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

National and local interests

As already suggested, the 1820s came at an interim stage in the development of the treatment of crime. Thus there was a wide range of 'old' and 'new' attitudes, giving particular scope for dissent. This helped to accentuate discrepancies between national and local views. Some of these discrepancies were illustrated by the case of James Cook. For instance, his hanging provoked a considerable reaction against the death penalty. More evidence of provincial feeling against this came from witnesses appearing before a Select Committee on crime in the preceding few years.¹¹⁸ Nevertheless, the various enactments of the 1820s made hardly any reduction in the types of offences to which the death penalty applied; the new laws were largely consolidating measures.¹¹⁹ Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, was responsible for them, and he hoped that they 'would confer some distinction' on his name. He presented himself as a potentially more eager reformer merely held back by public opinion.¹²⁰ But his private correspondence about radical 'agitators', and his own opposition to the later Whig legislation, contradict this benevolent self-image, and suggest that he was not really sympathetic to reformist views.¹²¹

The case of Cook illustrates the possibility of more direct confrontation between national and local people. In the initial stages of panic about the fires, there was a degree of co-operation. Western, the MP, was both a national and local figure, and he did obtain a promise from the Home Office that accomplices would be pardoned if they exposed the chief culprit.¹²² But this procedure was a fairly common and routine one. It was a different matter after the death sentence had been passed on Cook, when the magistrate William Luard petitioned for a pardon. Luard had a singular lack of success, in spite of Western's visiting Peel on his behalf.¹²³

There were other examples in the Home Office's dealings with Essex people, that might have prepared Luard for this, had he known about them. The Home Office officials could on occasion react to local letters not just with neglect but with contempt. For instance in 1824 John Oldham received a very curt reply to a long and reasoned letter about the problems of bringing to justice a mob which had attacked an informer at Ongar.¹²⁴ Particularly relevant to Witham was the fact that several very anxious letters from Essex about rural arson in 1829 had not provoked any signs of concern at the Home Office.¹²⁵ One of them, from the Revd Thomas Jee of Thaxted, was merely sent back to Essex, to the Lord Lieutenant, Viscount Maynard, to whom Jee could have written himself had he thought the matter to be capable of a local solution. Maynard reported that he was 'not aware that there has been any want of energy on the part of the magistrates'.¹²⁶

This last reaction has particular relevance to the Witham case, in illustrating that the people with most status, and closest to the reins of power, were those least in a position to be aware of real local tension. Thus at Witham, Western, the Member of Parliament and link man, may, like Viscount Maynard, have been somewhat remote from local feelings, and, in his case, from the acute local consternation caused by the death sentence on James Cook. This may have contributed to his apparent ineffectiveness when he visited Peel at Luard's request to plead for the life of Cook. Another factor was that his visit was on the same day as the Second Reading of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, on which Peel was undergoing a dramatic change of heart; this was to affect the personal reputation of which he was very proud.¹²⁷ James Cook must have seemed a minor local difficulty in comparison.

In contrast to Western, William Luard, who prepared the petition, was practically a fulltime magistrate on the case. He was well aware of the great concern caused by Cook's youth, his local origins, the existence of other suspects, and the continuation of the fires after his committal to gaol. Luard's responses to the questions of the Poor Law Commissioners in 1834, and those of the Revd Thomas Jee mentioned above, show that they among others were very aware of local feelings, and possibly even of local working-class sensibilities.¹²⁸ But it was not Luard and his kind that had any real influence. The petition he compiled for Cook was very much fuller than most, and was also unusual in coming direct from a magistrate rather than from a solicitor. So it might have been expected to attract particular attention. But the official Home Office response was in effect that Luard should be glad to have achieved a conviction for the fires, rather than being concerned about the severe sentence, or about who had been convicted.¹²⁹

The correspondence between Peel and his Permanent Secretary Henry Hobhouse, shows that a petitioner sometimes received their consideration if he gained either national notoriety, or the personal support of George IV.¹³⁰ Often, however, the King was so ill or distracted that Peel had to plead for his signature on even routine papers.¹³¹ On one occasion the King's long-suffering Secretary told Peel that 'it has been a great effort on the part of HM to sign so many papers and has occasioned much pain to HM's hand'.¹³² And the majority of petitions were lost in a sea of' other correspondence. Most clearly did not leave the Home Office for the Crown to which they were theoretically addressed. James Cook was not alone in paying the price for that office's neglect. It was claimed in later years that between 1802 and 1840 at least seven people were executed in England who were innocent.¹³³ This of course excludes those who were guilty but whose sentence could justifiably have been reduced. As far as can be discerned, no pardons were granted in the 1820s to Essex petitioners.¹³⁴

Next page: Poverty and prosperity