Men of Bad Character: the Witham Fires of the 1820s

4. CONCLUSION

In 1907 Philip Hutley, son of the recipient of Edmund Potto's threatening letter, chaired a meeting of the Witham Urban District Council. One of the items on the agenda was the consideration of tenders for the disposal of an 'old manual fire engine'. It was reported that Messrs Shand, Mason and Co had 'supplied it to Witham as far back as 1829, and as it was no longer fit for use, they could only offer £3 for it as old material. Mr Hugh Bawtree said it ought to be put in a glass case as a curiosity. It has not been to a fire for at least a quarter of a century. The offer was accepted'.²⁰¹

There were no comments in 1907 about the sensational circumstances of the original purchase of the fire engine, which seem to have been forgotten. However, in the 1970s local writers began to rescue the Witham fires from oblivion, and to draw attention to their sensational character.²⁰² They have been seen as an isolated and exceptional incident, and in some ways this is what they were. It might therefore appear that their oddity makes them meaningless historically - a so-called 'monomaniac' could embark on a fire-raising spree at any time - and not be seen to have any great significance. It must be admitted that it is really only the depth of reporting and the extent of record survival that make the fires interesting today. Without this they would have been just another unexplained few lines in the newspaper, or in the diary of Robert Bretnall with which this study began, and they would be as mysterious as the argument between Bretnall and 'old Martin Brunwin' which appears in the same entry.

But although the wealth of information may be untypical, it is very enlightening in many ways, and some of them have been discussed in this study. Often it is the contemporary comment about how unusual something was, that provokes questions about what was normal, and suggests fruitful areas of investigation. This particularly applies to the legal process discussed in Section 2, where it was suggested that the 1820s were a transitional period. On the one hand there was the force of local and personal discretion which had been dominant in the 18th century. For instance, the victims had first to determine whether or not an offence had actually taken place. John Crump and James Catchpool at Witham eventually decided that their fires on 5 November 1828 were not after all activated by fireworks but by an arsonist; it was only three weeks later that further fires seemed to confirm that decision. They then had to consider whether to take action, and had many opportunities to stop or continue with it before the trial in August. James Catchpool decided not to proceed, perhaps for religious reasons, but John Crump was left with little choice but to hunt the arsonist, because of the wave of feeling that overtook the town. This same anxiety seems to have spread to other parts of the county, where prosecutors rounded up old offenders. They also took people to court whom they might have overlooked at other times, who were thus very much the victims of chance. Some of them may even have been people of good reputation, unlike the 'bad characters' who usually became suspects under the powers of discretion, because of the absence of other information.

However, the anxiety generated by the fires also activated a more significant move against reliance on character alone in the furtherance of a prosecution. This was the recourse to new ideals of certainty and public and professional action, to supplement the force of suspicion. These were only in their infancy in the 1820s, and were to develop further to become the norm during the rest of the century. In particular, Witham saw the energy and application of the magistrate William Luard. In seeking evidence he sought information about matters such as the whereabouts of the suspects, and the availability of firelighting equipment, in a way which was much more like the systematic police approach of later years. This led him to James Cook, a suspect who did not have bad character. Cook's trial might therefore be seen in some ways as a confrontation between the new and the old, as there he faced a judge who used the 'old-fashioned' powers of discretionary severe punishment.

Many other aspects of the episode would need wider investigation before one could be sure of their position in the history of the law. For instance, the question of a probable bias in the selection of juries, and in their decisions, is not one that seems to have been given any great attention. Similarly, the challenge of jurors by a defendant, as was done in the Potto case, and the action of the jurors themselves in defying the judge, were certainly seen to be unusual. But it is not clear whether this was part of a general trend, or just something that happened from time to time and was always thought odd.

These various ways of using the criminal law were a reflection of tensions and relationships in society. This is another aspect of the Witham fires which is made possible by the detail and survival of the records. Some examples were discussed in Section 3. One was the lack of communication and understanding between local and national figures. This is a perpetual problem, as is the fact that figures like Western who appear to bridge the gap may not do so very effectively in practice. But there were particular problems which aggravated matters in the 1820s, such as the fact that the Home Office and Robert Peel were pre-occupied with three other issues, namely Catholic Emancipation, the unrest in the northern counties, and a desire to restrict the pace of real law reform. The relationship between the poor and the prosperous was also under particular strain in the 1820s, under the effects of rapid population increase, changing agricultural practices, fluctuating wheat prices, and a severe reduction in poor relief payments. This meant that whether or not any of the fires were in fact 'caused' by the effects of the Poor Law, the comments they provoked suggest that it would have been no surprise if they had been. These comments also illustrated the complete discrepancy of view between those like the MP Western who thought the poor fairly treated, and those like Robert Ling who wished to see the overseer in the flames. William Luard's ineffectiveness in petitioning for the life of James Cook, illustrates both these tensions in society. He was not able to break through the indifference of national figures to local concerns, and Western did not share with him his concern for the poor and the unemployed.

Lastly, the detail of the Witham fires can illuminate the minute workings of a local community. Normally, Witham people, in common with those of most parishes, would probably concentrate their prosecuting activity on people from other places. Their own fellow-inhabitants would be controlled by more subtle means. It was only unusual threats to local equilibrium which led to the criminal law being called upon for assistance. One of these threats was the alarm of the Witham fires themselves. Another was the introduction of an economic system, namely the brushmaking yard, outside the customary one of farming and trade; not only did this introduce outside workers on relatively high wages, but it was probably associated with an alien religious movement, namely Methodism. This set of threats to society may have little direct bearing on the fires themselves in that there is no evidence of it being an actual cause of arson. But it is an example of how a particular feature of a local community can be revealed by the exceptional reaction and rate of reporting which an incident like the fires provoked. Like many other aspects of the incident itself and the local society of the time, it leaves one wanting to know more. Hopefully there were other remarkable incidents in other areas that might be equally illuminating, and that might one day reveal their secrets.

Next page: Acknowledgements