The Annual Register: World Events .... 1817. - 1818

 Events when the miners had the wages reduced by a tenth. They went on strike though it seems they didn't use that word at the time. 

In Radstock in 1814

 Found this today. About the North Somerset Yeomanry. 

North Somerset Yeomanry

 This is from a book from 1850 on Google books called North Somerset Yeomanry. 

1802

1820

Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry 1818

 I have been trying to find out the appearance of the North Somerset Yeomanry in the Frome and Radstock riots of 1817. I have tried Frome Museum as they were from Frome and surrounding villages. I haven't had any luck but this is from 1818 so near in time. 

Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry Malmesbury Troop Sergeant George Butler August 1818

Anybody have this book?

There's a riot going on 1814-1830

 Been interested in the riots of the early 19th century. Frome and Radstock had them. Here is a list of riots or unrest from Brief Historical facts 1760-1830 C. Cook J. Stevenson on Google books

Merthyr Riots 1816

 Penry Williams (1802–1885). Article on the artist and event here

Bread or Blood.

 Here is a report from the Star (London) published on Monday 3rd March 1817, that is available online from the British Newspaper Archive.

Reading the Riot Act

 

One of the things I am interested in is times in Radstock when the Riot Act was read. It happened in 1817 and other times too. What happened was a specially worded document would be read out in full by a Magistrate or official and if the crowd didn't disperse within an hour they would be guilty of a felony punishable by death. They read it in the movie Peterloo we watched the other day. In 1817 it was enforced in Radstock by the 23rd Lancers and the North Somerset Yeomanry from Frome.  The Riot Act was brought in in 1714 and was repealed in 1967. Wiki on the Riot Act.

Waterloo movie

1816 Year without a summer

 Been reading up on the riots in Radstock in 1817. Part of a general response to the year without a summer. Read about it here

Summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest of any on record between 1766 and 2000,^[2] resulting in crop failures and major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere.^[3]

Battle of Frome 1816

 

Cobbett's Political Register William Cobbett

Cox and Baylis, 1816 - 

23rd Lancers

 In 1817 during a period of turbulence that followed Waterloo and a disastrous summer in 1816 there were Bread or Blood riots around the country and Radstock and area was the location of a serious insurrection. Sir John Hippisley read the Riot Act and troops were sent in. The 23rd Lancers came from Bristol and the North Somerset Yeomanry were also deployed. An account of it can be read here. Found this image of the uniform of the 23rd at that time. 

The Costume of Yorkshire

A Collier with Blenkinsop's Salamanca in the background

A book by George Walker. Wiki here

Radstock during the 1817 strike when the riot act was read

The Annual Register, Or, A View of the History, Politics, and Literature for .the year 1817

'Du Pain ou du sang'

I recently had the honour of having a piece I wrote translated into French in Heartbeat fanzine - it was interesting seeing your words in another tongue - one phrase that sounds most melodic in French is the phrase 'bread or blood' which was the slogan of the revolting Radstock colliers in 1817 - sounds better in French.

1816 - the Year without a summer

Of course incidents like the Somerset coalminers' strike of 1817 (see Bread or Blood below) was all part of a global catastrophe that started back in april 1815 with the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. This caused a summer that was wet and without sun the next year and was responsible for Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, but mainly failures of crops throughout Europe, potatoes rotting in the ground, this all eventually trickling down to the coalfields of Somerset. Strange really how something like that can effect everything. Of course the massive amounts of discharged servicemen after the Napoleonic wars had ended was another factor. I don't know maybe this might an interesting tv programme or something. Oh it was in 2005. Maybe we should look at this as a cautionary tale about the environment.

Bread or Blood

This image of a miner in Yorkshire from 1814 is an intro to a piece about the Somerset coalfield strike of 1817 - this was a time of agricultural failure and high unemployment and faced with a reduction of wages the miners of Radstock, Camerton, Paulton etc struck. Gangs of hundreds of them roamed the countryside armed with cudgels and the mines were occupied. Troops were called in to restore order including the new Lancers from Bristol. Four were arrested for riotous assembly and order was restored. The steam engine in the background is interesting. It's Blenkinsop's Salamanca, on the Leeds and Middleton Railway, 11 years before the better known Stockton to Darlington Railway opened.
Around here one William Ashman built a steam loco-motive to run on the coal tramway tracks around Radstock in the 1820s but it was too heavy. Shame. Picture from here