January 1793 was an uncertain time across the country.
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| Didsbury in 1853 |
The weather was unseeingly cold, the harvest had been poor, and in France the survival of the monarchy was in doubt.
All of which might explain why a crowd gathered to watch as an effigy of that well-known radical, Thomas Paine was burned on the village green in front of the two village pubs.*
And after the event some of the crowd will have settled down in the Old Cock, and the Ring o’Bells which would be rebuilt as the Church Inn and is now the Didsbury Hotel.
Just how many of those swapping stories in the two pubs, were in favour of Tom Paine, and how many had taken against the man who supported both the American and the French Revolutions, we will never know, but our two publicans may well have been pleased at the turn of events which brought in the customers.
The crowd who assembled to see the event may have been driven by a fear of Paine’s ideas or out of sheer curiosity, but they weren’t alone, because in all that orgy of burning, Bromsgrove in Worcestershire was
“the only town in England in which an effigy of Tom Paine was not burned”, leaving the Manchester Guardian to add that there in Bromsgrove, “Democracy predominates.”**
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| Thomas Paine, 1792 |
And that leads me to the only description of a burning that we have for Manchester, which was the one carried out on December 17th 1792,
"The inhabitants at top Deansgate, hanged the effigy of Tom Paine, dressed in a Maroon coloured Coat, Striped Waistcoat, and greasy pair of Breeches, a Barber’s Block with a Wig on supplied the Place of a Head, from his Coat Pockets hung shreds of Paper and on the shoulder a Quantity of Thread, emblematical of his deviant Trade, with ‘The Rights of Man’ stitched on his Breast; thus he hung an Hour, amidst the Acclamations of Hundreds of Spectators; he was afterwards dragged through the Streets, and then committed to the flames the Populace singing ‘God Save the King’"***
This event came during a surge of ‘loyalism’ in Manchester where a carefully crafted campaign had been waged against those who had embraced the French Revolution and argued for a Radical ideas.
In the same month, the home of Thomas Walker on South Parade was attacked by an organized mob of Church and King supporters, and Walker was forced to drive them off by discharging a pistol.
Writing later of the event he commented,
“Emboldened by drink and fired on by agitators, groups hostile to the radicals began to gather around the city. Walker was in no doubt that this was pre-planned.
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| Thomas Walker, 1794 |
Parties were collected in different public houses, and from thence paraded in the streets with a fiddler before them, and carrying board on which was painted with CHURCH and KING in large letters’
On four separate occasions a mob gathered outside South Parade, broke the windows and attempted to force their way in. Supported by friends Thomas Walker was forced to fire into the air to disperse the crowds.
The magistrates did nothing to prevent the events and while a “regiment of dragoons was in town, booted and under arms” and ready to disperse the rioters no order was given.
As if to add insult to injury the main concern of the magistrates when they finally met Walker was that he should not fire at the crowd again if the mob returned! These attacks had been matched by similar ones on the home of Priestly in Birmingham and in Nottingham.” ****
Location; Didsbury and Manchester
Pictures;
Thomas Paine, 1792, Thomas Walker. 1794, Didsbury showing the Church Inn and Old Cock, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/
*Axon, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885, page 120
** Bromsgrove, Manchester Guardian, January 20th, 1793
***Manchester Mercury, January 1, 1793, quoted by O’Gorman Frank, Manchester Loyalism in the 1790s from Return to Peterloo Manchester Region History Review, Volume 23 2012
**** Walker, Thomas, A Review of some of the events of the last five years, London 1794 page 23
