Yorkshire Almanac Robert Gibson, fishmonger of Queen Street, Hull, is beggared by his Liberal landlord for favouring the Conservatives in the general election, says the (Tory) Hull Packet

23 August 1837: Robert Gibson, fishmonger of Queen Street, Hull, is beggared by his Liberal landlord for favouring the Conservatives in the general election, says the (Tory) Hull Packet

Hull Packet. 1837/08/25. Hull, Friday, August 25, 1837. Hull. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

HULL, FRIDAY, AUGUST 25, 1837.

In the last publication of the Hull Packet we promised an accurate statement of the case of ROBERT GIBSON, a Fishmonger, whose goods were distrained, because he dared to act as a Conservative at the recent Election, in spite of the threats of a Mr. KIRKWOOD, who is his landlord. We are now about to make good our promise; and before doing so, we will only pledge ourselves that in no one syllable do we go beyond the actual fact.

ROBERT GIBSON, a fishmonger, occupies a house and shop in Queen-street, Hull, which he rents of Mr. Stephen Kirkwood, of Hull, builder. Gibson is a Conservative: Mr. KIRKWOOD is a Liberal! Several of GIBSON’s neighbours having put out blue flags, on the Friday morning previous to the day of election, GIBSON himself expressed a wish to have one also, and a flag was accordingly taken to his house by some of the Blue party. Mr. KIRKWOOD, however, happening to be present at the time, told Gibson that he would not allow him to put out the flag. GIBSON urged in vain that surely he had a right to do as he liked in this respect, in his own house. Mr. KIRKWOOD was inexorable, vowing that, if GIBSON did put the flag out, he (KIRKWOOD) would tear it down. That Mr. KIRKWOOD’s animosity to flags was confined solely to those of a Blue colour is best evinced by his reply to an inquiry of Mrs. Gibson’s – whether he had any objection to their putting out an Orange flag? which was “No, I have no objection to that – you may do as you like about that.” In consequence of Mr. KIRKWOOD’s threat, GIBSON returned the flag to the Blue party; but happening shortly afterwards to overhear Mr. KIRKWOOD say to a person in an exulting tone, “One of my tenants was going to put out a Blue flag but I have stopped him” – his indignation was roused, and he was determined to show Mr. KIRKWOOD that though poor he had yet too much of the spirit of an Englishman to suffer himself to be trampled upon, and immediately procured a Blue flag which he exhibited from an upper window of his house. Owing to the season of the year (which is very unfavorable to his trade) GIBSON at this time was in arrear to his landlord for ONE QUARTER’S RENT. Mr. KIRKWOOD, however, had not demanded the payment of it, and GIBSON, conceived that it would be allowed to run on for the half-year (as it had done the year previously in order to give him time to work round. On the Saturday, Mr. KIRKWOOD called at GIBSON’s house and said to Mrs. GIBSON – “As your husband has been so stupid as to put out the blue flag, if you don’t pay me the Quarter’s Rent you owe me, I will put the Bailiffs in for it.” To this threat, Mrs. GIBSON could only reply by a reference to her husband, who was then from home. On the Monday, GIBSON voted for James and Wilberforce. On the following Wednesday morning, Mr. KIRKWOOD entered a distress for his Quarter’s Rent, under which every article of the little furniture GIBSON possessed was seized, and he, with his wife, two infant children, and his wife’s sister, who is dependent on him for support, was left without a chair, or a bed to lie on. The only articles of furniture they now possess, are two mattresses, which a benevolent friend enabled GIBSON to buy in at the sale.

It is not for us to attempt to point out the particular course which it will become the Conservatives of HULL and around the neighbourhood, to pursue with respect to this particular case. We have every reason to believe that GIBSON is an honest, industrious, well conducted, and hard working young man; and we are confident, such being the fact, that the Conservatives will not permit brutal oppression to destroy him, solely because he has acted upon the dictates of his conscience and his judgment, and spurned at the low foul insolence of a bigotted Destructive. In the foregoing statement of the case we have purposely used the plainest phraseology possible; and for the present we will only further dwell upon the subject, in order to notice very briefly two or three points:- The first is, that this most liberal and very worthy Mr. Kirkwood is nearly related to GIBSON, and has by degrees, within two years, got his rent up from Sixteen Pounds year to Twenty Pounds Six Shillings a year! The second is that GIBSON votes as a Householder, and not as a Freeman; and yet the Destructives are daily scheming for the annihilation of the Freemen on the pretended ground that they are dependent, while the householders are independent. The fact is that the owners of nine-tenths of the small houses in towns which are just sufficient to confer votes are busy, prying, discontented Radicals, who would trample on their tenants. The third is to tender our humble services to promote any plan, not benefitting the liberal and honest Mr. Kirkwood, which may be devised for rescuing an industrious and well conducted young man from the pangs of low oppression, and enabling his now destitute wife and infant children to possess those moderate and almost necessary comforts which his exertions have hitherto provided for them.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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4 December 1843: The Tory MP for Knaresborough recounts the death in poverty of an old woman at Harden Beck, Bingley

31 July 1846: Pudsey celebrates repeal of the Corn Laws with a 1.725 tonne free-trade plum pudding

18 January 1966: Barbara Castle (Lab.) swings the Hull North by-election with a bridge over the Humber, convincing Harold Wilson that he has the momentum to win a general election

20 September 1819: Flags and fasces at a procession from Briggate to Hunslet Moor to protest the Peterloo Massacre

9 January 1659: The poet Andrew Marvell reacts emotionally to his nomination as “a fitting man to take our wishes unto parliament house” at a hustings of the “free and lightened voters” of Hull

30 May 1835: The (Tory-dominated) Leeds Corporation gives its assets to three cronies to prevent their being inherited by the new (Whiggish) town council created by the Municipal Corporations Act

21 February 1835: The Spectator sketches the preoccupations of Leeds’s Tory and Whig establishments – respectively, partying, and preventing implementation of the child labour provisions of the Factory Act

27 August 1754: The (Tory) Leeds Intelligencer calls on Holbeckers to accept the appointment by Samuel Kirshaw, Vicar of Leeds, of a new curate, Richard Fawcett Snr, to St Catherine’s Chapel

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Via Roy Wiles (Wiles 1965).

Events

“Sunday last” is 25 August, but Fawcett managed to get in by 11 September:

On Wednesday last Mr. Fawcett for the first time performed Divine Service in the chapel of Holbeck, but was escorted to and from the chapel by a party of Dragoons, who kept guard at the doors during the service. Notwithstanding this precaution, some evil-disposed people found means to break the windows and throw a brickbat at Mr. Fawcett while he was in the reading- desk. The Sunday following he went through the service unmolested. And on Sunday last he preached a most excellent sermon, 46th verse of 13th chapter of Acts… The same night some prophane sacrilegious villains broke into the chapel and besmeared the seats with human excrements.

On 22 September he was able to conduct a reduced Sunday service in peace:

On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Fawcett was received and behav’d to by his congregation at Holbeck with great decency… One of Mr. F.’s friends admitted their favourite preacher to his pulpit in the town-by this means the tumultuous part of the people were mostly drawn away from Holbeck, and the curate left at liberty to perform his duty amongst the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants of the chapelry.

However, on 22 October we read that

In the night between the 16th and 17th inst., the windows of the chapel of Holbeck were again broken. No wonder, when Holbeck contains such a nest of vermin whom neither the laws of God or man can confine within the bounds of decency, etc.

For which John Robinson, a “Houlbecker,” was in November sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine of £5 (Griffith Wright 1895).

In the summer of the following year he published his first Sunday’s sermon and and his resignation letter. I think that in the following Fawcett is quoting things actually said to him:

A man might oftentimes, by due Care and Watchfulness, perhaps very safely defeat the Schemes, and discourage the Practices of the private Pilferer; and yet, whenever this is done, it is commonly suspected to be done rather for the Preservation of his own Property, than out of a pure Regard to the Public-good: But when he is attack’d in his house, or upon the road by open Plunderers, and requir’d to deliver, or suffer himself to be rifl’d of what he is possess’d of, with some one of these dreadful Alternatives, of having his Brains immediately blown out,” or their hands “wash’d in his hearts Blood,” or “having bis “Entrails pull’d out at his Mouth,” or “being “buried alive,” it will Then surely be accounted highly Romantic in him to reject their demands, out of a Pretence to prevent the bad Influence of their Example; and he will be generally suspected of giving a Proof of his Fool-hardiness or his Avarice, rather than of his public Spirit, by such a Refusal.

In the resignation letter he says that he

perform’d the Duty of the Curacy for near Three Months after he gain’d Admission into the Chapel, and this too, rather to prepare a Say for the peaceable Reception of any other Person whom the Patron shou’d think proper to nominate, that out of any Prospect of reconciling the People to himself.

Fawcett declines to attribute responsibility (“Who the Incendiaries were, the Sufferer neither Pretends to Know, nor Desires to be Inform’d”). He also explicitly excuses the lord of the manor, who at this juncture I take to be Lord Irwin (aka Henry Ingram, 7th Viscount of Irvine) rather than the Whiggish Scholey family, as well as other leading citizens (Fawcett 1755).

Was Fawcett a lousy preacher, or was the mob’s alternative, whoever he was, utterly adorable? Was there a Whiggish or Radical element at work? Was there some element of revenge for Samuel Kirshaw’s victory over James Scott in the struggle from 1745-51 for the vicarage of Leeds (Taylor 1865)? Perhaps you know.

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