Dark Days of Georgian Britain: Rethinking the Regency, by James Hobson - book review

      We all know that Victorian England was a horrible place, with grim conditions for factory workers and harsh treatment of the poor. But, James Hobson argues, we have a rosy picture of Georgian England because authors such as Jane Austen - and above all the film versions of her novels - portray it as period of elegance and wealth, when people had nice manners, nice morals (on the whole) and delectable costumes. Of course Austen's books never attempted to portray the whole of contemporary society, only those parts of it she felt competent to describe, and she modestly compared her fiction to a miniature painting on a tiny piece of ivory. Without having to quarrel with Jane Austen - who was as acutely aware of the economic motives of human interaction as any Marxist - there is still every good reason to read Hobson's latest book, Dark Days of Georgian Britain: Rethinking the Regency.

      Despite laws that provided very minimally for those at the bottom of the pile, a large population in Georgian Britain was always teetering on the edge of starvation. Conditions worsened during the Napoleonic Wars, when inflation climbed steeply, and when the war ended there was massive unemployment followed by agricultural disaster in 1816. Corn laws, which prevented the import of grain in order to keep prices up for farmers, were extended after the war, and the introduction of machinery destroyed many livelihoods. Workers who tried to form unions and protest against wage cuts were often hanged or transported. 

       Children did all sorts of grim drudgery, notoriously being sent up chimneys, and also toiling as low paid scullery maids, shop assistants or bottle washers, and if they died in a work accident there was little concern.

     In London in 1816 a "Soup Committee" was set up to dole out gruel to the poor, particularly redundant sailors. The Prince of Wales donated £5,000. This was not enough to prevent riots and acts of vandalism by protestors.

     Hobson has collected material from newspapers, court records, parish poor-law records, and other reports to build a picture that is readable and enthrallingly ghastly. The rate-payers who resented subsidizing paupers sometimes loaded them on a cart and dumped them just outside the parish boundaries. It then became somebody else's problem. 

       In an era when bribing voters in elections was commonplace, Sir William Manners, a landlord in Ilchester in Somerset, took a more forthright approach. He evicted tenants who would not vote for his son as their MP, literally tearing the roofs off their houses and sending cartloads of dung to be deposited there to force them out. When his son still did not get elected in 1818, he closed down the workhouse where the recalcitrant voters had taken refuge. Admittedly there was an outcry, but parliament decided it had no right to intervene.

     So why wasn't there a violent revolution, if things were so bad? Arthur Thistlewood, a soldier with Jacobin sympathies, was one of the few who attempted it. He joined the Spencean Philanthropists, who were determined to overthrow the rotten, unjust system by any means necessary. They attempted an armed revolt in December 1816, but despite being equipped with stolen weapons had no chance against government troops. After Thistlewood's trial for High Treason ended, farcically, in acquittal, as the spies and government agents giving evidence could not prove anything against him, he carried on and planned to assassinate the entire Cabinet in April 1820. This time he and his co-conspirators were caught, convicted and hanged, a spectacle for which the authorities thought fit to sell tickets priced at 6 guineas.

    Knowing more details about these and many other resistance and protest movements helps us to make sense of the disgraceful episode of "Peterloo" in 1819, when a panicking City corporation in Manchester sent mounted troops to put down a peaceful meeting for workers' rights. 

   One thing that interests me is the fact that the Georgian Poor Laws, which required the rich in every parish to provide a minimum handout weekly to those who could not otherwise afford bread, linking the amount to the price of a loaf, originated in Speenhamland, near Newbury, Berkshire, bang in the middle of the Craven estates. They were passed by magistrates who met at the Pelican Inn at Speenhamland on 6th May 1795. This was in the outskirts of Newbury, the closest town to Elizabeth Craven's home, Benham Place, where she was then living with her second husband, the ex-Margrave of Anspach. The address of Benham is Speen, near Newbury, Berkshire. She and her husband undoubtedly appointed those magistrates. We know that she and the Margrave were very active philanthropists and very concerned about the hardships of the poor on their estates and in the adjoining areas. At his funeral there was a long procession of paupers who had been supported by him. A letter written by Craven to Lord Liverpool, President of the Board of Trade, in 1800, survives, urging him to do more to prevent farmers hoarding grain and keeping up prices. ¹



The Pelican Inn, then the George and Pelican, Speenhamland, Newbury. 

     I think it is very unlikely that Elizabeth Craven did not know what steps the magistrates were taking on her doorstep, and very likely that she and the Margrave instigated their actions. The owner of most of the rest of the surrounding land was her son, now Lord Craven, and he too could have put pressure on the magistrates. He had a lifelong interest in altruistic causes. If I am right, then Elizabeth Craven played a crucial role in saving innumerable fellow citizens from starving during those dreadful years.

      It would certainly make people sit up if the next Austen movie featured the Bennet family driving over a pile of frozen corpses on their way to the ball at Netherfield, or Elizabeth finding a man-trap in the grounds at Rosings on one of her walks, perhaps with the rotting corpse of a poacher in it, his leg severed. Could Willoughby or Frank Churchill turn out to be a Spencean Philanthropist? Such things were to be found in Regency England. We will have to wait and see whether the makers of the next movie decide to take up the challenge. 

1. See my book Elizabeth Craven, Writer, Feminist and European (Vernon Press, 2017), p. 212.