Emigration Learning Resource 1
Poverty and discontent in 1830s West Sussex lead to riots and dire consequences for two local men
Suggested age groups: KS3 and Lifelong Learners
Subject areas: History, Literacy, Drama
CONTEXT
Following years of war, high taxes and low wages, farm workers were so poor and hungry they finally snapped in the 1830s. These workers had faced very low wages or unemployment for a number of years due to the widespread introduction of the mechanical threshing machine and the policy of enclosing fields which forced them off their small holdings. Farms no longer needed thousands of men to tend the crops – now just a few were enough. With fewer jobs, lower wages and no prospects of things improving for these workers, the threshing machine was the final straw, the object that was to place them on the brink of starvation. Groups of workers joined together and smashed the threshing machines and threatened farmers who owned them. These riots which occurred across the country, including West Sussex, were known as the Swing Riots. Westbourne and neighbouring parishes witnessed particularly serious rioting.
Westbourne is a parish 0.5 miles northeast of Emsworth. The parish includes the hamlets of Woodmancote and Aldsworth, and in 1830 included the settlements of Southbourne and Prinsted to the south.
In 1801 Westbourne had a population of 1549 and by 1831 this had grown to 2031.
Quarter Sessions Records
Justices of the Peace met in Quarter Sessions (every 3 months or ‘quarter of a year’) to perform administrative functions on a county-wide basis, such as supervising the administration of roads and poor relief by parish officials, maintaining and inspecting prisons, houses of correction and asylums, supervising the constabulary, licensing alehouses, religious registration, etc. They also had a judicial function, trying a wide range of offences deemed not serious enough to be heard at higher level courts. West Sussex Record Office holds Quarter Sessions records from as early as 1594 through to the 20th century.
Records of Petworth Quarter Sessions for Jan 1831 list some of the rioters in Westbourne who were prosecuted for their part in the Swing riots and the harsh sentences dealt out to them.