Steven Hawking's Tutor
Posts: 5,915 
January 31st, 2008, 12:02 PM
The year 1812: Britain had been at war with France for 20 years and with Napoleon for 9 years; Britain was also at war with the United States in both the Napoleonic Wars (which Britain won) and the War of 1812 (which finished a stalemate); King George III was mad and so his son ruled as Prince Regent - who frittered away his father's money; taxes were high; violent crime was rife in the cities, especially London, as it had been throughout much of the previous century - the public were especially scared of the Keelie boys gang; Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons, the only British PM in history to be assassinated; and the Luddites, a social movement of British textile artisans, worried that the new-fangled, hi-tech machinery produced by Britain's Industrial Revolution, broke into mills and factories across the country and smashed up mechanized cotton looms. Also, Britain was a bloody and brutal place - there were around 225 capital offences in Britain at the time (known as "The Bloody Code") - people (even children) could be hanged for stealing sheep, stealing handkerchiefs, cutting down trees, stealing from a rabbit warren, arson, forgery, murder, and being out at night with a blackened face.
So you could say that 1812 was the worst year in British history....
High taxes, shaky economy, rampant thugs... 1812 was Britain's worst year EVER
By TONY RENNELL
30th January 2008
Daily Mail
The year was barely an hour old before murder and mayhem struck the streets.
Young thugs, pickpockets and thieves armed themselves with knives and cudgels and went marauding through a city centre for victims to mug.
Three dozen of them steamed round William Jolly, a divinity student, and stole his money.
Walter Robertson, a businessman, was held against a wall and robbed of his watch and wallet.
The year of hell: In 1812 the Napoleonic Wars were raging (as portrayed by TV's Sharpe played by Sean Bean) between the British (the goodies fighting tyranny) and their allies against the French, Americans (the baddies) and their allies - the British and their allies, though, eventually emerged as the victors. The British were also fighting the Americans in the War of 1812
A watchman, Dugald Campbell, got in their way and was battered to the ground. He lay in the road dying while his attackers, the Keelie Gang, roared off in search of more trouble.
Sounds familiar? Could it have been this year, 2008, in which street robberies are so common that even the Home Secretary advises women against walking outside alone at night?
In fact, the year in question was 1812, and those events in the early hours of New Year's Day in Edinburgh were only the start of an extraordinary 12 months of crime and civil unrest.
Britain was in the doldrums. There seemed no end in sight to a dozen years of war with the ever-expansionist tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte and his version of a united Europe.
Nelson's glorious victory seven years earlier at Trafalgar seemed a lifetime away.
The economy was slumping, the price of food soaring, hardship and poverty spreading.
Militant textile workers manned barricades and fought to stop the introduction of new technology that would cost them their livelihood.
Then, amid this atmosphere of gloom and insurrection, the Prime Minister was shot dead in the House of Commons.
Madness: In 1812, mad King George III was locked away and his son - the Prince Regent - was frittering away his money
All of which is why 1812 was this week selected by BBC History magazine as these islands' worst year ever.
There were other leading candidates, such as the year of the Black Death in 1349 or the desperate days of the Jarrow unemployment marches in 1936.
But for sheer misery and absence of even the remotest hint of a feel-good factor, 1812 was apparently the one to surpass all others.
We must judge the awfulness of their existence by their own perception of it, according to author and historian Derek Wilson, who compiled the new report.
Crisis followed hot on the heels of crisis until everyone seemed overwhelmed by a sense of disaster.
The assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812 - the only British PM to be assassinated
Hogmanay in Edinburgh was supposed to have been a peaceful occasion. By tradition then, as now, people from all over the city, rich and poor, thronged into the centre to get drunk and have fun.
But this year something "hitherto unexampled" happened, according to a shocked report by the town council.
Instead of a gentle "first-footing" in the usual manner, the boots of the Keelie boys from the slums and tenements went into the groins of the better-off.
Nor were their assaults simply down to high spirits getting out of hand. They had spent weeks drawing up a plan "to give the police a licking" and to rob the crowds.
On the night, they had prearranged signals to pick out their prey.
The retribution from the shocked Scottish citizenry came down like a hammer. A huge reward of 250 guineas (equivalent to around £200,000 today) flushed out the leaders, two of whom had fled to Glasgow with the booty.
There was so much it filled two trunks.
Sixty-eight arrests were made, including boys as young as 12.
After trial, five youths were sentenced to transportation to the wilds of Australia - then a British penal colony. Then, as an example, Hugh Macdonald, 18, a shoemaker, Neil Sutherland, 18, an apprentice painter, and Hugh Mcintosh, 16, also a shoemaker, were condemned to hang.
Their execution was watched by thousands of people, lining the streets and even the rooftops along the way to the gibbet.
Meanwhile, the authorities and right-thinking folk puzzled over what had gone so badly wrong with their young people.
Was it lack of moral teaching? Or the easy availability of drink? Should the upper classes not be setting a better example? Would more police on the streets solve the problem?
Violence: In 1812, Luddites smashed up the machines which would ruin their livelihoods
The debates of 1812 went unresolved (then, as now). Instead there was a general sense that the very fabric of a stable society seemed to be crumbling and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Violence seemed endemic as the so-called Luddites smashed the new machines that would make cheap cloth for the mill-owners and them redundant.
The leader of the Luddites (1813)
Troops were called out, the Riot Act was read, and there were armed clashes between rioters and soldiers in the North of England and the Midlands.
Magistrates and mill-owners were ambushed and assaulted or targeted in their homes and their families terrorised.
Some are said to have built-in secret rooms as hiding places, just as the very rich today have "panic rooms" in their homes.
As the price of bread went up to record highs, the result of a series of bad harvests and fiscal mismanagement, corn merchants were marked out for similar harsh treatment from the hungry and discontented.
And, just as with the youth crime in Edinburgh or the war against Bonaparte, there seemed no end in sight and no quick fix to the problem of rural poverty and the social sideeffects of industrialisation.
The "green and pleasant land" that William Blake had written about just eight years earlier seemed suddenly grey and threatening, his "dark satanic mills" more hellish than ever.
"Jerusalem" was even further away from being built here than the poet could have conceived.
Then, in London, the violence that seemed to have gripped the country broke out in a sensational fashion.
Spencer Perceval was the prime minister of a Tory government that could find no common ground on which to tackle the country's growing problems.
A diehard reactionary, he opposed any social reform such as extending the vote beyond the landowning classes or relaxing the laws against Roman Catholics holding public office.
As a lawyer he had been famous for leading the prosecution for seditious libel of the civil rights campaigner, Tom Paine, over his epoch-making book, The Rights Of Man, which argued that all men were equal.
Thugs of today: Asbo teens could be compared to the Keelie boys gang
He had become prime minister after two years as chancellor of the exchequer, and combined the two offices, largely because he could not find anyone willing to take on the chancellor's brief alongside him as PM (Alistair Darling take note!).
Just how unloved he was, he discovered on May 11, 1812. The night before he had slept badly, troubled, as he told his wife in the morning, by a dream that he would be murdered.
His family begged him to stay at home but he went to the House of Commons.
He was on his way out of the chamber to attend a parliamentary inquiry into the Luddite riots when a man stepped forward with a pistol and shot him once through the heart.
He fell back, said: "I am murdered", and was dead before he could be carried away into the Speaker's rooms.
The culprit made no attempt to escape but gave himself up quietly on the spot.
His name was John Bellingham and he had for some time been petitioning his local MP claiming that the government owed him money.
He had also tried to speak to Perceval on the matter but been rebuffed. This was his way of getting attention.
At his Old Bailey trial, he made a rambling, incoherent speech, claiming that it was not Perceval he had attacked but the office of prime minister.
He also said he had been robbed of his liberty by the state and torn from his wife and family. Witnesses came forward to show he was insane.
Madness did not save him and he was hanged in front of Newgate Prison. But what was extraordinary was that crowds came in their thousands to cheer him at his execution.
Such was the hostile mood in the country and the disrespect for politicians that the assassination of the prime minister - the only time in this nation's history - was a cause of jubilation rather than regret.
Contrast this with the angst the U.S. went through on the deaths of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy, or even Pakistan over Benazir Bhutto.
In such dire circumstances, it might be thought that the nation could turn to its monarch for inspiration.
Sadly, any subject who hoped for relief from their gloom from Buckingham Palace would have looked in vain.
The King, George III, was mad and locked away.
No misery like 1812: Britain had been fighting Napoleon since 1803 but eventually emerged the victor
His son, the Prince Regent, had assumed his father's powers but was frittering away his money on extravagances such as his pavilion in Brighton, an exotic fantasy home, furnished without a thought to the cost, and an insult to the poverty and suffering of his people.
In 1812 too, while still at war with France, the nation fell out with the U.S.
It was a disagreement about trade embargoes but it led to fighting and, ironically, just about the only bright spot of the year.
American militiamen crossed the border into Canada, thinking it an easy conquest, but were twice repulsed by British soldiers. The redcoats even followed them into the U.S. and for a while captured Detroit.
British soldiers (in the red) fighting the Americans in the War of 1812 - the British were defending Canada against an American invasion
By the end of the war, 1,600 British and 2,260 American troops had died. Even though the war was officially a stalemate, the British saw it as a victory.
But, this small victory apart, it was a year of unrelenting calamities with no obvious sign of better times ahead.
We were a divided nation. Economic disruption was severe. There was anarchy at home and debilitating war abroad," says Derek Wilson. "The country was at an all-time low and bereft of leadership."
Looking at the news so far this year, filled with tales of economic collapse, marauding yobs and a government beset by calamities, some might be tempted to ask whether life in the 21st century is so very different from 1812 after all.
dailymail.co.uk
The year 1812: Britain had been at war with France for 20 years and with Napoleon for 9 years; Britain was also at war with the United States in both the Napoleonic Wars (which Britain won) and the War of 1812 (which finished a stalemate); King George III was mad and so his son ruled as Prince Regent - who frittered away his father's money; taxes were high; violent crime was rife in the cities, especially London, as it had been throughout much of the previous century - the public were especially scared of the Keelie boys gang; Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons, the only British PM in history to be assassinated; and the Luddites, a social movement of British textile artisans, worried that the new-fangled, hi-tech machinery produced by Britain's Industrial Revolution, broke into mills and factories across the country and smashed up mechanized cotton looms. Also, Britain was a bloody and brutal place - there were around 225 capital offences in Britain at the time (known as "The Bloody Code") - people (even children) could be hanged for stealing sheep, stealing handkerchiefs, cutting down trees, stealing from a rabbit warren, arson, forgery, murder, and being out at night with a blackened face.
So you could say that 1812 was the worst year in British history....
High taxes, shaky economy, rampant thugs... 1812 was Britain's worst year EVER
By TONY RENNELL
30th January 2008
Daily Mail
The year was barely an hour old before murder and mayhem struck the streets.
Young thugs, pickpockets and thieves armed themselves with knives and cudgels and went marauding through a city centre for victims to mug.
Three dozen of them steamed round William Jolly, a divinity student, and stole his money.
Walter Robertson, a businessman, was held against a wall and robbed of his watch and wallet.
The year of hell: In 1812 the Napoleonic Wars were raging (as portrayed by TV's Sharpe played by Sean Bean) between the British (the goodies fighting tyranny) and their allies against the French, Americans (the baddies) and their allies - the British and their allies, though, eventually emerged as the victors. The British were also fighting the Americans in the War of 1812
A watchman, Dugald Campbell, got in their way and was battered to the ground. He lay in the road dying while his attackers, the Keelie Gang, roared off in search of more trouble.
Sounds familiar? Could it have been this year, 2008, in which street robberies are so common that even the Home Secretary advises women against walking outside alone at night?
In fact, the year in question was 1812, and those events in the early hours of New Year's Day in Edinburgh were only the start of an extraordinary 12 months of crime and civil unrest.
Britain was in the doldrums. There seemed no end in sight to a dozen years of war with the ever-expansionist tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte and his version of a united Europe.
Nelson's glorious victory seven years earlier at Trafalgar seemed a lifetime away.
The economy was slumping, the price of food soaring, hardship and poverty spreading.
Militant textile workers manned barricades and fought to stop the introduction of new technology that would cost them their livelihood.
Then, amid this atmosphere of gloom and insurrection, the Prime Minister was shot dead in the House of Commons.
Madness: In 1812, mad King George III was locked away and his son - the Prince Regent - was frittering away his money
All of which is why 1812 was this week selected by BBC History magazine as these islands' worst year ever.
There were other leading candidates, such as the year of the Black Death in 1349 or the desperate days of the Jarrow unemployment marches in 1936.
But for sheer misery and absence of even the remotest hint of a feel-good factor, 1812 was apparently the one to surpass all others.
We must judge the awfulness of their existence by their own perception of it, according to author and historian Derek Wilson, who compiled the new report.
Crisis followed hot on the heels of crisis until everyone seemed overwhelmed by a sense of disaster.
The assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812 - the only British PM to be assassinated
Hogmanay in Edinburgh was supposed to have been a peaceful occasion. By tradition then, as now, people from all over the city, rich and poor, thronged into the centre to get drunk and have fun.
But this year something "hitherto unexampled" happened, according to a shocked report by the town council.
Instead of a gentle "first-footing" in the usual manner, the boots of the Keelie boys from the slums and tenements went into the groins of the better-off.
Nor were their assaults simply down to high spirits getting out of hand. They had spent weeks drawing up a plan "to give the police a licking" and to rob the crowds.
On the night, they had prearranged signals to pick out their prey.
The retribution from the shocked Scottish citizenry came down like a hammer. A huge reward of 250 guineas (equivalent to around £200,000 today) flushed out the leaders, two of whom had fled to Glasgow with the booty.
There was so much it filled two trunks.
Sixty-eight arrests were made, including boys as young as 12.
After trial, five youths were sentenced to transportation to the wilds of Australia - then a British penal colony. Then, as an example, Hugh Macdonald, 18, a shoemaker, Neil Sutherland, 18, an apprentice painter, and Hugh Mcintosh, 16, also a shoemaker, were condemned to hang.
Their execution was watched by thousands of people, lining the streets and even the rooftops along the way to the gibbet.
Meanwhile, the authorities and right-thinking folk puzzled over what had gone so badly wrong with their young people.
Was it lack of moral teaching? Or the easy availability of drink? Should the upper classes not be setting a better example? Would more police on the streets solve the problem?
Violence: In 1812, Luddites smashed up the machines which would ruin their livelihoods
The debates of 1812 went unresolved (then, as now). Instead there was a general sense that the very fabric of a stable society seemed to be crumbling and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Violence seemed endemic as the so-called Luddites smashed the new machines that would make cheap cloth for the mill-owners and them redundant.
The leader of the Luddites (1813)
Troops were called out, the Riot Act was read, and there were armed clashes between rioters and soldiers in the North of England and the Midlands.
Magistrates and mill-owners were ambushed and assaulted or targeted in their homes and their families terrorised.
Some are said to have built-in secret rooms as hiding places, just as the very rich today have "panic rooms" in their homes.
As the price of bread went up to record highs, the result of a series of bad harvests and fiscal mismanagement, corn merchants were marked out for similar harsh treatment from the hungry and discontented.
And, just as with the youth crime in Edinburgh or the war against Bonaparte, there seemed no end in sight and no quick fix to the problem of rural poverty and the social sideeffects of industrialisation.
The "green and pleasant land" that William Blake had written about just eight years earlier seemed suddenly grey and threatening, his "dark satanic mills" more hellish than ever.
"Jerusalem" was even further away from being built here than the poet could have conceived.
Then, in London, the violence that seemed to have gripped the country broke out in a sensational fashion.
Spencer Perceval was the prime minister of a Tory government that could find no common ground on which to tackle the country's growing problems.
A diehard reactionary, he opposed any social reform such as extending the vote beyond the landowning classes or relaxing the laws against Roman Catholics holding public office.
As a lawyer he had been famous for leading the prosecution for seditious libel of the civil rights campaigner, Tom Paine, over his epoch-making book, The Rights Of Man, which argued that all men were equal.
Thugs of today: Asbo teens could be compared to the Keelie boys gang
He had become prime minister after two years as chancellor of the exchequer, and combined the two offices, largely because he could not find anyone willing to take on the chancellor's brief alongside him as PM (Alistair Darling take note!).
Just how unloved he was, he discovered on May 11, 1812. The night before he had slept badly, troubled, as he told his wife in the morning, by a dream that he would be murdered.
His family begged him to stay at home but he went to the House of Commons.
He was on his way out of the chamber to attend a parliamentary inquiry into the Luddite riots when a man stepped forward with a pistol and shot him once through the heart.
He fell back, said: "I am murdered", and was dead before he could be carried away into the Speaker's rooms.
The culprit made no attempt to escape but gave himself up quietly on the spot.
His name was John Bellingham and he had for some time been petitioning his local MP claiming that the government owed him money.
He had also tried to speak to Perceval on the matter but been rebuffed. This was his way of getting attention.
At his Old Bailey trial, he made a rambling, incoherent speech, claiming that it was not Perceval he had attacked but the office of prime minister.
He also said he had been robbed of his liberty by the state and torn from his wife and family. Witnesses came forward to show he was insane.
Madness did not save him and he was hanged in front of Newgate Prison. But what was extraordinary was that crowds came in their thousands to cheer him at his execution.
Such was the hostile mood in the country and the disrespect for politicians that the assassination of the prime minister - the only time in this nation's history - was a cause of jubilation rather than regret.
Contrast this with the angst the U.S. went through on the deaths of Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy, or even Pakistan over Benazir Bhutto.
In such dire circumstances, it might be thought that the nation could turn to its monarch for inspiration.
Sadly, any subject who hoped for relief from their gloom from Buckingham Palace would have looked in vain.
The King, George III, was mad and locked away.
No misery like 1812: Britain had been fighting Napoleon since 1803 but eventually emerged the victor
His son, the Prince Regent, had assumed his father's powers but was frittering away his money on extravagances such as his pavilion in Brighton, an exotic fantasy home, furnished without a thought to the cost, and an insult to the poverty and suffering of his people.
In 1812 too, while still at war with France, the nation fell out with the U.S.
It was a disagreement about trade embargoes but it led to fighting and, ironically, just about the only bright spot of the year.
American militiamen crossed the border into Canada, thinking it an easy conquest, but were twice repulsed by British soldiers. The redcoats even followed them into the U.S. and for a while captured Detroit.
British soldiers (in the red) fighting the Americans in the War of 1812 - the British were defending Canada against an American invasion
By the end of the war, 1,600 British and 2,260 American troops had died. Even though the war was officially a stalemate, the British saw it as a victory.
But, this small victory apart, it was a year of unrelenting calamities with no obvious sign of better times ahead.
We were a divided nation. Economic disruption was severe. There was anarchy at home and debilitating war abroad," says Derek Wilson. "The country was at an all-time low and bereft of leadership."
Looking at the news so far this year, filled with tales of economic collapse, marauding yobs and a government beset by calamities, some might be tempted to ask whether life in the 21st century is so very different from 1812 after all.
dailymail.co.uk
