Swing Riots

Summary

Stuff You Missed in History Class: Swing Riots

Podcast by iHeartPodcasts | Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Fry | Episode Date: August 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Fry explore the often-overlooked Swing Riots—a major rural uprising in England during 1830–1831. They provide historical context about why these events occurred, draw connections to other social protests (like the Luddites and Rebecca Riots), examine the role of mechanization in agriculture, and spotlight the complicated legacy of William Cobbett, a pivotal figure of the era.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Context and Causes of the Swing Riots

• Links to Other Uprisings: Tracy connects the Swing Riots to earlier and later episodes of working-class protest—specifically the Luddites (1810s) and Rebecca Riots (1839), noting similarities in destitution, mechanization, and physical destruction ([02:26]).
• Enclosure Movement:
  • Historical Common Land: Much English land was once communal, supporting grazing and local needs ([04:14]).
  • Enclosure Impact: Between 1770 and 1830, ~6 million acres shifted to private control, displacing many and increasing dependence on large landowners ([05:14]).
• Post-War Economic Anxiety:
  • After the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), a surplus of laborers depressed wages ([05:43]).
  • Corn Laws: Introduced in 1815 to prop up grain prices for landowners; drove up prices for laborers and fueled protests ([05:43]).
• Changing Attitudes Toward the Poor:
  • Growth of workhouses and rising pressures to distinguish the "deserving" vs. "undeserving" poor ([06:43]).
  • Tithes (compulsory church donations) further strained struggling workers ([08:09]).
• Demographic & Technological Pressures:
  • Influx of Irish laborers increased competition;
  • Threshing machines began replacing manual labor, endangering up to half a rural worker's winter income ([09:11]).

2. Mechanization and Machine-Breaking Traditions

• Threshing Machines: Described as game-changers in productivity but sources of widespread unemployment ([10:11]).
• Protest History:
  • British labor resistance to machinery goes back to the 17th century (e.g., Spitalfields uprising, Luddite movement) ([13:28]).
  • Rationale: Immediate threat to jobs and perceived decline in craft quality often outweighed long-term promises of economic benefit ([15:15]).
• Early Machine Attacks: Documented cases of threats and destruction, including a 1791 incident targeting a Wimbledon farmer ([10:53]).

3. Outbreak and Spread of the Swing Riots

• Start of the Riots: Began in Kent in 1830 after local grievances and failed petitions ([16:55]).
  • August–October 1830: Series of mob actions to destroy threshing machines, escalating with “Swing” letters threatening landowners ([17:39], [18:05]).
• Captain Swing: Unlike "Ned Ludd", “Captain Swing” was a collective persona used to sign threat letters—a symbol and rallying point ([18:05]).
• Intersection with Food Protests: Sometimes demands targeted food, aid, or tithe relief rather than machines ([25:05]).

4. William Cobbett’s Role and Controversial Legacy

• Biography: Cobbett’s journey from conservative pamphleteer (anti-French Revolution, pro-enclosure) to radical advocate for parliamentary reform is discussed at length ([18:51]–[21:36]).
  • Notable Shift: After buying a farm and witnessing rural poverty, Cobbett reversed many of his earlier positions ([20:52]).
  • Famous for his book “Rural Rides” and for publishing fiercely critical commentary on England’s social structure ([22:43], [23:10]).
• Ambivalence:
  • Cobbett romanticized a “lost” England and could be inconsistent or exclusionary regarding the struggles of non-agricultural workers ([21:36]).
  • Notably, he defended machinery in a letter to Luddites, despite leading reform campaigns later ([22:10]).
• Legal Troubles: Faced repeated seditious libel charges for his published advocacy ([35:17]).

5. Riots—Actions and Responses

• Protest Tactics:
  • Destruction of threshing machines, arson, livestock killings, negotiation with landowners ([24:12]).
  • Some landowners destroyed their own machines or made promises to avoid mob violence ([24:12]).
  • Violence was not universal—strikes, food riots, and church demonstrations also occurred ([25:05]).
  • Hostility toward Irish migrant workers sometimes surfaced ([25:05]).
• Government Response:
  • Local gentry appealed to central authorities for help; yeoman cavalry was mobilized ([25:41]).
  • Noteworthy violent climax: Skirmish at Pit House (John Bennett’s estate), leading to death and mass arrests ([26:00]).

6. Legal Crackdown and Aftermath

• Swift Justice:
  • Special commissions established to try rioters quickly; heavy sentences ranged from death to transportation to Australia ([36:22]).
  • Over 3,000 incidents logged, making this one of England’s largest post-medieval uprisings ([37:25]).
• Lasting Impacts:
  • Little immediate change for most workers;
  • The 1834 Poor Law expanded workhouses, feeding into the Victorian-era misery famously depicted by Dickens ([38:08]).
  • However, the riots influenced the passage of the Great Reform Act 1832, which broadened (male) electoral representation ([38:41]).
  • William Cobbett won an MP seat for Oldham under new constituency arrangements ([39:30]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Desperation and Justice

• William Cobbett in “To the Working People of England” ([31:07]):
  “The great and general cause is the extreme poverty of the working people, or in other words, the starving state in which they are... their bodies are also not to be left to perish for want, while the land abounds with plenty. And that plenty arising too, from their own labor, it tells them, and they know it, that the laborer is worthy of his hire.”

On Bread and Privilege

• Cobbett criticizes social inequality ([33:15]):
  “What justice is there in taking away our bread and giving it to his daughters while we are reduced to grains and potatoes?”

On Legal Outcomes

• On government prosecution ([36:22]):
  Holly Fry: “Between December 18, 1830, and January 14, 1831, cases were tried before special commissions... 252 people were condemned to death, although ultimately only 19 of those were hanged... almost 650 people went to prison.”

Hosts on William Cobbett as a Person

• On Cobbett’s complicated character ([40:29]):
  Tracy V. Wilson: “I find him very interesting.”
  Holly Fry: “He is interesting. Kind of a pill.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:26] – Opening context: Drawing lines from the Luddites to the Rebecca Riots and the emergence of the Swing Riots
• [04:14] – The enclosure movement and its consequences
• [09:11] – Introduction of threshing machines and rising tensions
• [13:28] – British tradition of machine-breaking and its legacy
• [16:55] – The official start and escalation of the Swing Riots
• [18:05] – Captain Swing letters and symbolism
• [18:51–23:34] – William Cobbett’s evolving political trajectory
• [24:12] – Protester tactics and community responses
• [26:00] – The violent Pit House confrontation
• [31:07] – Reading of Cobbett’s powerful public address
• [36:22] – Legal crackdown and sentencing details
• [38:41] – Political aftermath and the passage of the Great Reform Act

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Overall Tone and Presentation

The hosts maintain an engaging, accessible tone—balancing historical detail with casual conversation and occasional wry humor, especially when discussing Cobbett’s mercurial persona or the unintended domestic comedy of competitive cat grooming ([44:21]).

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Final Reflection

The Swing Riots were a massive—yet often forgotten—labor uprising, rooted in economic hardship, mechanization, and government policies that failed to protect the rural poor. While they prompted some reforms, the long-term social improvements for workers arrived slowly and often came with their own drawbacks. The episode offers both a nuanced portrait of the unrest and the people (like Cobbett) who chronicled and influenced it, blending scholarly analysis with stories that bring 19th-century England vividly to life for today’s listener.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Holly Fry]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Fry]

And I'm Holly Fry.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

A few years ago we did an episode on the Rebecca riots, which started in Wales in 1839, and at the time I had been looking for something that had some parallels to the Luddite uprising that started in central England a couple of decades before that. That was because the idea of workers smashing the machines that were replacing their jobs and cranking out inferior product, that just felt like it had some relev in the moment that we were living in. We had already covered the Luddites, though, all the way back in 2013, so I couldn't just do that again. I was looking for something else. And the Rebecca Riots were not quite the same thing, but they did grow out of some of the same context. There were some similar themes there, including difficult economic conditions these things were growing out of. And also smashing stuff. The smashing stuff I particularly enjoy. The Rebecca Riots are most remembered for attacks on toll gates where people had to pay money to use the roads, while the Luddite uprising became infamous because people were smashing the stocking frames that were being used in the textile industry. Of course, that is only a small part of each of those things. So another uprising came up while I was researching the Rebecca Riots, and that was the Sweet Swing Riots that took place primarily in eastern and southern England in the years in between the Luddite Uprising and the Rebecca Riots. One of the hallmarks of the Swing Riots was the destruction of threshing machines. But again, that is just one part of the story. When I discovered the mention of the Swing Riots, it was too late to change topics, so I decided to put that on the list for later.

[Holly Fry]

In the 1820s and 30s, farmers in rural England were struggling for a lot of reasons. One was enclosure. Historically, much of the arable land in England was considered to be common land. A person's crop was theirs, but outside of growing season, other people could access and use that same land, including as grazing land for their animals. Livestock were also fed hay that grew in communal meadows. The process of enclosing land with fences and hedges and putting it under private control started in the 12th century and went through a couple of major waves. One of those waves started around 1750 and continued through the mid19th century. About 6 million acres of common land in England were enclosed between 1770 and and 1830. And by the end of the 19th century, almost all of the arable land was enclosed.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

During this process, some people who lost access to land moved to cities and towns to look for work. But other people just lost their livelihoods and they got no compensation. They really didn't have any other options other than trying to find a job working for somebody who was now in control of that land. So in addition to losing their livelihoods, people became a lot more dependent upon landowners goodwill or the lack of it.

[Holly Fry]

Also during the Napoleonic wars, which stretched from 1803 to 1815, agricultural workers had been able to earn higher wages because so many men were away at war. Once the war was over and surviving soldiers and sailors returned home, there was an oversupply of workers and wages dropped. The end of the war also led to fears of a collapse in grain prices as trade was re established across Europe. In 1815, Parliament passed a Corn Law to regulate corn imports and try to protect landowners and farmers from falling prices. But ordinary workers saw this as making grain more expensive for them to buy, especially since 1816 was the year Without a Summer, which we have talked about on the show before. Protests and riots against the Corn Laws overlapped with the Swing riots and continued until those laws were repealed in 1846.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Attitudes about the poor were also changing in the UK in the early decades of the 19th century. The costs of relief for poor people had really surged during the Napoleonic wars and politicians and political economists started really focusing on how to bring those costs down. And one tool to try to do that was the workhouse.

[Holly Fry]

Although the idea of workhouses dates back to at least the mid 17th century in England, the Act to Amend the Law for the Relief of the poor, passed in 1819, provided for the expansion of workhouses and the building of new ones. It also empowered and required the select vestries, or the people who managed each parish, to quote, inquire into and determine upon the proper objects of relief and the nature and amount of the relief to be given, and in each case to take into consideration the character and conduct of the poor person to be relieved. The select vestries were also quote, at liberty to distinguish in the relief to be granted between the deserving and the idle, extravagant or profligate poor. So by 1830, most parishes in England had at least one workhouse. And a deserving poor person could often get cash relief, while someone deemed undeserving would be sent to the workhouse.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This was also connected to the tithe. People were expected to donate 10% of their income to their local parish. And that could be done with an in kind donation of produce or of some other good that they grew or farmed or made. A lot of people could not afford the tithe in light of everything that we've just talked about and beyond that, this whole practice was starting to seem out of date to people, considering the way English society and the English economy were changing. Working people protested against the tithe and against efforts to reform the tithe in A way that would make it more expensive for them.

[Holly Fry]

One of these proposed reforms was a change to cash payments that could be made in in lieu of tithing, part of the dairy production, since fresh milk couldn't be stored in the way that some other agricultural products could. The amount of these payments hadn't changed in centuries, and the church wanted to bring them in line with their current value. But farmers, of course, did not want to pay more.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

On top of all of that, which was already a lot, the harvest was particularly poor in 1829 and 1830. English agricultural laborers also faced increased competition for jobs as workers moved to England from Ireland. And the thing that became emblematic of the swing riots, Human threshers were being replaced by machines.

[Holly Fry]

So threshing is the process of separating the edible part of a grain from its stalk and husk. This was a late fall and winter activity after the grain had been harvested and allowed to dry. Before the development of threshing machines, this was an intensely manual process. Laborers, mostly men, would beat bundles of grain with a flail to separate the grain. Manual threshing was hard work, but it could provide up to 50% of a farm laborer's winter income. And, of course, in the winter, there were not many other ways for a farmer to make money.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The first threshing machines were developed in the 18th century. Michael Menzies of Edinburgh invented a machine for threshing grain in 1732 and patented it in 1734. In 1778, Andrew Meikle of Scotland invented a machine that might have been based on that earlier design. These initial attempts to make threshing machines did not work all that well. But threshing machines driven by water or horses started to become more reliable and more cost effective. In the 18 teens, these machines were vastly more efficient than human threshers. So as more landowners started buying them, people were just out of a job.

[Holly Fry]

It did not take long for people to start making threats over threshing machines. In 1791, a farmer in Wimbledon named Patterson was threatened with arson after installing a threshing machine. Although it isn't fully clear whether the threat was against the machine or against the farmer.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We will talk about how threats against threshing machines really started to grow after a sponsor break.

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The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Veeve Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McBill and Jesse have in store. This time around, they strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All Sass, zero filter and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets Old Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Machine breaking as a form of protest in Britain stretches back to at least the 17th century. Some of the earliest examples were in the textile industry. For example, in 1675 there was a four day long uprising in the Spitalfields area of London in which weavers broke apart newly developed looms that were described as being able to do the work of 20 men. In 1779, 300 knitting frames belonging to Samuel Nede were destroyed after he gave evidence against knitters who were petitioning parliament for better working conditions. The Luddite uprising of the 18 teens was of course, another example of this machine breaking.

[Holly Fry]

A big driver in a lot of these protests was people being put out of work by more efficient machinery or skilled workers being replaced by machine operators who didn't need the same level of training and expertise. There was often an argument that in the long term these innovations would increase productivity and bring down prices, which would make the goods more affordable, which would increase demand, which would lead to more jobs. Sometimes that was more or less true, but that didn't really help people in the short term. Sometimes the quality of machine made goods was also an issue. This is also something to put in the context of a country that has worked on a guild system for all labor for a long time. People either perceived that the quality of these machine made goods was worse or that was definitively true. But that drop in quality was one of the issues in the Luddite uprising.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

There were also protests in agricultural communities in response to mechanization in 1816, in part because of the unusually cold wet weather and its effects on agriculture. There were multiple disconnected protests targeting agricultural equipment. Threshing tackle was destroyed near Colchester and in South Suffolk People broke threshing machines and mole plows which were used to dig underground drainage channels through fields with a lot less effort than you could do them by hand. This happened alongside food riots in more urban areas and sometimes this is all known as the bread or blood protests for a banner that was carried by some of the demonstrators.

[Holly Fry]

The Swing riots started in 1830. Farmers in Kent had petitioned for a postponement of attacks on hops in 1829 and they had been denied. There were also political changes going on at a national and international level. King George IV died in June of 1830 and he was followed by William IV. In July of 1830, a revolution in France led to the overthrow of Charles the 10th, which helped inspire revolutionary ideals among artisans and Workers in England. The first documented attack on a threshing machine took place at Wingmore in the Elam Valley area of East Kent a month later.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

So for some time leading up to this, workers and artisans in the area had been warning local landowners that if they did not stop using threshing machines, those machines would be destroyed. On August 24, a group of about 20 men started destroying all the threshing machines that were still in use. This went on for weeks, with more people joining the mob, and that mob moved all over Kent.

[Holly Fry]

In October, two people near Dover received a letter that read, quote, you are to notice that if you don't put away your threshing machine against Monday next, you shall have a swing. Swing meant that they would swing from the gallows or be hanged. The letters were signed Swing, which took on multiple layers of meaning. The threat of hanging, the swing of a flail in threshing and Captain Swing. Unlike the Luddite uprising, in which Ned Ludd became something of a mythical leader of the demonstrators, Captain Swing wasn't really the Persona of a leader, just the author of menacing notes and documents demanding the end of threshing machines or other concessions.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Another thing that happened in October was that journalist and political commentator William Cobbett took a lecture tour through Kent and Sussex. And Cobbitt's story as a whole saga, he could definitely be his own episode. I just kept finding more things about him that kind of needed to go in here or that I wanted to put in here but didn't really fit. So we are just giving enough sense of, like, why he became such a big part of this whole thing. He was the son of a farmer and a publican, meaning his father ran a pub and when he was young he worked as a gardener and a plow boy. He joined the army and then after being discharged, he wrote a pamphlet called the Soldier's Friend about the harsh conditions that soldiers were subjected to. He also tried to have some of the officers who helped create those conditions court martialed. And in 1792, when it became clear that this was not going to go Cobbett's way, he and his wife, Nancy Ann, fled to France and then to the United States, where he taught English to French immigrants.

[Holly Fry]

Comet's opinions at this point probably don't line up with what you might expect based on what Tracy just said. He was fiercely against the French Revolution and he wrote a lot about that. He called the political philosopher Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and the Rights of Man, sometimes also called the father of the American Revolution, quote A man famous for nothing but his blasphemy and his hatred of England. Cobbett was generally anti revolution, anti republican and anti democratic reforms in England. He had to go back to England in 1800 after Dr. Benjamin Rush successfully sued him for libel for things that he had printed in his newspaper, Porcupine's Gazette. Back in England, Cobbett continued to write articles against democratic reforms and for things like the enclosure of common lands.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But Cobbett's attitude started to change after he bought a farm in Hampshire in 1805, and he toured the area and he saw how many farm workers were living in just desperate poverty. He wrote a book about what he witnessed across southern England called Rural Rides, and described himself as deceived in his earlier views. He became a really outspoken advocate for parliamentary reform, which is what he thought was necessary to address these issues. He faced a seditious libel charge for his writing on these subjects in 1809, and after representing himself in court, he was convicted. He was sentenced to two years in Newgate Prison, and he went bankrupt.

[Holly Fry]

Cobbett's advocacy could be a mixed bag, not just on these issues, but on a range of others. Some of his writing is racist and anti Semitic. Although some of these views did evolve over time, he was also motivated by the thought of returning to a romanticized idea of England, more like what he nostalgically remembered from his childhood. He had an idyllic picture in his mind of how things used to be an authentically English countryside of the past, but that was something that had just never really existed.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He also didn't always have the same perspective on other workers who also faced hardship outside that world of agriculture and rural life. In his 1816 letter to the Luddites, he made a very strident defense of machinery, saying, quote, I think then that it is quite clear that the existence of machinery to its present extent cannot possibly do the journeyman any harm, but on the contrary, that he must be injured by the destruction of machinery.

[Holly Fry]

After Cobbett was released from prison and got his finances back in order, he was able to buy another farm, and later a much bigger1. In 1816, he established a periodical called the Political Register, in which he advocated for parliamentary reform. Not long after that, he had to flee the country again under the threat of arrest for some of the things he had written. But he was able to return. In 1819, he brought with him the

[Tracy V. Wilson]

remains of Thomas Paine. He had become an admirer of Paine's work, much different from his earlier thoughts on the man. And after learning that Paine had been buried in a plain field on his farm. Cobbett wanted to give him a hero's burial back in England. That never actually happened, though, and Payne's remains were scattered. It's not clear where many of them wound up.

[Holly Fry]

This brings us back to the swing riots in 1828. Cobbett had started writing that an agricultural uprising was on the way if things did not change. And his October 1830 lecture tour was seen as inflaming tensions in rural England. As authorities started arresting and prosecuting demonstrators, they also focused on Cobbett and whether his speeches could be classified as libel or sedition. One man, who was later convicted of arson was reprieved after saying that he had been motivated by a speech Cobbett gave in the town of battle on October 16th.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The Swing Riots continued to spread through October and November of 1830. Demonstrators broke threshing machines, they set fire to haystacks, and sometimes they slaughtered livestock. Often this was not a matter of just showing up, smashing things and setting fires and then moving on. Demonstrators would try to negotiate with landowners or clergy or other authority figures. First, some farmers destroyed their own threshing machines with the hope that the demonstrators would leave them alone, or they would make concessions to the mob, like they would offer aid to the poor or promise better wages or say they would get the clergy to return everyone's tithes. Sometimes these promises worked, but sometimes this did not work out. And then also sometimes after one mob had left, another one arrived and everything just started over.

[Holly Fry]

In some parts of England, mobs attacked businesses, demanded food or money from landowners, or demanded that the church return their tithe, but without doing any machine breaking. There were also strikes, food riots and demonstrations at churches and other places that offered relief to the poor. In some places, people attacked and threatened Irish farm workers and tried to drive them out of the area. All of this is considered part of the Swing Riots, even if nobody broke any threshing machines or made any reference to Captain Swing.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Meanwhile, landowners and business owners contacted the Home Office and other authorities for help, and the administration of Prime Minister Charles Gray took steps to both put down the uprising and investigate Cobbit's involvement. Yeoman cavalry units were dispatched to try to deal with the unrest.

[Holly Fry]

On November 25, what was probably the most violent incident of the riots took place at the estate of John Bennett, known as Pit House. Bennett was an MP and a magistrate, and he had previously given evidence against the workers of the parish before the Poor Law Committee. Bennett had two threshing machines, which the mob destroyed after arming tools that they got at a nearby blacksmith. They also threw stones at Bennett and his steward. The Yeomanry was dispatched to try to restore order, leading to a skirmish in which one demonstrator, John Harding, was killed and many others were injured. At least 25 were arrested.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We'll talk about how the riots came to an end after a sponsor break.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Veeve Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McBill and Jesse have in store. This time around, they strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bath houses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the Silver linings you can take with you all Sass, zero filter and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age. On the podcast that never gets old, listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space well. With ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit once it's installed. ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 247 or you can manage it yourself from the ADT app. There are no long term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there. You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT blue you can DIY trusted ADT Home Security in a snap. Head to ADT.comBLU to build your system today and to hear more about home protection and other grown up topics, check out new episodes of Grown up stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In addition to his lecture tour, William Cobbit wrote about the issues that were affecting rural workers and the Swing riots in his periodical two Penny Trash, which was a smaller, cheaper version of the Political Register. In November of 1830, he published to the Working People of England, in which he described the ongoing destruction and arson as things that reasonable people would see as an abominable crime. But he went on to say that the question had to be asked of what would lead hundreds of people to carry out such crimes.

[Holly Fry]

He wrote, quote, I know this cause, or rather these causes. I know also that there is an effectual remedy of this great and melancholy evil, and I need not say that it is my duty to state them both with perfect frankness, a duty which I shall perform as briefly and with as much clearness as I am able. The great and general cause is the extreme poverty of the working people, or in other words, the starving state in which they are. That Bible which they have been taught to read as the means of saving their souls, tells them from one end to the other, that their bodies are also not to be left to perish for want, while the land abounds with plenty. And that plenty arising too, from their own labor, it tells them, and they know it, that the laborer is worthy of his hire. And they know that that hire means a sufficiency not only for the man who works, but for his wife and children, and of clothes and fuel and lodging too, as well as a victuals and drink. Can God, who commanded that even the ox should not be muzzled as he trod out the corn, be pleased to see men who have tilled the land, sowed the corn and reaped it and housed it, forbidden to touch the flower and condemned to eat roots or herbage, not sufficient to keep a pig in good plight? Every line of holy writ tells them that this cannot be the will of God, while tradition, while all the sayings of their forefathers, tell them that such a state of things is contrary also to the laws and customs of their native country.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He went on to say that everyone in the country used to brew and drink their own beer, but now almost no one did, other than the one or two who were given the malt to do it. And he said that people used to eat a variety of food, including meat, and now everyone was reduced to just subsisting mostly on potatoes. He described taxpaying workers of the country as half starved, while the people who lived on those taxes were, quote, wallowing in luxury and splendor.

[Holly Fry]

From there, he went on at length about how many people in Britain had lucrative sinecures where they were paid lots of money to do little to no work. Many of those people paid pensions to their daughters and sisters from that money, which Cobbett thought was lucky for those women. But, quote, what justice is there in taking away our bread and giving it to his daughters while we are reduced to grains and potatoes? He named a lot of names. Multiple men who were getting big payments and their female relatives who were getting a few hundred pounds a year. Cobbett listed a series of remedies, including the abolition of laws and taxes, that he thought were penalizing rural workers until Parliament could be reformed.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In December of 1830, Cobbett published a piece in the Political Register under the heading of Rural War. That was a phrase that he used a lot in his writing about these issues. This piece included two letters, quote, on the state of England and a warning to France. They were addressed to the editor of La Revolution in Paris. He wrote, quote, as the working people have gone on getting poorer and poorer, they have become more and more immoral. And indeed, it has been proved by witnesses before the Committee of the House of Commons, that in innumerable instances men have committed crimes for the purposes of getting into jail, because the felons in the jails are better fed and better clad than the honest working people. As the working people have become poor, the laws relating to them have been made more and more severe. And the poor law, that famous law of Elizabeth, which was the greatest glory of England for ages, has by degrees been so much mutilated and nullified that at last it is so far from being a protection to the working people that it has by its perversions been made the means of reducing them to a single state of wretchedness not to be described.

[Holly Fry]

It is probably unsurprising that once again William Cobbit faced charges for all of this. He was accused of seditious libel and put on trial for inciting violence and disorder and quote, the burning and destruction of corn, grain machines and other property, as he had done back in 1819. He represented himself, but this time the case ended in a hung jury, so he didn't wind up going back to prison or having to flee the country.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Some of the first demonstrators who faced charges during the Swing Riots got relatively light sentences. They spent just a few days in jail. But as this popular uprising grew and spread, authorities became a lot more concerned about putting it down. Among other things, the July Revolution in France raised a lot of fears that something similar might happen in England. Typically, cases would have been heard based on when all of this happened at the Lent Assizes in March of 1831, but authorities did not want to wait that long.

[Holly Fry]

On November 23, Home Secretary William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, offered a reward for helping to arrest people who were involved in the Swing Riots and give testimony against them. He also created special commissions to prosecute the accused. Between December 18, 1830, and January 14, 1831, cases were tried before special commissions across southern and eastern England. During these proceedings, 252 people were condemned to death, although ultimately only 19 of those were hanged. Either 481 or 505 people were transported to Australia. Both of those numbers appear in multiple places in the research, and almost 650 people went to prison. The people who faced trial weren't just farm workers. They also included blacksmiths, cobblers, carpenters, wheelwrights and various other workers and artisans.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Between the start of the swing riots in 1830 and the end of these legal proceedings in 1831, there were at least 3,000 incidents. They took place across most of southern and eastern England and in parts of central England. This makes the Swing Riots One of the largest popular uprisings in England since the peasants revolt of 1381, which is also known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion. We covered that rebellion on the show before and these incidents did not immediately stop with the trials and convictions. There were more scattered incidents that continued and Cobbett kept writing about at least until 1834.

[Holly Fry]

In terms of the Swing Riot's impact, the day to day lives of farm workers really didn't change all that much. Some of the landowners who did promise to make changes didn't keep those promises. A new Poor law passed in 1834 required that people who were sent to workhouses be clothed and fed and for children in workhouses to be educated. But this law further expanded the use of workhouses, leading to the Victorian era. Workhouses that were depicted in the works of people like Charles Dickens.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But the Swing Riots are seen as a factor in Parliament's passage of the Great Reform act of 1832. There's a correlation between the districts that saw uprisings and demonstrations during the riots and the districts that voted for pro reform members of Parliament. This act got rid of a lot of the rotten boroughs which were represented in Parliament, but did not actually have many people living there. It also created new boroughs and it made more people eligible to vote. This included small landowners, tenant farmers and shopkeepers, as well as householders who paid a yearly rental of at least 10 pounds. But under this act, only men had the right to vote and a lot of the poorest farm workers stayed still did not qualify.

[Holly Fry]

The creation of new districts allowed William Cobbett to become a Member of Parliament. He was elected to represent Oldham, which was created under the act. In the House of Commons. He strongly objected to the 1834 Poor Law and after it passed, he openly called for a popular uprising, something he had explicitly denounced earlier in his life and only somewhat hinted at during the Swing Riots. The Parliamentary reform that passed in 1832 was more limited than what Cobbett had advocated for. But he was still devastated that a reformed Parliament, which he had been so sure was needed to improve things in rural England, had instead voted to penalize poverty even further. His later writing included a number of books that explored the way the Crown had dispossessed poor people in England. And he was bankrupt when he died of influenza in 1835.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I find him very interesting.

[Holly Fry]

He is interesting. Kind of a pill.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, he's a lot of things. There are layers. We'll talk about that more on Friday, I'm sure. I have some listener mail to wrap this up. And this is From Rachel. Rachel wrote Hi Tracy and Holly. Very longtime listener, fourth time writer. The behind the scenes about the Bunker Hill Monument and Elizabeth Blackwell struck a chord with me. I will be making my first visit to London this fall to see the Bayou Tapestry and whatever else I can manage to enjoy in two weeks. Yes, I already have tickets to see the tapestry. When Tracy told us about the Blackwell exhibit at Oxford, I looked it up and was disappointed that it will be over before my trip. The discussion about Bunker Hill and the steps brought back memories of taking my boys to an American history vacation in 2000 and doing the Freedom Trail in Boston. When we got to Bunker Hill, they still had enough energy to climb to the top. I had a knee problem that made stairs painful, so I took the time to rest. Now the problem is long gone. I guess I should try to go back and climb to the top of the monument back to my London trip. I have reserved a place for a tour of Big Ben and they tell you multiple times that you have to be able to walk up 334 steps, not all at once as there are stops. They are also very careful to tell you that you must be able to tolerate the noise of the bells and walk through narrow passageways. Since I live in a three story townhome, the steps are not a problem. I probably get that many done before noon. It's not a tour many people take and I'm looking forward to being one of them. No pet photos, but I did read this article in the New York Times and that made me think of you both. Thanks for keeping me company at the gym and the kitchen. Rachel. Thank you. Thank you for this email. Rachel. There are a lot of things so number one, so many cool things to do in Oxford even though that exhibit will not be there by the time of your trip. So if you have time to make it out to Oxford, there's a jillion great things to do. I'm also impressed by anybody who does the whole Freedom Trail. Yeah, because I think it's something like 2.67 miles maybe, which does not sound that long to me because I go on like 5 to 7 mile hikes with some regularity. But walking that long on city streets feels a little different and people often wind up wait, does it sound harder to you? It sounds harder because it's not nice, soft giving ground. It's hard pavement under my feet.

[Holly Fry]

Total opposite.

[Parent]

Yeah.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This is fascinating.

[Holly Fry]

Well, because it's inconsistent if you're out in nature and you know exactly like you know. I mean city streets can also be inconsistent, there can be paving problems, et cetera. But to me, that's like when I was running regularly. I would always rather run a sidewalk than on a trail.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, I know a lot of people start the Freedom Trail and wind up kind of clocking out because they sort of realize this feels a lot farther than I thought it was going to based on it being 2.7 miles or however exactly long it is. So the article that was sent is an article in the New York Times that is headlined, your cat is being nice. Think again. A new study finds that sometimes cats groom each other specifically to be annoying. And this finding does not surprise me either, because I will for sure watch my cats, like, start out with a nice little bath, and it looks like they're being kind of cuddly, but one of them is slowly transitioning that into antagonizing her sister.

[Holly Fry]

Yeah, I mean, when we had both of our Siamese, they engaged in what we called competitive grooming, where it would just be like, no, I'm licking you. And they would just back and forth with that for a long time. I thought they were gonna come away bald sometimes.

[Child]

Oh,

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I can imagine exactly what that looks like. So thank you, Rachel, for this email and for sending that article. I had not seen that. If you would like to send us a note, we're@history podcastheartradio.com if you would like to see the show Notes where we have all the research for our episodes, that's at our website, which is missinhistory.com and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you'd like to to get your podcasts. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Parent 2]

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[Parent 3]

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[Parent 2]

How Lingokids. They have Spider man themed activities. It's completely safe. Like if someone took our comics and made them perfect for a 4 year old.

[Parent 3]

I still hang on to my old collection. Does it have Disney Moana too? My daughter is obsessed.

[Parent 2]

Disney Moana, Frozen Zootopia, it's all in there.

[Parent 3]

I'm downloading this right now.

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[Parent 2]

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Fry]

Hey everybody. We are getting ready to go on a trip. We're not packed yet, but our brains definitely are because we have a trip to Baja Mar on the horizon and it's kind of all I can think about. I'm so excited about the food. There are amazing restaurants and lounges there that I'm going to sample everything I possibly can. I'm going to gaze into the water, and mostly I am going to watch the Daily Flamingo Parade, which might be the thing I'm most excited about. There's also an incredible spa and I know Tracy's going to be taking advantage of that. There is excited and then there is Baja Mar excited. Start [e-mail].

[Tracy V. Wilson]

this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.