The fires were lighted up by malice in the breasts of the labourers because the farmers pinched them in their wages; the riots may be called an effort to recover their former rate of wages, and answered their object. [Robert Withers, Land Agent.]
STOTFOLD.
At Stotfold the late Mr. John George Fordham, of Royston, with a foresight and courage that did him lasting credit, used his influence, at personal risk to himself, in suppressing the riots.
During the years of 1830-5, a period of great discontent ensued, and incendiary fires continued to be of alarming frequency. Ashwell and Bassingbourn suffered severely. Of the former it is said that nearly all one side of the place was burned, and of the latter, in the course of three or four years, most of the farm homesteads were destroyed.
The fires at Shelford deserve notice here, on account of the remarkable circumstances surrounding them. In the first place the perpetrator, John Stallan, was the last man executed for the crime of arson, and in the second place his conviction was brought about by a strange piece of circumstantial evidence. Stallan was a labourer of respectable character and in constant work, and became one of the men attached to the fire engine. The fire in respect to which he was convicted, was discovered in time for the owner to run to it and pull out some of the thatch, and with it came out a ball of rag, and in it a piece of ignited tinder. This was found on examination to be made up of material including a piece of a lady's dress of which the pattern was distinct, and was found to be a piece of a dress given by a Mrs. Headley, to Stallan's wife, the remaining part of the dress being found in his cottage! He was arrested, and at first tried to fix the taking of the rag for the tinder upon a half-witted lad, but being unable to shield himself behind this subterfuge, he next went so far as to try and fix the crime upon his own wife, and again in this he conspicuously failed, and at the Cambs. Assizes was convicted and sentenced to be hung, and was executed in December, 1833, after confessing that he had been the author of all the ten Shelford fires, and that his only motive for committing the crimes was to get the ale and the money he received for helping to extinguish the fires!
Under such a condition of things as that described above, the farmer had considerable difficulty in getting any insurance offices to insure his produce.
One notable riot occurred at Fowlmere (about 1833-35). Warrants were obtained for the apprehension of the ringleaders, and for executing this warrant the Earl of Hardwicke, as Lord Lieutenant, came to Royston and swore in about twenty special constables, whose ornamental staves sometimes turn up now amongst local curiosities. These constables went over to Fowlmere on horseback, under the command of a justice of the peace, Mr. Hawkins, who then lived at the Priory, and was an uncle of Mr. Justice Hawkins. On arriving at Fowlmere the posse of armed "specials" found most of the labouring population of the village—male and female—assembled in the open space near the Swan, armed with sticks and other weapons, prepared to resist the execution of the warrant! After some persuasion and the reading of the Riot Act, a skirmish ensued, in which sticks, fire-irons and shovels, mixed with constables' staves, produced some cuts and bruises, and some torn clothes. Eventually the party of the law triumphed, the ringleaders were secured, and marched off under escort of the special constables to Cambridge gaol.
Out of the parochial inertia and the demoralization, discontent and lawlessness, which we have seen springing up, a full crop, from the old Poor-law, the Commission of 1831 presented a report which left no alternative but a sweeping measure of reform of the parochial life if England was to be saved from its own children, who, living a parasitical life, were eating away the vitals of that upon which they thrived. Salvation from within the parish was now well-nigh impossible. So the new Poor-law of 1834 swept away the parish as a unit of Poor-law administration—the Churchwardens and Overseers were no longer to meet after service in Church to consider applications for relief or the apprenticing of pauper children. The new order provided for grouping a score, more or less, of such parishes into a Union, with some uniform system of administration which should be less dependent upon the circumstances and prejudices of an individual parish.
The Royston Union was formed in 1835, consisting of 29 parishes in Herts., Cambs., and Essex, as at present.
The first chairman was John Bendyshe, Esq., J.P., of Kneesworth, and John George Fordham, Esq., was vice-chairman. Mr. Henry Thurnall was appointed Clerk (an office he continued to hold for forty years), Mr. Thomas Wortham, auditor, and Mr. J. E. Fordham, of Melbourn Bury, treasurer.