‘A Review in a Market Place’ by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) shows the inspection of troops in the market place at Winchester in about 1790. Up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the persistent fear of invasion from France, first under the Republican government created by the French Revolution in 1789 and later by Napoleon’s imperial troops, ensured that the town’s coal and armaments industries prospered, but provoked unrest thanks to forcible conscription into the Navy and the economic impact of decades of war.
Introduction
When at the end of Pride and Prejudice (1811) Jane Austen banished George Wickham to serve in a militia regiment in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, she was not sending him out of harm’s way. Lydia might enjoy the town’s musical salons and Theatre Royal, but all around was a hive of heavy industry and radical politics. Both had long been dominated by Crowley’s Crew, articulate freethinkers among the blacksmiths of Crowley’s ironworks at Winlaton.
WHEN provisions became very dear, they were wont to take possession of the market carts as they passed through the village on the way to Newcastle, and there and then dispose of the goods at what they considered reasonable prices. An incident of a kindred character, but showing more emphatically the reckless boldness of Crowley’s Crew, occurred about the close of last century.*
Butcher meat, and, indeed, meat of every kind, had risen to a very high price.* There was not, apparently, a corresponding increase in wages, and the Winlaton people began to feel the pinch of want. Accordingly, a meeting was convened, and, acting upon resolutions there passed, a formidable body of men marched in martial array to Newcastle. Proceeding straight to the market on the Sandhill, they took summary possession of the stalls and market carts, and with a haughty disregard of the cost of production, import duties, and retailors’ profits, assumed the functions of salesmen. The rightful owners of the goods were astounded and terrified by the audacity of the act. The whole town was in a turmoil.
* In 1795, so Eneas Mackenzie tells us in his history of the town, “Great numbers of the working classes assembled on November 10, in the several markets in Newcastle, and, in presence of the town’s officers, retailed the butter at the reduced price of 8d. per lb. the wheat at 12s. per boll, and potatoes out of the warehouses at 5s. a load. No violence was committed, except what was necessary in enforcing this illegal and temporary regulation of the market.”
* Newcastle suffered badly from the French Revolutionary Wars (1793-1802), with repeated runs on the town’s banks, food shortages, high prices, and consequent civil unrest. So long as war lasted, seamen ‘impressed’ (i.e. conscripted by press gangs) into the Navy had to get their pay to wives and children back home; many dependents were forced to rely on the Poor Rates, and trade was affected by the fighting. Then when war ended, the conscripts were turned out of the Navy and had to find work in a depressed economy choked by government regulation. Subscriptions had to to be raised to persuade men to enlist voluntarily in the Navy with a tempting signing-on fee. The renewal of hostilities following Napoleon Bonaparte’s elevation to Emperor of the French in 1804 began the cycle afresh.
Précis
In the 1790s, the workers at Crowley’s ironworks near Newcastle-upon-Tyne took it on themselves to regulate food prices when they thought them too high. On one occasion, they burst into the quayside market in Sandhill and began selling off the foods in the stalls at bargain rates, leaving the legal merchants reeling. (52 / 60 words)
In the 1790s, the workers at Crowley’s ironworks near Newcastle-upon-Tyne took it on themselves to regulate food prices when they thought them too high. On one occasion, they burst into the quayside market in Sandhill and began selling off the foods in the stalls at bargain rates, leaving the legal merchants reeling.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 45 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, besides, despite, if, just, must, ought, until.
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