1842 Pottery Riots

rdf:langString 1842 Pottery Riots

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rdf:langString On Monday the 15th, after some inflammatory sermons by Cooper , on the day before at Longton and Hanley, the fraternity of Chartists and the surly advocates for a fair day's wages , assembled in formidable array at the Crown Bank in Hanley, where the Chartist Meetings had been usually held, proceeded thence to stop the engines at Earl Granville's works, broke open the Police Office at Hanley, also a print-works, also a principle pawnbroker's shop there, and the house of the tax collector; proceeded to Stoke, demolished the windows of that Post Office, and afterwards those of Fenton and Longton. The rectory-house at the latter place was the especial object of their fury; it was gutted and set fire to, though the fire was extinguished before it destroyed the premises. The house of Mr Mason at Heron Cross, that of Mr Allen of Great Fenton, and that of Mr Rose, the police magistrate at Penkhull, were in like manner visited and treated by parties of marauders, who, returning to Hanley in the evening, were again lectured, and commended by Cooper for what they had done, though he reproved them for their drunkenness, as being likely to expose them to detection. Terror and consternation spread around, and many families left home for security. The scenes of the night were expected to surpass the atrocities of the day, and so they did. Religion and justice must be exhibited as public victims on the altar of Chartist divinity. Accordingly the parsonage of the Rev. R. E. Aitkens in Hanley, and Albion House in Shelton, the residences of William Parker, Esq., one of the county magistrates, were, with all their valuable furniture, burnt and destroyed. The offices of Earl Granville in Shelton shared the same fate. The morning of the 16th discovered their smoking ruins.

rdf:langString "The arrest of Chartist agitators in connexion with these outrages has caused no little dismay among their adherents ... Yates, the coffee-shopkeeper at Hanley, whose house had been a place of rendezvous for violent Chartists, and who had himself been one of the most active in turning out the people at the manufactory ... was apprehended on Saturday 20th while at work"

rdf:langString John Ward, "The Borough of Stoke-Upon-Trent, in the Commencement of the Reign of Queen Victoria".

rdf:langString The late Riots in the Potteries

rdf:langString Predominantly centred on Hanley and Burslem, in what became the federation of Stoke-on-Trent, the 1842 Pottery Riots took place in the midst of the 1842 General Strike, and both are credited with helping to forge trade unionism and direct action as a powerful tool in British industrial relations.