bold Defiance shows their were elements capable and prepared to take defence of what they saw as their interests to fantastic levels.
If some cutters’ groups had drifted from collecting contributions to pay for organising costs, into extortion and intimidation? The suggestion that a violent and extreme minority are forcing other workers into supporting rebellious action by force is part of the armoury of your daily mails etc when ranting about any strike. These foaming mouths never reckon the violence done on the other side, or the processes of coercion by which poverty, the factory system, submission to dehumanising work are imposed; the morality runs only one way. Collective self-defence is often necessary – sometimes you have to get your self-defence in first. This was even more true in the 1760s, when even meeting to discuss wage levels could get you thrown in prison, and demonstrating could bring the army down on you.
And morality was subtly different to our own era; by necessity, bonds of community solidarity were often stronger, and many among the lower orders shared a common disregard for a legal system willing to openly and unhesitatingly shed blood for petty crimes. Two hundred years of careful social conditioning and calculated concessions have altered attitudes towards policing, the law, imprisonment and social/anti-social crime – interesting developments in class and society that we cannot for space reasons go into here. But there’s widespread and stubborn resistance among some strata of the working class even today to the ‘accepted’ moral codes of right and wrong…
Killing Daniel Clarke would not bring back the dead; whether or not the attackers meant him to die. To some extent the attack on him was a spasm of rage from people who had not only lost loved ones and neighbours, but also may have felt they lost the struggle those men had (allegedly) taken part in.
The journeymen in many cases did what they thought was necessary to defend their livelihoods; when you need to eat, morals come second. The law had backed Chauvet and his ilk, accepted the flagrantly bought testimony of Clarke and the other witnesses, and ruthlessly killed Eastman, Horsford and the others cutters… Whether the law had framed guilty men, or connived at the deaths of the innocent, thousands in Spitalfields had known there was no justice for them in the law; only their own actions would get any kind of justice.
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An entry in the 2020 London Rebel History Calendar
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