Journals of a Time Traveller

I have posted previously on the life of my Swing Rioter ancestor, Robert Smith of Attleborough, Norfolk, in The Man with the Mattock and The Man with the Mattock II.

In January 1831, my three-times great-grandfather, Robert Smith, stood at the bar of the Norfolk Quarter Sessions. At just 24 years old, he was convicted of spearheading a night of tumultuous rioting across the parish on the 4th and 5th of December 1830. The court records paint a vivid picture of his defiance: he led an assault on the local parish workhouse, breaking windows and terrorising its governor for bread and cheese; he systematically smashed agricultural machinery across neighbouring farms; and, most dramatically, he cornered the local rector, the Reverend Fairfax Franklin, holding him hostage inside his own church vestry for hours.

Brandishing a mattock in the face of the exhausted clergyman, Robert delivered a pair of truly revolutionary speeches to the crowd, declaring that "this is only the beginning, we have begun at the foot and will go up to the head," and triumphantly proclaiming that the working men "were the strongest party and would always be so." “that that devil was fled”

The AI reconstruction above visualises the scene in the vestry.

The British establishment’s response to the Swing Riots was famously brutal. Across the country, 19 men were executed and nearly 500 were transported to Australia, essentially a lifetime banishment under brutal conditions. My ancestor Robert Smith had:

1. Smashed machinery.
2. Attacked a workhouse. Threatened its governor with harm.
3. Cornered and threatened a member of the clergy with a weapon while giving speeches about starting at the foot and going to the head.
4. On the Sabbath (Saturday and Sunday)
5. A French tri-colour had been reported.

Yet he was not executed, not transported. Rather, the Quarter sessions held at Norwich were more lenient - two and a half years imprisonment. The stiffest penalty handed out to the Attleborough rioters, yet still, a mild punishment for the time.

But even that punishment was to be reduced.

Translation of the above letter (presented both sides in a Posthaven Gallery):

To the Visiting Justices of the County Gaol.

Gentlemen

I beg leave to recommend to your particular attention the cases of Robert Smith, Samuel Smith, and James Stacy, convicts in that Gaol, in consequence of Riots at Attleborough last December whose respective terms of Imprisonment I, as Prosecutor anxiously wish should be shortened, as soon and as much as you may think, consistent with the purposes of public Justice and Individual reformation –

When making this application to You, I will briefly state that tho’ these Men were amongst the most active on that occasion, I am quite convinced that they were greatly influenced by the instigation of others, and that the first and last of them, who are both Young had always before that time conducted themselves peaceably and that their friends and Relations have behaved with much propriety ever since their Convictions, and that the other Convict

[Page 2]

(Samuel Smith) has a Wife and Six Children, who, tho’ they have never yet been chargeable to the Parish, stand much in need of their Fathers exertions for their future support – I have reason to believe that Mr Johnson will certify to You the general good conduct of these Convicts –

I have the honor to remain Gentlemen Yours obdt G [obedient Servant] Fairfax Francklin

Attleborough July 25. 1831 –

As Committing Magistrate I beg leave to support the foregoing application. T. P. Slapp

As one of the witnesses I beg to do the same Henry Dover

Henry Dover Esq } Aylsham }

Whitehall 30 Novr 1831

Sir,

Viscount Melbourne having caused inquiries to be made into the case of Robert Smith, Samuel Smith and James Stacey who were convicted at the Quarter Sessions for the County of Norfolk in January last of Riot, and sentenced to various terms of Imprisonment, in whose behalf you transmitted some documents in your Letter of the 27 ultimo, I am directed to inform you that under all the circumstances his Lordship has felt himself warranted in advising His Majesty to grant James Stacey a Remission of the remaining part of his sentence, & proposes to pursue the like course with respect to the other Prisoners when they have undergone one Years imprisonment from the Date of their Conviction.

I am, Sir, Your obdt Servant

S. M. Phillipps

It reads like pure fiction. This was, after all, the very same Viscount Melbourne who routinely had men hanged to make an example of them, and who famously transported the Tolpuddle Martyrs merely for forming a friendly society. If I were to read in a novel that a radical rioter like Robert was simply 'let go' after a mere twelve months, I would dismiss the plot as entirely improbable. Yet, the archival evidence is right there on the page: it happened.

Continuing on from this post about my 3rd great grandfather Robert Smith, who was imprisoned at Norwich Castle Gaol for his part in a swing riot at Attleborough in 1831.

I'd uncovered a Robert Smith who took part in the riot in Attleborough, but a question always arises when researching an ancestor with a common name - was he / she my Smith, Brown, or Jones?.  So I need to look closer.  And I do see a problem:

His son, my 2nd great grandfather, Robert Smith (the junior), was born 15th December 1832.  Yet Robert Smith (the swing rioter), was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment in January 1831.  How did he do that?  Was Robert Smith the Swing Rioter NOT my 3rd great grandfather, Robert Smith of Attleborough, born there in 1807?

Then a few days ago, on the England & Wales, Prisons &Punishment, 1770-1935 collection at FindmyPast.co.uk, under correspondence, I find this Norfolk Court record, dated 30th November 1831:

I had problems reading even this copy that I had optimised with an image editor, so I had to get help on a Facebook genealogy group.  Apparently it is an appeal by James Stacey, one of the three imprisoned ring leaders, for sentence remission.  It also gives notice that the other two, Robert Smith, and Samuel Smith would also be appealing as soon as they had served one year in prison.  Did they receive remission?

I also found this under the same collection, dated to "1832" under Home Office Registers Of Criminal Petitions:

James Stacey, Robert Smith, and Samuel Smith are all still serving time.  I don't know how early in 1832 they are being recorded there - but, their sentence types are all recorded as "Rem" (remission), so it does look to me as though their original sentences were reduced.  If they were released on remission by late March 1832, then Robert Smith the Swing Rioter had just enough time to return to my 3rd great grandmother Lydia Smith (nee Hewitt), and to father Robert "Hewitt" Smith, the junior.  If so, do you see who the rector was at their son's baptism?  The Rev. Franklin himself.  The guy that Robert Smith held a mattock over, that with the thresher burning, attacks on the workhouse, and general rioting, landed him in Norwich Castle Gaol in the first place!  Two years later he's baptising Robert's son.

Also at FindmyPast.co.uk, I've found more newspaper reports of the case.  In my previous article, I reported:

Times were incredibly difficult for the poor.  I wonder if he was behind the voice that was reported during the Attleborough Riot by a witness:

Above the confusion of the voices one rang out, more stridant and confident than the rest 'We are the strongest party' the man cried. 'We always have been and we always will be.  This is only the beginning.  We have begun at the foot, and we will go up to the head.'.

Well.  One newspaper report stated that it was indeed our ancestor Robert Smith that said this:

Why did he do it?  What was Robert's status?  Around that time, he was recorded as a labourer.  Later, a hawker, and an umbrella maker.  Even later in life, after our 3rd great grandmother Lydia, died, he married Frances Saunders (nee Husk), and they moved up North on the railways, to work in the cotton spinning town of Sulcoates.

But I may have discovered another element to his story?  Why he was angry, and why he was accepted or identified as a ring leader of the riot?

Had Robert himself recently experienced a loss in status?  Did this finally drive him against the local Establishment?  In 1841, he was living with his wife Lydia, and six of their children, at his father-in-law's farm on the edge of Attleborough at Hill Common:

Maybe we can now understand him, just a little more.  Also on that 1841 census report - you can see his son Robert (Hewitt) Smith the junior, there aged eight years.  He's the guy that became the Attleborough bricklayer, and the victualler of The Grapes Inn, that was held up at gun point in 1879.  My 2nd great grandfather, and another story.

A vicious and armed attack on two of my ancestors in 1879.

The Grapes Inn, Attleborough, Norfolk.  I wonder if that is my great great grandmother Ann Smith (nee Peach), standing in front of the beerhouse in this old photograph?

I first heard of The Grapes from my late grandmother Doris Brooker.  She recalled in her childhood, her father, Frederick Smith, once taking her by horse and cart to a pub in Attleborough, that had a grapevine growing in the doorway.  If you look at the above photograph, I think you can see growth on the front of the building.  Was that the same vine?  I had just seen a census that recorded her grandfather, as the victualler of the Grapes Beerhouse in Attleborough. It connected.  She didn't know, but that beerhouse was where his parents had lived.

Here's how they relate to my late paternal grandmother:

My 2nd great grandfather Robert Smith, had been born in Attleborough in 1833, to a local family.  His father, Robert the senior, at one point, lead a local riot against the background of the Swing Riots.  After a sentence imprisoned in Norwich Castle Gaol, Robert the senior made a living as a hawker, umbrella maker, and as a labourer.  In his fifties, he finally escaped the Agricultural Depression by taking a second wife, on the new railways to Sculcoates, a cotton spinning town in Yorkshire.  Robert the junior and other siblings though, remained in Attleborough.  

Robert the junior's wife, my 2nd great grandmother, Ann (nee Peach), had been born at Etton, Northants, in 1835, although her mother, Sarah Peach (nee Riches) was from a local Norfolk family.  When Ann was an infant, her father David Peach was convicted of stealing two steers, and transported to Tasmania.  Sarah and Ann returned to Norfolk.  Ann subsequently must have grown up in a very poor single parent family in the town.  Her mother Sarah, unable to remarry, made a living as a charwoman.

So both Robert and Ann were born into more poverty rather than riches.  They married at Attleborough in 1857.  Robert had become a bricklayer.  

Between then and 1876, Ann gave birth to at least six children - Harry, Frederick (my grandmother's father), Alice, Emma, Samuel, and Nellie Smith.  They must have worked hard to get what they had.  By 1879, they were running the Grapes Inn on Levell Street in Attleborough.  From there, they ran a beerhouse, a bricklayer's yard, a builder's merchant yard, and possibly a pork butchers.  Here they are at the Grapes in 1881:

That's the background.  That 1881 Census shows the family two years after the event that I am now going to retell.

The Attleborough Burglary

It was about one o'clock in the morning on the first of March, 1879.  The beerhouse was closed.  My great great grandmother Ann Smith, was suddenly awakened by a noise and a light on the landing.  As she reached out to the bedroom door in order to investigate, a masked man carrying a revolver pushed into the bedroom, exclaiming "hoi-a-hoi!".  Her husband Robert now awake, the intruder pointed the pistol at his face.  The threat made, the burglar backed out to the landing.  Just then, their eldest son Harry, awoke by the commotion opened the door of another bedroom.  The intruder turned his revolver onto Harry, pointing it at a distance of six inches into his face.  Harry slammed the bedroom door shut, and the gun was fired into it, splintering the door.  The burglar then bolted from the Grapes, running out of the front door.  Robert, Ann, and Harry surveyed the house.  The intruder had kicked over a lamp, which needed to be extinguished.  The house had been ransacked.  Robert's silver pocket watch and chain had been stolen, some money, a carving knife, and some silver from a dresser.

The thief was a 20 year old John Clarke, originally from Shields in the North of England, but who had spent some time himself as a bricklayer, on the West India Docks in London.  He was on a rampage in Norfolk.  Armed, he committed a spate of burgalries at Attleborough, Spooner Row, Shipdham, and Foulsham.

The following Tuesday, he was at Little Walsingham.  It was becoming to risky for him to continue his crime spate in Norfolk, and he was heading for the railway station, to escape back to London.  He was tracked by the Police to a Little Walsingham pub, where they preceded to question him.  He made a dash for it.  As the police officers pursued him through the village, three times he raised his revolver and fired the gun at them - missing every time.

He reached the village of Great Walsingham.  The Police officers had by now commodeared a horse and cart to pursue him.  Locals joined in, including a game keeper's son called Codman.  More shots were fired - one through Codman's apron!  They chased him across the fields.  Another bullet struck a horse in the neck.  The rider of that horse, PC Goll, diismounted and forced Clarke to the ground - the gun fired again during the struggle.  Goll managed to part him from the revolver, and to handcuff him.

Clarke was found with a number of stolen items including my great great grandfather's watch.  He also had a piece of glass, painted with a death skull, that he would use with a lamp to frighten his victims.  The next morning, he gave a full confession.

He was taken later that day to Norwich Shirehall.  Angry crowds beseiged the building and a force of police had to keep order.  There he was charged, and Robert, Ann, and Harry gave their accounts, and identified their stolen properties.

At the May Assizes, John Clarke was sentenced to twenty years penal servitude.

Norfolk News 10th May 1879

Eastern Daily Press 8th March 1879

Norwich Mercury 8th March 1879

My great grandfather Frederick Smith with his son Lenny.