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TheInternational

Journal of Regional and Local Studies

Series 2Vol. 6 No. 1 Spring 2010

CONTENTS

Taming the Governors: The Swinging Pendulum of Power over the Ottoman Provinces in the Nineteenth Century, Abdulhamit Kırmızı

Rural Housing in Early Nineteenth Century Northumberland, Michael Barke

Cultivating the City and its Citizens: The Creation of Corporation Allotments in York, Ross Wilson

Topographies of Anti-Nuclear Art in Late Cold War Los Angeles, Michelle Moravec

Social Order and Disorder in Nineteenth Century Drink Place: An Evaluation of Manchester and Salford, Deborah Woodman

Book Reviews

Alan Fox, A lost frontier revealed: regional separation in the East Mid-lands. Andrew J.H. Jackson

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The International Journalof Regional and Local Studies

The International Journal of Regional and Local Studies is published twice a year. The aim of the journal is to publish articles of both historical and contemporary interest from history, geography, business, sociology and urban studies. The approach will have a regional and/or local focus, not restricted to any one country.

Style notes for contributors are available from the editor on request.

Editor: Dr Pete Shinner Faculty of Media, Humanities & TechnologyUniversity of Lincoln Brayford Pool Associate EditorLincoln LN6 7TS Dr. Philip SwanEmail: pshinner@lincoln.ac.uk Email: pswan@lincoln.ac.uk

Editorial Advisory BoardAlyson BrownEdge Hill University

Pat Hudson Cardiff University

Ian Packer (Book Reviews Editor)University of Lincoln

John BroadLondon Metropolitan University

Andrew JacksonBishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln

Colin PooleyLancaster University

Stephen Caunce University of Central Lancashire

Steve KingOxford Brookes University

Barry ReayUniversity of Auckland

Steven CherryUniversity of East Anglia

Ted KoditshekUniversity of Missouri, Columbia

David RussellInstitute of Northern Studies, Leeds Met. Uni.

Carl ChinnUniversity of Birmingham

Evelyn LordCambridge University

Keith SnellUniversity of Leicester

Bernard DeaconUniversity of Exeter, Cornwall

Nick MansfieldNational Museum of LabourHistory, Manchester

Jon StobartUniversity of Northampton

Shane Ewen,Leeds Metropolitan University

Seulky McInneshin,Philadelphia

Melanie TebbuttManchester Metropolitan University

Elizabeth FaueWayne State University, Detroit

Andrew MooreUniversity of Western Sydney

Kate TillerUniversity of Oxford

Nigel GooseUniversity of Hertfordshire

R.J. MorrisUniversity of Edinburgh

Andrew WalkerUniversity of Lincoln

Kate HillUniversity of Lincoln

Margaret NobleUniversity of Greenwich

John WaltonUniversidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain.

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Contributors

Dr Michael Barke is Reader in Human Geography at the University ofNorthumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne. After taking his undergraduate degree in Geography at Liverpool University he studied for a PhD in historical urban geography at Glasgow University. He has taught at Northumbria University (formerly Newcastle Polytechnic) since 1974 and his main research interests are concerned with urban morphology, the historical geography and demography of North East England, and recent social and economic change in Southern Spain.

Abdulhamit KIRMIZI is Assistant Professor of History in Istanbul Sehir University. He is the author of Abdülhamid'in Valileri: Osmanli Vilayet İdaresi, 1895-1908 (Istanbul: Klasik, 2007) and Avlonyali Sureyya Bey, Osmanlı Sonrasi Arnavutluk, 1912-1920 (Istanbul: Klasik, 2009). He has published many articles on late Ottoman history and is the founding member of TALID (Türkiye Arastirmalari Literatür Dergisi/Turkish Studies Review).

Dr Michelle Moravec received her Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Los angeles. Her research focuses on women’s social movements, particularly the intersection of feminist activism and culture. Currently she is at work on a project that explores historicity in second wave feminism. She is an assistant professor of history at Rosemont College in Philadelphia.

Dr Ross Wilson has studied the subject of the archaeology on the Western Front since 2003. His research interests focus on the way in which archaeology might shape and inform the memory of the battlefields. Issuessuch as the use of images, material culture, embodiment and narrative construction are key features of this work. He is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher on the 1807 Commemorative project at the University of York.

Deborah Woodman is a PhD student in the Institute for Northern Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University and a part-time lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield. She has general research and teachinginterests based around nineteenth and twentieth century British history, but her PhD and specific areas of research are focussed around nineteenth-century Manchester and the North-West, in particular looking at the role of drink, leisure and popular culture, and working-class politics in the region. Her thesis looks at the role of the public house in Manchester and Salford during the nineteenth century.

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TAMING THE GOVERNORS: THE SWINGING PENDULUM OF POWER OVER THE OTTOMAN PROVINCES IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY

Abdulhamit Kırmızı

The struggle between provincial governors and the central government was defined by Halil İnalcik as the most significant development of the seventeeth century Ottoman Empire. The measures undertaken to limit the governors’ growing autonomy and to prevent their abuses were based on the tactic of creating countervailing forces. Although other instruments of provincial government like the kadı (judge), the defterdar (chief treasury officer), and the muhassıl (tax collector) were strenghtened, in the eighteenth century it was the âyân (provincial notables) who mainly rose in prominence, using this prepared ground for decentralization.1

The important role that the âyân played in the public affairs of the province paved the way for local autonomy. The central government tried several times to put an end to this influence during the last quarter of the eighteenthcentury in order to predicate its own authority. But only after 1812, during the reign of Sultan Mahmud II, was a system of centralized government confirmed. The ayan, who had established their hereditary rule over extensive territories, began to be suppressed.2 Mahmud II established the military governors (müşirs) in 1836 to disempower the local ayan governors.3 This temporary militarization of provincial administration was an important step to improve the centralized government. Indeed, the pendulum of dynastic centralization swang to the highest point, when the Sultan abolished the Grand Vizierate in March 1838. It was, however, reestablished just after the death of Mahmud II in July of 1839.4 After this, the centralization project was led directly by the Bâbıâlî, where the office of the Grand Vizier was located, taking advantage of the enthronement of the inexperienced teenage Sultan Abdülmecid II.

Changing the Idea of GovernmentReforming the provincial government was among the most sensitive issues in the reorganization of the administrative structure of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. The establishment of central control by Mahmud II over the provinces and their governors was an initial step in the reform process5. But it was the Tanzimat era, beginning with the promulgation of the Gülhane Edict in 1839, that changed the whole idea of the state in the Ottoman Empire. Certain rights were declared to be enjoyed by the subjects, who were no longer seen as only tax-paying reaya.6

After having secured the central character of the provincial administration,

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the state tried to introduce a certain administrative flexibility, giving theinhabitants a voice in local government and modest control over the actions of the governors. This policy of the Ottoman government under Sultan Abdülmecid, the son and successor of Mahmud II, included calling delegates from the provinces to the capital, sending out commissioners from the center to the provinces, and attaching to each provincial governor a representative council.7 The provincial councils, established by a founding ferman in 1840, represented small oligarchies. Nevertheless, as Shaw points out, they provided an encouraging means for local initiative to survive and for local problems and needs to be expressed.8 Non-muslims were urged to assume administrative responsibility in these local organs.9

Both the edicts of Gülhane in 1839 and the Islahat in 1856 promised to improve the provincial administrative system. In the third paragraph of the Gülhane edict, also known as the Tanzimat Fermanı and considered to have opened a new era in the history of the Ottoman Empire, ‘the improvement of the state of the provinces, and of relief to the (subject) peoples’, was set as a main goal of the imperial administration:

If, therefore, the geographical position of the Ottoman provinces, the fertility of the soil, the aptitude and intelligence of the inhabitants are considered, the conviction will remain that by striving to find efficacious means, the result, which by the help of God we hope to attain, can be obtained within a few years. Full of confidence, therefore, in the help of the Most High, and certain of the support of our Prophet, we deem it right to seek by new institutions to give to the provinces composing the Ottoman Empire the benefit of a good administration.10

The following Islahat edict was in many ways refering to provincial administration, as in the following paragraph:

Works of public utility shall receive a suitable endowment, part of which shall be raised from private and special taxes levied in the Provinces, which shall have the benefit of the advantages arising from the establishment of ways of communication by land and sea.11

The state was beginning to get involved in many aspects of human life by using new means of transportation and communication.12 The phenomenal technological advances of the nineteenth century brought profound changes, many of which were made possible by the introduction of mechanically generated electricity in 1832. This revolutionary discovery allowed people to communicate instantly over distances that had required days or weeks for horse or train-carried messages.13 Telegraph stations were set up along railroads first because the right-of-way had already been cleared and it was easy to set up poles to carry the telegraph wires. Railroad dispatchers sent messages via telegraph to control the movement of trains and these wires also began to carry messages with news of events and business transactions.

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It has been said that the ‘electric telegraph’ was the most significant invention of the nineteenth century. Governments used new technologies to control more aspects of society than had ever been possible. The imperial bureaucracy enlarged with regard to these the new fields of state intervention. Ortaylı noted that the telegraph technology came immediately to the help of the nineteenth century centralization policies.14 Transformations in technology, communication and transportation changed the idea and means of administration of provinces, where new functions arose and needed new staff to perform them.

Increasingly rising in numbers, subordinate officials sought central approval from those ministries in Istanbul to which they were directly responsible, and this sometimes impeded efficient administration by the governors. Realizing the governors need for a greater authority to avoid tedious reference of problems to İstanbul, a ferman in the year 1852 (promulgated under the influence of Mehmed Ali Pasha, the strong governor of Egypt),gave the vali more power over his subordinate officials and concentrated considerable responsibility in his hands.15 The governor received the right to appoint his chief administrative officers in the next two echelons below him. This trend toward decentralization of the administrative authority continued after the promulgaton of the 1856 Islahat Edict and in the regulation of 1858. These latter made the vali the local representative of all competent offices of the central government, with everyone below him responsible to the government through him.16 It was the first time that the governor was mentioned as the sole representative of the government and main actor in the province in nineteen articles.17 Accordingly, in 1859 some vilayets were degraded to mutasarrıflıks.18 The decrease in the number of provinces meant an increase in the importance of the valis. But the importance and size of some places made it impossible to be ruled as mutasarrıflık. Therefore, for example, Edirne was reassigned as vilayet, one year later.19

The Provincial Laws of 1864 and 1871The crucial developments in the provincial regulation process occured in the 1860’s. After a local rebellion, a commission with the Grand Vizier at the head was sent by the Sultan to the province of Nish in 1860. During this investigation, Midhat Pasha became governor of this vilayet in the Balkans. His success in the governorship made the Meclis-i Vâlâ begin to negotiate on a general regulation for the provinces.20

Another incident resulting in legal procedure was the problem of ethnic conflict in Mount Lebanon. Ottoman centralization attempts over Mount Lebanon, where rule had been previously left to local Druze landlords and the equally independent-minded Maronite Catholic peasants, caused clashes between communities there. When, in 1860, the massacres spread to Damascus causing France to intervene, Emperor Napoleon III sent an army to occupy Beirut. A conference of the five major European powers (France, Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia) proposed a new way to govern

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Lebanon and which the Porte was forced to accept. Mount Lebanon became a special autonomous sancak detached from the nearest province, the vilayet of Damascus. According to the Protocol of 1861 (Cebel-i Lübnan Nizamnâmesi), Mount Lebanon was placed under the rule of a Christian mutasarrıf who was appointed by the Ottoman Porte. Administratively, Lebanon was divided into seven kazas, each administered by a kaymakam appointed by the mutasarrıf and accountable to him. Each kaza, in turn, was divided into müdiriyyets, each administered by a müdir appointed by the kaimakam and accountable to him. The smallest administrative unit was the village headed by a shaykh or mukhtar elected by the community and responsible to the müdir. 21

The Mount Lebanon case was the first major deviation from the classical eyalet organization of the Ottoman Empire. This event was an important factor leading the state to the most important change in provincial administration: the proclamation of a law enabling administrative reorganization of the provinces and the duties of the governors. Sultan Abdülaziz visited the Bâbıâlî personally in August 1864, and ordered the dispatch of special commands to provincial governors, for the ‘completion of prosperity and civilization of the dominions and people, and maintenance of present security and repose’.22

The initial step in the legislation series reorganizing the administration of the provinces was the promulgation of the Tuna Vilayeti Nizamnamesi (Regulation of the Danube Province) in 1864. This regulation was to be applied first in the province of Danube,23 the combination of three sancaks (Niş, Silistria and Vidin), stretching out from the Danube river to the Balkan Mountains and under the government of Midhat Pasha. The term vilayet, in its ultimate meaning, seems to have made a place for itself in the formal administrative vocabulary on this date.24 This was the first move to abolish the former eyalet system.

The first five paragraphs of the regulation defined the borders and the administrative authorities of the province, stating that vilayets were divided into livas, livas into kazas, and kazas into kura. They were governed respectively by liva kaymakamı, kaza müdürü, and the muhtar. Interestingly, the borders were defined in accordance with the borders of the II. Imperial Army, with only the exclusion of the eyalet of Edirne. The remaining seventy-six paragraphs of the regulation were divided into five main parts: The first four concerned the conduct of the provincial stages, the last covered the system of election in all four units. It defined all actors of all levels in separate paragraphs.

A hierarchy of officials and an administrative council composed of senior officials and local notables, each defined in the nizâmnâme, assisted the governor. The local councils existed also in the sub-districts. Four representatives from each sancak, two Muslims and two non-Muslims,

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were also to meet annually under the presidency of the vali for a maximum period of fourty days to discuss internal affairs of the province.

Local elites were assured of a position in the local power structure by their participation in the increased number of councils at all levels. A certain check on the domination of the councils by a few usurpers was provided by a complex electoral system. After indirect elections, the final selection of council members from among the candidates was left to the administrative head at the next highest level. Responsibilities were carefully defined to avoid conflict between governor and council. Additionally, the administrativecouncils were checked by a general provincial council that convened once a year for not more than fourty days, and was composed of entirely elected members.

Police forces (zabtiye) were placed under the command of the civilian provincial administration, although the number of troops and their discipline remained under the ultimate control of the Directorate of Police. A Director of Foreigners’ Affairs was appointed to the provinces by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deal with the foreigners in the province. Appointed officials worked on land registration and census and property records were defined within the provincial administrative hierarchy. Judicial councils were created at each level to handle cases appealed from religious courts and cases which fell outside their jurisdiction. A provincial legal inspector was nominated by the şeyhülislam.25

In delegating greater authority to the governors, the law represented a decentralization of the empire as a whole, but an increase in central authority at the provincial level. The law of 1864 was aimed ‘at combining central control with local authority, at expediting the conduct of public business in the provincial capital, and at improving the representative quality of the local councils.’26 Although the sancak governors, the vali’s immediate subordinates, were appointed by the Sultan, the vilayet governor enjoyed extensive power.27 However, the creation of large provinces under governors with greatly expanded powers can actually be seen as an extension of the Bâbıâlî’s control.

Gradual Application of LawsThe law was applied after Danube to other model provinces, namely in Bosnia, Damascus, and Erzurum. After successful application, the law was published with some modifications in 1867 in order to extend it to the other vilayets,28 with the exceptions of Serbia, Rumania, Tunisia, Egypt, Montenegro, Samos and the Lebanon, which were provinces under special status. Thirteen new vilayets were formed and added to the provincial system.29

A manual book of instructions with 274 pages was published and sent to the vilayets in 25 July 1867 (23 Rebiulevvel 1284) containing twenty-one

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bundles, beginning with ‘General Instructions on the Special Conduct of the Provinces and the Execution of the Provincial Regulations’ (Vilayetlerin İdare-i Mahsusası ve Nizâmâtının Suver-i İcraiyyesi Hakkında Talimat-ı Umumiyye, pp.2-18). This was followed by the Vilayet Nizamnamesi (in it’s 1867 version, pp.19-43), the Special Regulation on Financial Affairs (Umur-ı Maliyeye dair Nizamname-i Mahsusdur, pp.44-70), and a description of duties, rules and transactions of provincial officials, councils, and bureaus (Vilayetlerin havi olduğu mutasarrıflıklar maiyyetinde bulunan memurinve mecalis ve aklam vesaireden başka olarak merkez-i idare olan daire-i vilayetde mecalis ve aklam vesair memurin-i mahalleriyle her birinin vazaif ve kavaid ve muamelatını icmalen beyan eder tarifnamedir, pp.71-121).30

In the aftermath of insurgencies in Crete, the Ottoman state decided to generalize the application of the regulation to the whole empire, with some restorations to it. The new law, the İdare-i Umumiye-i Vilayet Nizamnamesi,31 was declared to the provinces and the foreign embassies by sending ferman-ı adalets (edicts of justice) with special officials in the first month of 1871. An executive council, the meclis-i icraat, was founded to control the whole restoration process.32 The new law consisted of 130 paragraphs following an introduction. Here, the new vilayets were divided into livas, kazas, nahiyes, and karyes. A new official post, that of mutasarrıf, was created to administrate a sancak, used alternatively for liva. The title of kaymakam was given to the chief official of the kaza level. This represented an extension of the authority of the central government down to the kaza level, since the kaymakams were professional bureaucrats appointed from İstanbul. A new unit in between kaza and karye, the nahiye headed by a müdir, was created. The use of local notables in nahiye administration was considered important. The creation of assistant governorships was another new feature of the law. Some officials’ names in the former law were changed in the new one. The accountant’s name changed from vilayet muhasebecisi to defterdar; the umur-ı hariciye memuru became umur-ı ecnebiye müdiri, expressing the duty of the official dealing with the foreigners in the province much clearer. Road construction gained such an importance that the more general name of umur-i nafia memuru changed to tarik emini, the superintendant of roads. The directors of education (maarif müdiri), imperial treasures (defter-i hâkânî müdiri), and pious foundations (evkaf müdiri)33 were added to the provincial nomenclature.

As explained above, the twin laws were born under a number of influences.One was the provincial inspection tours by Kıbrıslı Mehmed Pasha and by imperial commissioners from 1860.34 The revision of the statute of Mount Lebanon, which had given greatly enlarged powers to the governor, was another major contributor to the laws.35 Grand Vezir Fuad Pasha, who was impressed by the activities of Midhat Pasha, governor of Nish, put forth great effort to enforce the law.36 France under Napoleon III was taken as the

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Table 1: Officials and offices mentioned in the Vilayet-Laws

1864 1871- Vali Muavini (Assistant Governor)Vilayet Muhasebecisi (Accountant) Defterdar (Treasurer)Muhasebe Kalemi (Accounting Office) -Vilayet Mektubcusu (Chief Secretary) Mektubcu (Chief Secretary)Umur-ı Hariciye Memuru (Foreign Affairs Officer)

Umur-ı Ecnebiye Müdürü (Director of For. Affairs)

Umur-ı Nafia Memuru (Public Works Officer) Tarik Emini (Superintendent of Roads)Ziraat ve Ticaret Memuru (Agricul.&Trade Officer)

Ziraat ve Ticaret Müdürü (Director of Agr. & Trade)

- Maarif Müdürü (Director of Education)İdare Meclisi (Administrative Council) İdare Meclisi (Administrative Council)

-Defter-i Hakânî Müdürü (Director of Imp. Treasures)

Alaybeyi (Chief of Gendarmerie) Alaybeyi (Chief of Gendarmerie)Müfettiş-i Hükkâm-ı Şeriyye(Inspector of Religious Courts’ Judges) -

-Emlak ve Nüfus Memuru (Property & Population Officer)

- Evkaf Müdürü (Director of Pious Foundations)

model for the reorganization of local administration with notable changes in adaptation. The five-tier system of département (préfet), arrondissement (sous-préfet), canton (juge de paix), commune (maire), and section de commune was translated as vilayet (vali), liva/sancak (mutasarrıf), kaza (kaymakam), nahiye (müdürü), and karye (muhtar). But the two divisions did not really correspond in area and population. The Ottoman sub-divisions were more extensive but reached less effectively to the lowest levels.37

The influence of the French prefectoral system on the laws of 1864 and 1871is a point which Carter V. Findley suggests be examined with care. The four-level system of administrative jurisdictions has precedents as far back as the ‘classical’ Ottoman timar system. Findley also points out the paradox in attributing the Ottoman over-centralization project to the French:

The French actually revised their system of local administration under the Second Empire, at a time when their influence on Ottoman policymakers was indeed strong, along lines of what was announced as decentralization. To the extent that Ottoman reformers borrowed from the French and obtained an opposite result, the reason probably lies partly in the intentions of the Ottoman statesmen, partly also in differences in the Ottoman environment. The idea of a local administrative infrastructure staffed from the central civil bureaucracy was still a novelty to the Ottomans, as it no longer was to the French. 38

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Provinces As ‘Little Absolute States’Although increased centralization was the desired result of the provincial reform laws, the governor was only supposed to refer the most important questions to İstanbul.39 The law was criticized some time after the death of Ali Pasha in 1871, as setting up ‘little absolute states’.40 The Grand Vizier Mahmud Nedim Pasha even abolished the vilayet-regime in 1872 for a short time until the reformist Midhat Pasha came to power.41 As noted by Boutros Abu-Manneh, the law was intended to lay the basis for the integration of the various districts of a province into one unit by bringing direct government down to the village level.42

To limit the governor’s role in the judicial process was a major result of the administrative reforms of the Tanzimat. The separation of judicial and executive functions in 1868 was a great attempt.43 Four years later, he was restricted to general supervision of the courts by a ministerial circular. In 1876, the governor was forbidden to interfere in any way with the discussions in the courts or to influence their decisions.Any possible influence of the vali was completely eliminated with the appointment of an inspector of justice (adliye müfettişi) to each vilayet. The inspector reported judicial problems directly to the Ministry of Justice without consulting the governor. It has also to be noted that the duality in the responsibility of provincial officials both to the governor and the ministry was overseen by the twin laws of 1864 and 1871.

A further manual of instruction, the İdare-i Umumiye-i Vilayat Hakkında Talimat, containing fourty articles, was provided in 21 February 1876 (25 Muharram 1293) and sent to the provinces.44 The Instruction began with defining the main task (vazife-i asliyye) of the governor as assuring the rights of all subjects.45 Then the duties of the governor were divided into two main sorts. The vazâif-i ıslahiyye contained duties connected just to the restoration process, whereas the vazâif-i dâime counted, in thirty-five articles, the duties of the governor concerned with service for the well-being of the inhabitants and protection of the province.46 It was published almost to define the borders of the power of the governors. Thirty-two paragraphs were about the vilayet governors, whereas the remaining seven were on the mutasarrıfs, kaymakams, courts and local councils.

Provincial Administration During the Reign of Abdülhamid IIOn 23 December 1876, four months after the deposition of his brother Sultan Murad V and his own enthronement, Sultan Abdülhamid II promulgated the first Ottoman constitution. A war with Russia which ended in disaster for the Ottoman state began some months later. Abdülhamid II dismissed the parliament and, in February 1878, suspended the constitution. Article 108 of the Constitution of 1876 stated that provincial administration was based upon the principle of extension of authority to the governors (tevsî‘-i mezuniyet) and the separation of duties (tefrîk-i vazâif).47

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One of the earlier steps of the first constitutional parliament, founded in 1876, was to establish a new provincial administration law.48 According to the speech made in the name of the Sultan, such a law was on the list of laws intended to be completed in that year. The law passed during the first session of the chamber. But the Sultan returned it for reconsideration during the second session. The government sent the proposed law of 101 articles named ‘Teşkil-i Vilâyât Kanunu’ to the parliament, but the closure of parliament left no end to the legislation process.49

In accord with article twenty-three of the Berlin Congress held in 1878, a mixed commision of Ottoman and foreign officials drafted a new provincial administration law in 1880, valid only in the European provinces of the empire. The law, promulgated on 23 August 1880, consisted of 449 articles but was not published in the Düstur, the Book of Statutes, and only was applied in Edirne.50

The political aspects of the 1890’s had a great influence on the provincialadministration of the Ottoman state. Most importantly, it was the beginning of the endless Armenian revolts. The first revolt was in Erzurum in 1890. The Kumkapi demonstration happened after this revolt, followed by the events in Kayseri, Yozgat, Çorum and Merzifon between 1892-93. In 1894, the Sasun revolt, and in 1895 the Bâbıâlî demonstration and Zeytun revolt were organised, beside many others in Anatolia. In 1896 the Ottoman Bank was occupied and Van was raided. In 1903 the second Sasun revolt occurred. In 1905 an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Sultan Abdülhamid II was made, followed by the Adana revolt in 1909.

After the Sasun and Talori incidents on 5 December 1894, the Grand Vizier Cevad Pasha51 was asked by the Sultan about his views on the reforms envisaged for the country.52 One of his points was the problem of the provincial administration. First, he clearly described the official character of the relations between the provincial administrators and the central government. The Interior Ministry was the first competent authority that all the vilayets could apply to. All the communications coming from the provinces were first studied there, and then sent to the Grand Vizierate. They were normally submitted to the Imperial Office, after another careful examination there. Then Cevad Pasha openly criticized the de facto situation of provincial communications:

Yet, since nobody has any idea of what the other party does, and nobody knows its own higher body concerned, there exists an administrative confusion. As a matter of fact, since the governors know that they will not be reprimanded for due to whatever faults they may have, they tend to ignore their authorities and the Grand Vizierate.53

He did not hesitate to add, that the reason why he raised this point was not due to the undesirability of applications to the Imperial Office. The

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question was the shortage of time of the Sultan:

Therefore, what is needed is the utilization of the normal channels for the screening and investigation of the cases presented by the governors or other officials.54

On 11 May 1895, a Reformation Bill to be put in force in the Eastern Provinces was conveyed to the Sultan.55 This communique of the British, French and Russian ambassadors concerned reforms at the provincial level after the Armenian incidents. The ambassadors stated that the propositions would involve laws and regulations already registered in the Düstur, but not currently in force and not pertaining the central administration.56 Münir Bey, the Translator of the Chancery of the State, conveyed to the Sultan certain statements concerning the expansion of the administrative spheres of all Anatolian provinces, not just the six as referred to, and the establishment of a civilian administration under the governorship of a top military or civilian official at the newly set up civilian spheres before the three ambassadors submitted their communique.57

The Ottoman government had to deal with the interventionist policies of European powers amid the continuing Armenian crisis. The British government prepared a plan for a naval demonstration in June of 1895. The French planned similar actions in October. The foreign minister of Austria Hungary, Graf Goluchowski, was promoting an initiative for intervention. Even the German Kaiser, as mentioned by Hanioğlu, pointed to the great likelihood of a palace revolution and encouraged the British prime minister to intervene directly in Ottoman politics,58 On 11 July, 1895, the Resolution of the Commission on the Memorandum and the proposals submitted by the British, French and Russian ambassadors were brought to the Sultan.59 The first chapter of the reform project dealt with the governors: They were to be selected from high dignitaries of the state, irrespective of their religion and possessing the highest qualifications of intelligence, capacity, and probity. Persons whose selection would notoriously be open to objections on public or political grounds should not be appointed to discharge the functions of a vali. The resolution of the Ottoman commission stated that the already existing regulations contained the selection, appointment, dismissal, substitiution, and trial procedures for valis. It was further concluded that,

Now, every individual called to fill the most important posts as that of vali, must have gained experience in all stages of the administrative hierarchy. Taking into consideration especially the diversity of caste and habits among the populations of the provinces in question, and the fact that, according to the returns of the census registers, the Muslim element forms the majority in every case and under any regime, it is quite evident that any modification of the system now in force for the appointment of valis, far from improving the administration would entail complications likely to disturb public tranquility. In those circumstances, it is advisable to appoint, according to local requirements,

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Assistants to the vali, selected from among the non-Muslim functionaries belonging to the most numerous of the various non-Muslim populations.

The second article of the scheme demanded dismissal after legal trial and appointment for five years. The Ottoman commission called attention to the fact that there were valis and other functionaries who had held their posts eight or ten years: ‘Admitting this rule, that no one can be dismissed without legal cause, there seems no necessity for a restriction the object of which is to limit to a term of five years the duration of appointments of valis.’60 The Sultan declared his views about the amendments made by the commission on the project by the saforementioned ambasadors on 29 July 1895:

The personages to be appointed to the post of vali and mutasarrıf, should not be chosen from among men who consider all religions and sects of equal importance, and who are extremely liberal minded, and who would sacrifice anything to be popular in the eyes of Europeans. Extreme care should be taken for the appointment of honest and loyal civil servants.61

In March of 1896, Şakir Pasha, the general inspector of the Anatolian provinces, remarked in one of his reports from Erzurum of the need to empower the hands of provincial governors. The only way to stop the raids and attacks of Kurdish tribes was to ‘embroad the rights of the governors in accordance with their responsibilities.’62 They had to have the right to use military forces by informing the military commander in urgent conditions, instead of waiting for a permission from İstanbul.63

The Ministry of the Interior (Dahiliye Nezareti) ceased to have more than fragmentary authority over provincial administrative cadres because of increased palace domination over internal administration.64 Abdülhamid II moved to centralize control over the governors throughout the empire after European powers increased invention in Ottoman administrative affairs. The Sultan needed to know about every issue that could involve foreign powers. He established direct lines of communication between the governors and the palace in additon to their official ties with the Ministry of the Interior. The latter, in turn, developed a highly centralized system that allowed no deviations from central regulations. Provincial officials had to await the orders of the center in important matters. Even small actions required prior authorization from İstanbul.65 ‘[T]he Sultan should grant full authority to the civil authorities to requisition the nearest troops in aid of the civil power whenever required, as is done in every civilized country’, wrote Colonel Ponsonby in end 1896, when he submitted proposals to suppress lawlessness in like the depredations committed by the Kurds in Van.66 Palace secretaries bypassed the ministerial organs and dealt directly with provincial authorities.67

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Conclusion Historians of modernization wish constantly to suggest, as Isa Blumi put it out in the Yemeni case, that Islamic societies experienced modernity by force of European penetration. Idealizations of Islamic societies ignore the complexities inherent in human communities.68 Wickwar pointed out that administrative modernization was not to any great extent forced by outside intervention, but was for the most part chosen by rulers as an obvious response to the challenges of the day, and as an aspect of their participation in worldwide developments.69

In the case discussed here, the development of provincial governorship as an indication of the new organization of modern state in the nineteenth century, and one aspect of the centralization of the Ottoman Empire, was an exciting process of elaborately balancing the pendulum of power in the provinces. The need to destruct the centrifugal power of the semi-officially established provincial landlords, the influence of a powerful governor asit was Mehmed Ali Pasha in Egypt in the mid-century, or the Armenian uprisings of the 1890’s, and likewisw internal dynamics had a far greater effect on the formulation of this power balance than European intervention. In provincial government, the establishment of military governors in 1836, although for a short time, was the extremest point of the centralization policy of Mahmud II, to disempower the ayans. Healing the problems stemming from the infirmity of the governors, the decree of 1852 gave them a greater authority, especially over their subordinates in the provinces. The empowering process tended to maintain through the promulgation of the 1856 Islahat Edict, the regulation of 1858 and the organizational transformation of 1859, all increasing the importance of the vali. The reorganization of provincial administration was conducted through the regulations of 1864 and 1871 expanded the powers of the governor, actually to extend the control of central administration into all corners of the realm. Coming to the reign of Abdülhamid II, in the beginning the tendencey was assured with the instruction of 1876 and the relevant articles in constitution of the same year. But 1890’s were a watershed, because of the reactive policies to the Armenian revolts and the pressures of the European powers. The powers of the governors shrinked to the extend that they required prior authorization from the capital, this means the court rather the ministry, for even very small actions. The Sultan’s direct control over the governors did not mean an empowerment, but a highly centralized system not allowing deviation from strict orders of the center.

NOTES1. Halil İnalcık, ‘Centralization and Decentralization in Ottoman Administration’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. by Thomas Naff and Roger Owen. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1977). pp.27-52. 2. İnalcik, Centralization, p.51. See also, A. Hourani, ‘Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,’ and M.Maóz, ‘The Impact of Modernization on Syrian Politics and Society during the Early Tanzimat Period,’in W. R. Polk and R.Chambers, eds., Beginning of Modernization in the Middle East. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1968). pp. 41-

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68 and pp. 333-49. For a certain local perspective on the change, see Schilcher, Linda, Families in Politics: Damascene Factions and Estates of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985); R. Roded,’Social Patterns among the Urban Elite of Syria during the Late Ottoman Period,’ in D. Kushner, ed., Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period: Political, Social and Economic Transformation. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi. 1986). pp. 146-71.3. Musa Çadırcı, Tanzimat Döneminde Anadolu Kentlerinin Sosyal ve Ekonomik Yapıları. (Ankara: TTK. 1991). pp.16-17. 4. Ali Akyıldız, Tanzimat Dönemi Osmanlı Merkez Teşkilatında Reform. (İstanbul, Eren:1993). pp.26-29. 5. A well-documented example of the transformation of administration at the provincial level during the reign of Mahmud II is that of Michael Ursinus, Regionale Reformen im Osmanischen Reich am Vorabend der Tanzimat: Reformen der Provinzialgouverneure im Gerichtssprengel von Manastir (Bitola) zur Zeit der Herrschaft Sultan Mahmuds II (1808-39). (Berlin: Klaus-Schwarz-Verlag. 1982). For a general view of the centralization processes worldwide, see Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Introduction: Power Elites, State Servants, Ruling Class and the Growth of State Power’, in Reinhard W. (ed.), Power Elites and State Building. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1996). pp. 1-186. The classical age was basically built on the distinction of askeri and reaya. Askeri was used for rulers, consisting of military and civil officials who did not pay taxes. Reaya was used for the ruled, the taxpayers, although it literally means ‘flock’ and is used for‘community’ even in the Psalms (79:13; 95:7; 100:3) and the sayings of the prophet of Islam (Muhammed bin İsmail al-Buhari, As-Sahîh, ed. by Mustafa Dîb al-Buga (Beirut: Dar al- Mekteb al-İlmiyye, 1990), vol.VI, p.2614. For its usage in the Ottoman official language, see Halil Inalcik, ‘The Ottoman Decline and its Effect Upon the Reaya’, Henrik Birnbaum and Speros Vryonis, Jr. (eds), Aspects of the Balkans: Continuity and Change. (The Hague: Mouton. 1972), pp. 338-354.7. Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1963), p.46. 8. Stanford Shaw, ‘The Origins of Representative Government in the Ottoman Empire: An Introduction to the Provincial Councils, 1839-1876’, Near Eastern Round Table, 1967-68, ed. by R. Bayly Winder (New York: New York University. 1968), 53-142; ‘Local Administrations in the Tanzimat’, 150.Yılında Tanzimat, ed. Hakkı Dursun Yıldız. (Ankara:TTK, 1993). pp. 33-49.9. One of the distinctive features of the Tanzimat was the participation of non-Muslims in the official councils of government. See W. Hardy Wickwar, The Modernization of Administration in the Near East. (Beirut/London: Khayats. 1963), p.22; Roderic H. Davison, ‘Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century’, American Historical Review, 1954, 59.4. pp.844-864 and ‘The Advent of the Principle of Representation in the Government of the Ottoman Empire’ in Polk and Chambers, Beginning of Modernization, pp. 93-108; Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (ed.) Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, the Functioning of a Plural Society, 2 Vols. (New York. 1982). İlber Ortaylı, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı Mahalli İdareleri (1840-1880). (Ankara: TTK. 2000), pp. 74-78.10. The quotation in English is from J.C. Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East. (Princeton: D.Van Nostrand Company. 1956) vol.II, p.113-116. Turkish text and French translation is in Yavuz Abadan, Tanzimat Fermanının Tahlili, Tanzimat I. (İstanbul: Maarif Matbaası. 1940), pp.31-58.11. English quotation from http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~genckaya/documents1.html. For the originals of both the Gulhane and the Islahat rescripts, see ‘Gülhane’de Kıraat Olunan Hatt-ı Hümayun’un Suretidir’ and ‘Islahata Dair Taraf-ı Vekalet-i Mutlaka’ya Hitaben Bâlâsı Hatt-ı Hümayun ile Müveşşih Şerefsadır Olan Ferman-ı âlînin Suretidir’, Düstur. (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire. 1289/1872). Vol. I, pp.4-7 and 7-14.12. For an explanation of how technological change was associated with European expansion in the late nineteenth century, see Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the 19th Century. (New York: Oxford

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University Press. 1981).13. ‘Turkey was the first country to introduce telegraphic lines into places where roads and railways were as yet unknown,’ Emile Lacoine, ‘Elektiriğin Memleketimizdeki Tafsilatı’, Tercüman-ı Hakikat and Servet-i Fünun, in 1895, quoted in Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey. (London: Hurst & Company. 1998), p.257. See also Yakup Bektaş, ‘The Sultan's Messenger: Cultural Constructions of Ottoman Telegraphy, 1847-1880’, Technology and Culture, 2000, 41. 4. pp.669-696 14. İlber Ortaylı, Tanzimat Devrinde Osmanlı Mahalli İdareleri (1840-1880). (Ankara: TTK. 2000). p.104.15. Wickwar, p.21. Vecihi Tönük, Türkiye’de İdari Teşkilatın Tarihi Gelişimi ve bugünkü Durumu. (Ankara: İçişleri Bakanlığı. 1945), p.112-115; Ed[ouard Philippe] Engelhardt, Türkiye ve Tanzimat. Devlet-i Osmaniyye-nin tarih-i ıslâhâtı, 1826-1882, tr. by Ali Reşad (İstanbul: Kanaat Kütüphanesi. 1328 [1912]). pp.98-101.16. ‘Vulat-ı İzam ve Mutasarrıfîn-i Kiram ile Kaymakamların ve Müdirlerin Vezâifine Şamil Talimat’, Düstur, Tertib-i Sani. (İstanbul 1282/1865). p.559-572; Sıddık Sami Onar, İdare Hukuku. (İstanbul. 1942), vol. I, p.657; Tönük, p.116-128; Davison, Reform, p.137 and 165. Shaw, The Origins, p.208. 17. Articles 7 to 26 of the 1858 Regulation concern the duties of the governors. The first two articles are enough to see the extent of governor’s new responsibilities: ‘Bir eyalette vuku‘ bulacak her türlü mesalihin mercii ve nazırı ve taraf-ı Devlet-i Aliyye’nin vekil-i mahsusu ve muhatabı vali olup, eyaletin nîk u bed ve kaffe-i hususâtından vali mesuldür’ (Art.7); ‘Her eyalette alelumum hükumet-i icraiyye vali bulunan zata mufavvaz olarak, kâffe-i kavânîn ve nizâmât ve evâmir ve tenbihâtın icrası bizzat vulât-ı izâmın vazifeleridir’ (Art.8). 18. Vakanüvis Ahmed Lütfi Efendi Tarihi, vol.IX, ed. M. Münir Aktepe (İstanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi, 1984), p.155. The historian illustrated his objection to this measure by writing ‘Bu tasarrufdan husule gelen menfaat ayn-ı mazarrat olduğu rehîn-i rütbe-i bedahetdir. Çünki vilayâtı küçültmek maddi manevi mazarrarı müeddîdir.’ 19. ‘Edirne eyaletinin ehemmiyet ve cesametine nazaran mutasarrıflık ile idaresimütenasib olmadığından,’ ibid., p.164.20. Ahmed Midhat, Üss-i İnkılab, Kırım Muharebesinden Culus-i Hümayuna Kadar. (İstanbul: Takvimhane-i Amire. 1294 /1878). Vol.I. p.103.21. Shaw, The Origins. pp. 172-173. On the Mount Lebanon case from this perspective, see Engin Deniz Akarlı, The Long Peace: Ottoman Lebanon 1861-1920. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1993); Ussama Maqdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2000); Caesar Farah, The Politics of Interventionism in Ottoman Lebanon 1830-1861. (Oxford & London: Centre for Lebanese Studies and I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. 2000).22. ‘[M]amuriyyet ve medeniyyet-i mülk ü milletin ikmali ve asayiş ü istirahat-ı hazıranın istikmali hakkında bilcümle vulât-ı izam mutasarrıfîn-i kirama evâmir-i mahsusa irsaline emr u ferman’, Vakanüvis Ahmed Lütfi Efendi Tarihi X, ed. M. Münir Aktepe (Ankara: TTK. 1988). p.119.23. ‘Tuna Vilayeti Namıyla Bu Kerre Teşkil Olunan Dairenin İdare-i Umumiye ve Hususiyesine ve Tayin Olunacak Memurlarının Suver-i İntihabiyeleriyle Vazâif-i Daimesine Dair Nizamnamedir’, dated 7 Cemaziyelevvel 1281. (8 October 1864), in Düstur, Def’a-i Sânîye. (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Âmire. 1282). pp. 517-536. 24. ‘Memleketin kıtaat-ı müteaddidesi livaların münasebetine göre devâir-i müte‘addideye taksim ile her daire ‘vilayet’ ismiyle yad olunacağı’. ibid. p.517.25. ‘Müfettiş-i hükkâm-ı şer‘iyye’, ibid, p.520. 26. Davison, Reform, p.142; Richard L. Chambers, ‘Civil Bureaucracy’, in Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey, ed. by Robert E.Ward and Dankward A. Rustow (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1966). p. 314.27. Butrus Abu-Manneh, ‘The Establishment and Dismantling of the Province of Syria, 1865-1888’, Problems of the Modern Middle East in the Historical Perspective: Essays in Honour of Albert Hourani, ed. John Spagnolo (Beirut: Ithaca Press. 1992). pp.7-26.

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28. ‘Vilayet Nizamnamesi’, Düstur. (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire. 1289/1872). Vol. I. pp.608-624.29. Shaw, Local Administration. p.281-282. The reorganization of the vilayets never ceased until the end of the Ottoman State. 30. The remaining items of this book, which is available in the ISAM Library (İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi of the Diyanet Vakfı) of İstanbul (353 VİL.İ, 038700), are on financial, legal and municipal affairs. The only academic reference to it is found in Hans-Jürgen Kornrumpf, Die Territorialverwaltung im östlichen Teil der europaeischen Türkei vom Erlass derVilayetsordnung (1864) bis zum Berliner Kongress (1878) nach amtlichen osmanischen Veröffentlichungen. (Freiburg: Klaus Schwarz Verlag. 1976), p.24. 31. ‘İdare-i Umumiyye-i Vilayet Nizâmnâmesidir’, Düstur. (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire. 1289/1872), vol. I, pp.625-651, declared on 29 Şevval 1287. (9 Kanunısâni 1286).32. İsmail Hakkı Göreli, İl İdaresi. (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi. 1952), p.8.33. ‘Evkaf Müdirlerine Dair Talimat’ was declared much earlier, on 1 December 1863, as to be find in Düstur (İstanbul: Matbaa-i Amire. 1289/1872). Vol. II. pp.146-169.34. Davison, Reform. pp.105-108, 142.35. İbid. p.143. 36. İbid. p.144.37. Wickwar. p.20.38. Carter V. Findley, ‘The Evolution of the System of Provincial Administration as viewed from the Center’, Kushner, Palestine. pp.8-9.39. Ahmed Cevdet, Maruzat, ed.Yusuf Halaçoğlu (İstanbul: Çağrı, 1980), p.110. 40. Davison, Reform. p.168.41. ‘Sadr-ı sabık Mahmud Paşa’nın icraat-ı âcilesinden biri de vilayât usulünün lağviydi’, Vakanüvis Ahmed Lütfi Efendi Tarihi XIV, ed. M.Münir Aktepe. (Ankara: TTK. 1991), pp.28-29. Kornrumpf (p.26) criticised Davison (p.168) in vain for having assumed by referring to Abdolnyme Ubicini (-P. de Courteille, Etat present de l’Empire Ottoman, Paris: Librairie Militaire. 1876, p.90) that Mahmud Nedim Pasha suspended the vilayet system for a time and Midhat Pasha restored it on becoming Grand Vizier. 42. Abu-Manneh, p.8.43. Stanford Shaw, ‘The Central Legislative Councils in the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Reform Movement before 1876’, International Journal of Middle East Sturdies. 1. 1970. pp.73ff.44. Vakanüvis Ahmed Lütfi Efendi Tarihi XV, ed.Münir Aktepe (Ankara:TTK. 1993). p.74.45. ‘Valilerin en mühim vazifeleri ale’l-umum ve ale’l-infirâd sunûf-ı teb‘anın hukukunu temin ve himaye ve herkesi zulm u ta‘addîden vikâye etmektir’, Düstur. Vol.III. p.24.46. Düstur. Vol. III. pp.24-37.47. ‘İdare-i vilayatca hukuk-ı merkeziyeyi muhafaza ile beraber, tevsî-i mezuniyet usulünün ittihazına müteallık bulunduğu,’ and ‘vilayatın usul-ı idaresi tevsî-i mezuniyet ve tefrîk-i vezâif kaidesi üzerine müesses olup derecatı nizam-ı mahsus ile tayin kılınacakdır (§108)’. The next two articles (109 and 110) were on the local councils. For the English version of the Kanun-ı Esasi see http://www.bilkent. edu.tr/ ~genckaya/ documents1. html. See also R.Devereux, The First Ottoman Constitutional Period (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963). p.77. 48. This was stated in the constitution as well. §108 noted that the details of the provincial organization shall be fixed by a law. §109 stated that ‘[a] special law will settle on wider bases the election of the administrative councils of provinces (vilayet), districts (sancak), and cantons (kaza), as also of the Council General, which meets annually in the chief town of each province.’ According to the following article, ‘[t]he functions of the Provincial Council-General shall be fixed by the same special law.’49. Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlı Tarihi, VIII, Birinci Meşrutiyet ve İstibdat Devirleri (1876-1907). (Ankara: TTK. 1977). p.323 and Göreli, p.9.50. Göreli, p.9; Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte 1789-1922. (Princeton: Princeton Universtiy Press. 1980). p. 252. 51. Mehmet Ercan, Sadrazam Ahmed Cevad Paşa. (PhD. Thesis, Marmara University. 1998).

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52. A Yıldız document in Osmanlı Arşivi Yıldız Tasnifi: Ermeni Meselesi. Vol. 2. (İstanbul. 1989). p.137 53. ‘[K]imse kimsenin yaptığından haberdar olmadığından ve kimse merciini tanımadığından bir tezebzüb-i idare mevcud olduğu, ve valiler ne kadar kusurlu olsa muaheze olunamayacaklarını bildiklerinden mercilerini ve makam-ı sadareti hiç dinlemediklerini...’, ibid.54. ‘Valiler ve sairler tarafından doğrudan doğruya arz olunan hususatın tedkikine şevketmeab efendimiz hazretlerinin elbet vakitleri olamayacağından, hususât-ı mezkurenin mecra-yı tabiisinden tedkik olunarak geçmesi lazım...’, ibid.55. İbid. p.143.56. ‘[E]decekleri teklif Düstur’da münderic olub da icrasız kalan ve idare-i merkeziyyeye aid olmayan kavanîn ve nizamatın temin-i icraatına münhasır olacağı...’. ibid.57. ‘Süfera-yı selasenin tebliğatından evvel, onların şimdi mevzu-ı bahis ettikleri vilayat-ı sitte değil, Anadolu’da vaki umum vilayatın şimdiki daireleri tevsi‘ edilerek ve teşekkül edecek devâir-i cedide-i mülkiye sınıf-ı askerî veya mülkîden birer zî-rütbe büyük memurun taht-ı nezaretlerine verilerek, ol suretle bir tarz-ı idare-i mülkiye tesisi yolunda da atebe-i seniyyeye bazı maruzat vuku bulduğunu...’; a statement of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Said Pasha, who was asked about his views on the ambassadors’ communique on 30 May, 1895. ibid. p.157.58. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995). p.62.59. Osmanlı Arşivi Yıldız Tasnifi: Ermeni Meselesi. pp.201-263.60. İbid. p.241.61. ‘Valilik ve mutasarrıflıklara tayin olunacak zevâtın edyan ve mezahibin cümlesinisiyyan ve müsavi addeden ve ifrat derecede serbest fikirde bulunan ve Avrupalılarca popülarite kazanmak için herşeyi feda edebilecek olan adamlardan intihab olunmamasına fevkalade dikkat olunarak, hidemat-ı devlete ehl-i namus ve devlet-i metbuasına sadık memurlar tayin olunmasına pek ziyade dikkat edilmesi’. ibid, p.279.62. ‘Kuvve-i icraiyye ve kanuniyyede eser-i faaliyet gösterebilmek içün şu aralık ber-muceb-i arz vulat-ı izamın mesuliyetleriyle mütenasib olmak üzere mezuniyetlerinin tevsi‘i hususuna müsaade buyrulması lüzumu layih-i hatır-ı kasır-ı ubeydanem olmağla arzına müsareat kılındı’, BOA, A.MKT.MHM. 676/18, 1313 L 9. 63. ‘Vilayet tarafından vukubulacak ihtar üzerine Merkez-i Ordu-yı Humayun’a malumat verilmekle beraber heman bilatereddüd harekat-ı askeriyye icrası lüzumunun kumandanlarına kati suretde tebliği ve vilayete dahi bu makule tahrir-i iş‘ârdan dolayı vakanın neticesinde terettüb edecek mesuliyeti deruhde etmiş olacakları cihetle bu mezuniyeti suiistimal etmemeleri ... suret-i mahsusada tavsiyesi feraiz-i umurdan görünüyor,’ ibid. 64. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform. p.251. 65. Stanford J. Shaw & Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Volume II, Reform, Revolution and Republic, 1808-1975. (London: Cambridge University Press. 1977). p.243. Anscombe, p.5 and pp.170-171.66. Colonel Ponsonby to Sir P.Currie, 29 November 1896, FO, 424/189, No 229, pp.278-279, quoted from Muammer Demirel, Ermeniler Hakkında İngiliz Belgeleri (1896-1918). (Ankara:Yeni TürkiyeYayınları. 2002). p.266.67. This was a major issue of quarrel between the Palace and the Bâbıâlî, the Sultan and the Grand Viziers, as shown by Engin Deniz Akarlı, The Problems of External Pressures, Power Struggles, and Budgetary Deficits in Ottoman Politics under Abdülhamid II (1876-1909): Origins and Solutions. (PhD. Dissertation, Princeton University. 1976). pp.104-142. 68. Isa Blumi, ‘All was not quiet on the Southern Front: Yemen’s Social Hierarchies and the Role of the Ottoman State, 1911-1918’, Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Social and Political History of Albania and Yemen, 1878-1918. (İstanbul: ISIS Press). p.66.69. Wickwar. p.1.

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RURAL HOUSING IN EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY NORTHUMBERLAND

Michael Barke

IntroductionThe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed an explosion of romantic writing about the British countryside and Northumberland was no exception to this.1 The experience of industrialisation and urbanisation led to a nostalgic and, arguably, idealised view of the rural environment. As an antithesis to urban realities, much of this writing extolled the visual qualities of rural areas, celebrating their natural beauty as well as their peace and quiet. But also, the social aspects of rural living were often represented as superior to, and more fulfilling than, those in towns and cities. Ruralcustoms, festivals, modes of work, costume and many other features were all celebrated as indicative of a way of life that, for most people, had passed away but which appeared to be better than current realities. Many of these views were, of course, highly romanticised and ignored the evidence of a less pleasant and comfortable way of life. One feature of rural living that still attracts this romanticised perspective is the perception of the rural dwelling itself.2 In much of this literature the image of the attractive and cosy cottage predominates but, in fact, for most of the nineteenth century the reality was very different.

The nature of housing and housing problems in the past has attracted much attention from historians3 and, in particular, the problems of dealing with slum housing figures prominently in such studies. Not surprisingly, thenotion of slums has come to be particularly associated with working class urban housing, mainly because of the scale of the problem associated with nineteenth century urban growth. But slums also existed in rural areas as witnessed by contemporary writings, for example Edward Smith’s (1876) prize-winning essay on The Peasant’s Home, 1760-1875: ‘Some of the large villages…are simply collections of hovels, utterly unfit for humanhabitation, possessing as they do, all possible defects accumulated under one roof. ‘.4 Indeed, some authors consider that the housing situation of rural inhabitants was, in many respects, actually worse for rural dwellers in the early nineteenth century than for their urban counterparts.5 This article

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will explore the evidence for rural housing conditions in Northumberland in the first part of the nineteenth century.

Contemporary descriptionsThe early years of the nineteenth century witnessed considerable interest in the countryside but, unlike the end of the nineteenth century, this interest had a very practical foundation. Strongly influenced by the warswith France and concerns over the nation’s ability to feed itself and the possibility of revolution, a considerable literature was generated, concerned with agriculture, improvement and rural conditions. Official reports beganto be published and these were soon joined by works produced by individual authors concerned to survey and present the ‘state of the (rural) nation’. Although issues of agricultural production predominated, rural living conditions also attracted considerable attention. As far as rural housing conditions in Northumberland are concerned, the literature presents a varied and somewhat contested picture but one where, on balance and for the firstfour decades of the nineteenth century, the evidence suggests the very poor housing conditions of the majority of rural dwellers.

At the end of the eighteenth century in Northumberland most rural housing ‘..conformed to functional local traditions, employing available building materials for sheltering humans and animals. Standards varied, and houses built at Brandon Hill near Powburn, Northumberland, as late as 1799, possessed only one window and were entered through a cow-byre.’6 Although an extreme case, the death report of ‘Old Franky’ (Francis Hill) who had lived in ‘..a sod hut on the road between Newcastle and Shields for upwards of fifty years..’ suggests how one individual found an ‘informal’solution to his accommodation problem .7 Some 40 years later, the cottages of agricultural workers in Norham were described in detail. ‘They are built of rubble, or of unhewn stone loosely cemented; and from age, or from the badness of the materials, the walls look as if they would scarcely hold together. The chinks gape open in many places…. The chimneys have lost half their original height and lean on the roof… . The rafters are evidently rotten and displaced; and the thatch, yawning to admit the wind and wet in some parts, and in all parts utterly unfit for its original purpose,… looksmore like the top of a dunghill than of a cottage’.8 (Plates 1 and 2).

The precarious nature and flimsy construction of many rural dwellings isalso attested by the frequency of damage by storms, floods and above all,

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Plate 1. Peasant Cottage, Norham

Plate 2 Group of Cottages, Norham

fire. For example, on May 21st, 1801 ‘ A terrible fire broke out in the villageof Harbottle, Northumberland, owing to a foul chimney. Nine cottages and four out-houses were unfortunately destroyed by this conflagration’.9 and on December 25th, 1806 at Acomb, gusts of wind carried sparks from a chimney and ‘..fire extended to the neighbouring cottages, about ten ofwhich were reduced to ashes’.10 Such events could lead to more than the loss of dwellings, however, as at Tweedmouth on March 15, 1830, where a row of thatched cottages were destroyed and two fatalities ensued.11 In January 1836 ‘ Newcastle and the northern district generally was visited with a violent storm of wind… At Holy Island fully one half of the houses were unroofed.’12 and almost exactly one year later, due to a hugely swollen River

23

Tyne, two rows of houses at Scotswood were rendered uninhabitable.13

The uncertainty surrounding security of tenure was also an issue for many Northumbrian rural dwellers. High levels of mobility were induced by the system of annual contracting for most farm labour. Male labourers or ‘hinds’ were mainly paid ‘in kind’ including a cottage for the year’s employment but the hind was also expected to provide at least one female worker or ‘bondager’ who would live in the same cottage, thus possibly complicating and almost certainly adding additional pressure to the accommodation situation. Although this system was largely abandoned by the Duke of Northumberland in the early nineteenth century, his estates were the exception, rather than the rule.14 Elsewhere, rural tenants would have been subject to the whims and eccentricities of their landlords, although few could have been as strange as Elizabeth Cuthbertson who ‘chose for her abode the second storey of a miserable house in Haltwhistle, the door of which was nearly constantly locked, and many of he windows bricked up..’ and who treated her tenants in a peculiar manner: ‘..some had not paid any rent for a great number of years, and others had paid a portion of the rent due, and both these descriptions of tenants she allowed to live upon their respective tenures, because they owed her money, but those who paid the whole of their rents she immediately discharged.’15 But, more generally, for Edward Smith, the ‘first cause of bad or deficient cottages was indifferent,needy or absentee landlords’.16

In a comprehensive report on Northumberland agriculture, Bailey and Culley observed that most rural cottages across the county were of one storey, built of rough stone and clay and were thatched, consisting of one room only.17 But they also hinted at some improvement in the case of more recent building. However, half a century later, James Caird18 considered that ‘..the state of the labourers’ cottages throughout Northumberland is, in the majority of cases, most discreditable to the county ‘ (p.389) but praised the efforts of the Duke of Northumberland ‘..whose munificent outlay willsoon provide comfortable lodging for every labourer on his great estates’ and the Marquis of Waterford’s model village of Ford. Nevertheless, it is clear that Caird considered these examples to be exceptions rather than the general rule and concluded his survey of the county in the village of Wark – ‘..the very picture of slovenliness and neglect. Wretched houses piled here and there without order – filth of every kind scattered about or heaped upagainst the walls – horses, cows and pigs lodged under the same roof with

24

their owners, and entering by the same door..’ (p.390). In 1855, ‘..the quiet and retired village of Matfen, adjoining the beautiful seat of Sir Edward Blackett, bart.,’ was exposed as presenting ‘..one of the most melancholy and miserable features of human wretchedness on record. The entire range of cottages were in a most dilapidated condition, … light, air and rain had free access…not a window contained a whole set of panes’.19 Just a few years later, however, the Medical Officer to the Privy Council, Dr. Hunter20 found Northumberland cottages to be ‘very much what they should be’ (p.187) and compared the county favourably to most other rural areas of England. In 1876, writing of rural cottage improvements, Edward Smith could claim that ‘ Northumberland has made great advances in this respect, particularly within the last twenty-five years’, and drew specific attention to the workof successive Dukes of Northumberland who had built or improved 931 dwellings for their tenants within the previous quarter century.21

It appears, therefore, that the rural housing situation in Northumberland was somewhat varied and may well have been in the process of changing by the middle of the nineteenth century. The first question in the first censusof Britain (1801) was not about people but about houses.22 However, there appears to have been some confusion over what, exactly, constituted a ‘house’23 with different definitions being applied across the country.Although a highly imperfect source as far as housing is concerned, therefore, it is unlikely that within one region, widely different definitions wouldhave been used. The first censuses of the county also have the advantage ofproviding uniform information for townships and parishes and can be used to infer comparative levels of overcrowding. Although comprehensive data on the size of cottages is lacking, it is almost certain that the vast majority of dwellings were cottages of one and two rooms only. For example, at Roddam in Ilderton parish, ‘The cottages consist only of two ground-floorrooms each, containing box beds. They are inhabited by the ‘hinds’, or agricultural labourers. Each hind is bound to find so many women to help inthe field labour… They live in the houses of the hinds who hire them.’24 Dr. Hunter’s survey of 5,375 cottages in 821 country parishes in 1864 revealed that the average air-space was only 156 cubic feet, compared to the legal minimum of 250 cubic feet in common lodging houses!25 The situation is not likely to have been better some 60 years earlier. In Norham in 1841, out of 174 cottages ‘..there are but 27 which have two rooms each, and which are supplied with that convenience which is indispensibly necessary to cleanliness and decency.’26 One of Northumberland’s most famous ‘sons’,

25

George Stephenson, was born in a one roomed cottage in Wylam in 1781and was one of six children. It appears that the vast majority of rural dwellings were of one or two rooms only and an average of more than four people per dwelling probably indicates some overcrowding and a figure in excess offive almost certainly guarantees it.27

Overcrowding, 1801 - 1841Figure 1 shows the average number of people per dwelling in the rural parishes of Northumberland according to the first census of 1801 andreinforces the impression of considerable variety.

Figure 1

No clear-cut geographical patterns are immediately apparent, although there is a general tendency for higher levels of crowding in remoter, upland areas and fewer parishes on the Northumberland plain fell into the highly overcrowded category at this time. However, this general pattern was not

26

mutually exclusive and examples of relatively low overcrowding existed in upland areas and high overcrowding in lowland areas, particularly in parishes within the coalfield area and near the river Tyne. Overall, however,rural housing conditions in 1801 were poor almost everywhere. No parishes had a mean occupancy of less than three people per dwelling and the lowest, somewhat surprisingly, was Heddon on the Wall with a mean of 4.08. But even within this parish there was considerable variation. Two of its townships, Eachwick and Whitchester, averaged over five people perdwelling (5.14 and 5.70 respectively). East and West Heddon had similar figures of 4.73 and 4.78 and Haughton with Close House had 4.39. The corevillage of Heddon, however had the lowest figure of 3.47 with 253 peopleliving in 73 houses. No dwellings were reported as being uninhabited. It must be remembered that the 1801 census was conducted in wartime and it may well be the case that a proportion of the younger male population were absent, serving in the army or navy. The highest levels of apparent overcrowding were found in Kidland (7.50 persons per dwelling), Wark (7.11), Ramshope (7.00) and Kirkharle (6.04), reinforcing the impression that the most severe problems existed in the remoter, upland areas (Plate 3). Nevertheless, it remains the case that just a few years after the 1801 census and across the whole of the county, Cobbett was able to compare Northumbrian rural dwellings unfavourably to the south of England.28

Plate 3. Upland Cottages, North Tyne Area

27

Figure 2 attempts to illustrate change over the period 1801-1841 and is based on the relationship between population change in those years and change in the number of houses. This provides a measure of the extent to which housing need was being met within the period. The situation may be described as ‘improving’ if the mean number of people per dwelling is lower in the 1801-41 period than it was in 1801. Thirty-four parishes fell into this category. In another fifty parishes, however, the situation worsened in theseyears, and in the majority, quite considerably (Figure 2). Parishes in the latter category are widespread and found in a variety of geographical locations. In a number of cases, parishes with a significant deterioration in overcrowdingare located in close proximity to some that show improvement. In the case of the latter, a significant factor alleviating overcrowding was a reductionin population pressure through out migration. In nine of the parishes that showed ‘improvement’ there were actually absolute losses of population in the 1801-1841 period. The proximity of areas showing ‘improvement’ to some of those showing a deteriorating situation may not have been due entirely to positive factors. Limited opportunities for employment may have led to people leaving their native village for one not so far distant that presented more opportunity, but in so doing, additional pressure was put upon the housing situation in the new location.

A further factor may have been significant in explaining this variety ofexperience. This is the frequently cited difference between ‘open’ and ‘close’ parishes. A central distinction in the categorisation of parishes as ‘open’ or ‘close’ was the pattern of landownership and its relationship to social control and social provision.29 In the ‘close’ parish or village, landownership was concentrated into few hands with consequent strong central control, including that of access to housing. But the standard of accommodation was likely to be of a higher quality, especially in estate village such as Cambo, Rock, Simonburn, Etal and Ford.30 ‘Open’ villages, on the other hand, were characterised by a multitude of landowners, were likely to be more radical socially and politically, and were characterised by a more plentiful but much poorer standard of cottage accommodation. In fact, a number of parishes with ‘estate’ villages did show apparent improvement in the degree of overcrowding that cannot be explained by population loss,

for example, Ford, Whalton and Bambrough, suggesting a more ‘controlled’ balance between housing supply and demand. Edward Smith had no doubt that ‘..several large proprietors who have spent a good deal of money on

28

improvements.’ were responsible for improving the cottage accommodation of their tenants, citing the examples of Earl Grey (at Howick), Mr. Cresswell (at Creswell), and John Grey, the chief steward of the Derwentwater

Figure 2

Estates of Grenwich Hospital, as well as the Duke of Northumberland.31 However, much of this improvement took place in the middle decades of the nineteenth century and, during the first half of the century, not all parisheswith ‘estate’ villages showed noticeable improvements in their situation.

In fact, the overall conclusion is that, despite the claims made for the advanced and improving state of Northumbrian agriculture in the early nineteenth century32 the provision of accommodation for the majority of the workforce appears to have remained desperately inadequate. Indeed, throughout the period from the late eighteenth century to the mid nineteenth, ‘..Northumbrian housing continued to give rise to adverse comment, its condition perhaps being aggravated by the ‘unceasing flitting’ associatedwith the bondage system..’33 It was partially the latter that gave rise to one

29

of the most telling contemporary analyses of the rural housing situation in this part of the north of England in the early nineteenth century.34 The Rev. W.S. Gilly examined in detail the parish of Norham, drawing attention to the inadequacies of rural housing provision, noting the good practice of cottage provision on a limited number of estates (Plate 4), but primarily seeking to publicise the hitherto unrecognised problems of rural dwellers. In the latter he was successful to a degree in that his work was recognised by Edwin Chadwick’s influential Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain . Gilly reserved his most critical comments for the bondage system and the extreme mobility it induced. In the case of Norham he found that, of 174 cottages let out to hinds in 1831, only 17 had the same resident family 10 years later and 83 had changed inhabitants within the previous two years. It was inevitable, he argued that such mobility removed any real incentive to improve the standard and quality of rural accommodation – ‘..so many of the cottages are such miserable hovels. The proprietor is not so anxious to provide suitable abodes for the hinds, as he would be if they were more stationary; and the hind himself, having an eye to future change, does not bargain, as he otherwise would, for the condition of his cottage. ‘.

Plate 4. Improved Cottages, Thornton Estate, Norham

Nevertheless, Gilly drew particular attention to the improvement in cottage accommodation in specific parts of Norham parish, especially the Thorntonestates of Lord Crewe. Gilly’s own figures show that the level of mobilitywas significantly less in this township than in other parts of the parish. Inthe latter, 47.7 per cent of hinds’ cottages had changed their occupiers in the

30

two years 1840 and1841 whereas in Thornton township the equivalent figurewas only 26.3 per cent. Gilly would therefore appear to be correct (and the ‘open’ ‘close’ village hypothesis gain some support) in his view that cottage improvement would reduce mobility. Furthermore, Thornton township saw improvement in its overcrowding situation with a reduction in the number of persons per house from 6.59 in 1811 to 5.74 in 1841. However, the latter figure is still a high one, in fact, the second highest of all townships in theparish. More significantly, however, Thornton township had a substantialpopulation loss of 35.7 per cent between 1811 and 1841, a factor that would clearly have reduced pressure on available housing accommodation. In contrast, the larger more ‘open’ villages of Cornhill and Norham had population gains of 13.5 per cent and 15.5 per cent respectively and both, not surprisingly, had increases in the mean number of people per house from 4.26 to 5.14 in Cornhill and 4.29 to 4.67 in Norham. An ‘improvement’ in one part of a parish may therefore have been accompanied by relative worsening in neighbouring areas.

A final piece of evidence on the rural housing situation and its relationship(or lack of it) to population mobility is provided by Figure 3, showing the number of persons with no proper accommodation at the time of the 1841 census, or more correctly, those people found by the census enumerators. In the entire county, nearly 500 people were enumerated as sleeping in tents, barns or in the open air and we may be sure that many more were so doing but not found. Although the 1841 census was conducted in early June thus increasing the likelihood of more people ‘sleeping out’ in the summer months, this was not harvest time when a considerably higher itinerant population may be expected.

ConclusionThe objective reality is that for most rural residents in Northumberland, the housing situation was worse in 1841 than it was in 1801. Where matters improved, the main explanation was a reduction in pressure due to absolute population loss or a reduction in total numbers. Some large landowners did carry out significant improvement but the overall impact of this wasactually rather limited. Furthermore, as the example of Norham shows, improvement in one area could have been accompanied by and possibly related to relative deterioration in an adjacent area. Through their sheer scale and the public awareness attracted, the massive problems of urban growth in the nineteenth century have, arguably, masked many of those

31

in rural areas. But for many of the residents of the latter their quality of life was equally as poor or even worse, particularly in relation to housing accommodation.

Figure 3

Relative concentrations occurred in the borders, in the Tyne valley and adjacent to the urban areas of Tyneside, reflecting the role of such areasas either routeways or their proximity to possible sources of temporary employment. Although, within an ‘urban’ setting rather than rural, the animosity felt by some sections of society to these ‘rough sleepers’ is indicated by an incident on Newcastle’s Town Moor on June 26th, 1803 when several tents were deliberately burnt down during the night, although no serious injuries were sustained by the occupants.35 But the main point here

32

is that there was clearly a substantial population (and that mapped in Figure 3 is almost certainly only part of the whole) in rural Northumberland in the first part of the nineteenth century with no proper house accommodationwhatsoever.

NOTES1. Two examples of this literature are A.G.Bradley, The Romance of Northumberland. (London: Methuen & Co.1908) and H.M. Neville, A Corner in the North: Yesterday and Today with Border Folk (Newcastle upon Tyne: Andrew Reid & Co. 1909).2. H.Batsford and C.Fry, The English Cottage. (London: B.T. Batsford. 1938).3. J. R. Burnett, A Social History of Housing, 1815-1970. (London: Methuen. 1978).4. E. Smith, The Peasant’s Home, 1760-1875. (London: Edward Stanford. 1876).5. G.Mingay, ‘The Rural Slum’ in M.Gaskell (ed.), Slums. (Leicester University Press. 1990). pp.92-143.6. N.McCord and R. Thompson, The Northern Counties from AD 1000. (London and New York: Longman. 1998).7. J. Sykes, Local Records, or Historical Register of Remarkable Events, Volume II. (Newcastle upon Tyne. 1833). p.1.8. W.S. Gilly, The Peasantry of the Border. An Appeal on their Behalf. (Edinburgh: Bratton Publishing. 1842). p.17.9. J.Sykes, op. cit., p. 7.10. J.Sykes, op. cit., p. 30.11. J.Sykes, op. cit., pp. 274-5.12. T. Fordyce, Local Records or Historical Register of Remarkable Events, Volume III. (Newcastle upon Tyne: T. Fordyce. 1867.) p.52.13. T. Fordyce, ibid. p.65.14. J. Long, Conversations in a Cold Room. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press. 1999).15. T. Fordyce. op. cit. p.68.16. E. Smith, op. cit. p.12.17. J. Bailey and G.Culley, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Northumberland. (3rd Edition, London. 1805).18. J. Caird, English Agriculture in 1980-51. (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. 1852).19. T. Fordyce. op. cit., p.308.20. Report by Dr. Hunter on the Dwellings of Agricultural Labourers in Seventh Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, Parliamentary Papers, 1865, vol. 26. p.135.21. E. Smith, op. cit., p.53.22. G.R. Lucas, ‘Uninhabited houses in England in the nineteenth century’ in R. W. Steel and R.Lawton (eds.) Liverpool Essays in Geography: A Jubilee Collection, (London: Longmans. 1967). pp.257-270.23. E. Higgs, ‘The definition of the ‘house’ in the census of 1841’, The Local Historian, 19, 1989. pp. 56-7.24. C.S. Burne, ‘Northumbrian Social Customs’, Folklore, vol. 15 (3). 1904. pp.341-343.25. G.E. Cherry and J. Sheail, ‘Town and country: an overview’ in E.J.T.Collins (ed), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume VII 1850-1914 (part II), (Cambridge:

33

Cambridge University Press. 2000). pp.1540-1580.26. W.S. Gilly. op. cit., pp. 14-5.27. When ‘overcrowding’ was officially recognised as an important indicator of housingproblems in the later nineteenth century the ‘official’ definition was set at two or morepersons per habitable room.28. W. Cobbett, Rural Rides. (London. 1830).29. D.R. Mills and B.M. Short, ‘Social change and social conflict in the nineteenthcentury: the use of the open-closed village model’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 10. 4. 1983. pp. 253-262.30. A. Howkins, ‘Types of rural communities’, in E.J.T.Collins (ed) The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume VII 1850-1914 (part II). (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2000). pp.1297-135331. E. Smith. op. cit.32. J. Grey, ‘A View of the Past and Present Status of Agriculture in Northumberland', T.R.A.S.E. 2, 1840. pp. 51-92; T. L. Colbeck, ‘On the agriculture of Northumberland', T.R.A.S.E. 8, 1847. pp.422-37. 33. W.A. Armstrong and J.P. Hazel, ‘Food, Shelter and Self-Help’ , in G. E. Mingay (ed.) The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. VI, 1750-1850. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989). pp. 729-754.34. W.S. Gilly. op. cit. 35. J. Sykes. op. cit., p.14.

34

CULTIVATING THE CITY AND ITS CITIZENS: THE CREATION OF CORPORATION ALLOTMENTS IN

YORK

Ross Wilson

2008 marked the centenary of the 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act, a piece of legislation which had a considerable impact on the landscape of urban and rural Britain. The 1908 Act entrusted local authorities with a new obligation towards its citizens: to provide allotment gardens where they were desired by residents. This responsibility fostered a new relationship between authorities and the local populace, as access to land was demanded, negotiated and discussed at a variety of levels. This process was a particular feature in the creation of corporation owned and operated allotment gardens in York. The campaign for allotments in the city also reveals the wider debates of social reform which were highly prominent in York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Issues of poor housing, unemployment and the wider condition of the working classes of York were reflected through the movement for allotments. Whilst allotment gardensrepresented a much-needed and important resource for residents in the deprived areas of the city, local politicians and councillors viewed the sites as significant tools for social reform. As allotments developed in York, theroles of both tenants and corporation were discussed and rethought, setting the foundations for the modern relationship between citizens and the local authority. Examining the history of the development of this public service, politically and socially, this paper will explore how allotment gardens were used to cultivate both the city and the citizens in the first two decades of thetwentieth century.

York in 1900: governance and citizensAt the beginning of the 1900s York was typical of most urban areas in Britain, exhibiting the contradiction of great wealth alongside enormous deprivation and poverty. Rowntree’s1 study of 1901 had famously highlighted the poor living conditions experienced by many of the working classes in the city, finding a third of York’s citizens lived in a state of destitution. Large areas ofslum housing, high levels of unemployment and rising prices placed many individuals and families in the city in a particularly precarious situation.2 The

35

ability and desire of the city corporation to respond to these pressures was curtailed by the mechanisms of local government and the belief in the forces of the free market. The structure and brief of the York City Corporation, like the authorities in many towns and districts in Britain, was formed through the 1835 Local Government Act.3 The bill had been passed to complement to some extent the Reform Act of 1832, and to provide, in principle, the accountability of authorities and some form of democratic representation for ratepayers.4 The 1835 Act enabled all ratepayers who had been resident in the area for three years or more the right to vote in the municipal elections. The initial influence of these bodies was somewhat limited, restricted asthey were to the administration of local finances, policing, granting licencesfor the sale of alcohol and the implementation of bye-laws for the ‘good governance’ of the area.5 The 1835 Act also provided for the establishment of the working structure of authorities, with Town Clerks, Officers andCommittees forming the backbone of the local government.6 Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century however the development of these local authorities increased as Parliamentary Bills devolved power to the provinces, especially in areas such as housing with the 1890 Housing Act.7

Despite these additions to their remit, the duty of the York Corporation to ensure good sanitation, relief for the working poor and provide public amenities was a contested issue in the local and national elections in the city during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These issues were especially prominent in the municipal elections of 1899 and 1900. The city, which was divided, for electoral and administrative purposes, into six wards, had candidates from across the political spectrum. Conservative, Liberal and the nascent Labour party contenders all debated the relative merits of improvements in the city’s governance and infrastructure. It was inevitably the latter political party who were the most keen to highlight the city’s social problems. Representatives of the Independent Labour Party, as well as those described as Cooperative or Progressive candidates, represented the emerging trend of what was termed ‘municipal socialism’ in York.8 Thomas Anderson, for instance, standing as an Independent candidate in 1899 in the Monk Ward, drew attention to the dilapidated housing stock in the city.9 George Price, standing as a Cooperative candidate, railed against the City Corporation for neglecting the duties owed to the residents of York. Price, amongst other demands, called for the Corporation control of water, gas and electricity, trams to be arranged to coordinate with the hours of workers, improved sanitation and the construction of public open spaces.10 Though

36

the share of the vote for these candidates was growing, they were defeated at the polls, as voters chose the platform advocated by Tory candidates, such as Joseph Peters, who stood in the Walmgate ward, against Corporation intervention.11

The municipal elections of 1900 were to reignite these issues of reform and renewal in York.12 Thomas Anderson, standing in Walmgate ward on this occasion, gained victory through impassioned speeches describing the wretched conditions faced by the city’s working classes.13 William Shaw, standing as a Cooperative candidate, also secured victory in the Micklegate ward in the same election, prompting the Cooperative Society of York to announce that:

‘…they succeeded in at last securing a direct representative of the Society, of trade unionism, and of the working classes generally on the City Council’.14

The swift turn-around in the electoral fortunes of Anderson, combined with the improved performance of candidates advocating similar interventionist ideals, suggested that voters were now becoming increasingly concerned with social conditions in the city. Working class ratepayers were growing frustrated by the successive failures of Tory and Liberal dominated Corporations to address the obvious needs of the citizens of York. These needs and the campaigns of 1899 and 1900 by Labour, Independent and Cooperative candidates were reaffirmed with the publication of SeebohmRowntree’s, Poverty, a study of town life.15 In this exhaustive study Rowntree described how the working classes in the city were trapped by a recurring cycle of deprivation.16 To explain this cycle, Rowntree used the categories of primary and secondary poverty; the former an inescapable product of low wages and unemployment and the latter the result of unforeseen expenses, old age or illness.17 Combining these two categories Rowntree forwarded his thesis that approximately thirty percent of the city’s population lived in poverty: ‘a fact of the gravest significance’.18 Whilst the main thrust of Rowntree’s report acknowledged the external factors that could push people into hardship, citizens were also regarded as a danger to themselves; the vices of drinking and gambling were highlighted as a further drain on meagre resources.19 The ability and drive for individuals to lift themselves out of poverty by exerting a greater amount of control in their lives was an underlying feature of the analysis.

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‘It must be remembered that some families are living in apparent poverty in the slums, not because of their inadequate income, but because of their distaste for the effort required by a life among better surroundings’.20

Liberal Politics and Reform in York and BritainThe way in which the problems faced by the city could be addressed thereby became a deeply political issue in the 1900 municipal election. Independent Labour and Cooperative councillors called for greater action in civic life by the Corporation, whilst Tory representatives in York argued against these interventionist measures.21 Liberal candidates were unable to finda distinctive voice in this melee, as whilst sympathetic towards Labour’s policies, the party was synonymous with many of the leading businessmen of the city.22 The Liberals were strongly backed by the Rowntree family, one of the largest employers in the city, with both Seebohm Rowntree and Arnold Rowntree firm supporters of the Liberal’s cause.23 Full Corporation intervention therefore was not an option envisaged by these supporters of the free market, especially when the working classes were viewed as at least partly responsible for their own condition and potential improvement. This dilemma was also a discussion point within the Liberal Party at a national level, as the means by which the party could appeal to a wider electorate and stem the rising support for the Independent Labour Party was a key concern.24

What was required therefore from this Liberal philosophy, both locally and nationally, was reform; but reform of both the physical and mental condition of the working classes.25 The objective of this reform was to quell the rising discontent of the urban working classes whilst maintaining the social bonds of Edwardian Britain.26 With rising unemployment and a worsening economy the Liberals swept to power nationally in the Parliamentary Elections of 1906 on the promise of this reform, displacing the failed Tory Government.27 Principal amongst these reforms set in place by the new Liberal Government was the Old Age Pension Act (1908) and the Workmen’s Compensation Act (1906); however, a significant amount oflegislation was focused on restructuring the laws controlling the distribution of land.28 Access to land was regarded as significant to reforming both ruraland urban areas; by providing farm labourers with their own small holdings, and factory workers with allotments, a significant improvement in the livesof the working classes in Britain was considered achievable by the newly

38

elected Liberal Government.29 The Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908 was designed for just this purpose. The act went further than any other piece of legislation regarding land reform, by stating that local authorities had a responsibility to their citizens. Section 23 provides that if allotment authorities;

‘…are of the opinion that there is a demand for allotments...in the borough, district or parish the council shall provide a sufficient numberof allotments to persons...resident in the borough district or parish and desiring the same’.30

In determining demand an authority was required to take into consideration,

‘…a representation in writing by any six registered parliamentary electors or rate payers’.

Section 25 of the 1908 Act also gave local authorities the power to compulsorily purchase land for allotments, if land could not be acquired by private agreement. The 1908 Act replaced the Allotments and Cottage Gardens Compensation for Crops Act 1887. The 1887 Act was set in place by the Tory Government of the late 1880s to alleviate the effects of the agricultural depression; it had also given local authorities the power to provide allotments when petitioned by six or more electors or ratepayers. The difference between the two pieces of legislation however, was the 1887 Act proved cumbersome and difficult to use, as without stipulating the onuson authorities to provide allotments, it appeared ineffective.31 The 1887 Act was only used effectively by ratepayers where there was a concerted effort undertaken by reformers to insist on its observation by the local authorities. The 1908 Act however ensured very little room for manoeuvre by local governments if they were petitioned by their citizens to provide allotment gardens. In York, the 1908 Act served to prompt the Corporation into action: a committee to deal with the issue was formed soon after the 1908 Act was passed.32

This organisation of allotments in the city was regarded as providing a means by which the social problems faced by many residents could be addressed. It created a new set of relationships between citizens and the Corporation, significantly acting upon the growing dissatisfaction towards

39

the local authority amongst the urban poor. The effect of creating allotment gardens within the city was substantial, both within the physical landscape of York and the modes of government. Allotment gardens operated to form a means of governing behaviour within the city, with an aim to alleviating the grind of poverty and diffusing the growing support of socialist parties. To explain these processes notions of hegemony can be employed. Hegemony defines the manner in which a dominant culture is replicated and acceptedby a diverse population through practice, habit and custom.33 Significantly,hegemony also accounts for the means by which a dominant group moves to incorporate or assuage the demands of a minority group by sharing resources with it. Whilst this reinforces the security of the dominant group it also provides a means of attributing an active vision of the minority culture rather than assume the unrealised deception or passive acceptance of their domination. Hegemony cannot therefore be regarded as a totality, as the oppressed or minority group can both influence and shape, at various scales,the hegemonic order. This provides a means of analysing the development of allotment gardens in York and reveals how the construction of allotment gardens in York ‘cultivated’ the population.

Allotments in YorkApplying these concepts to the study of the development of allotment gardens in York at the beginning of the twentieth century reveals the processes which conceived of allotments as a social programme: to reform the city and its citizens. There had been allotment gardens in York since the late nineteenth century, predominantly under the ownership of the Rowntree family, who provided allotment gardens to both their workers and students of the Adult Schools set up by the company. Similarly, other businessmen in the city had also provided allotments to their workers. The amount of allotment land however was limited; in 1899 there were only roughly 120 plots of varying size in the city, though in main they usually measured approximately 300 square yards. Allotments were a luxury however and were mainly let to the well-to-do working man who could afford the rent, limiting the possibility of some of York’s poorest citizens obtaining an allotment site.34 By 1906 however the amount of allotment sites had nearly quadrupled, with 450 plots spread over eight sites in the city. Despite this increase the ability to secure a plot was still difficult for those citizens not employed by particularcompanies or those able to meet the rent.

Table 1

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Location, landlord and size of allotments in York, 1906

District Landlord No. of allotments

Size of allotments

Haxby Road Rowntree and Co. 104 345 sq. yds.Poppleton Road Leeman Road Adult

School94 345 sq. yds.

Poppleton Road Acomb Adult School 76 345 sq. yds.Burton Lane Mr. Hornby 30 (approx) 0.3-2 acresLayerthorpe Mr. Mansfield 32 0.4 of an acreSouth Bank Mr. De Bing 60 180 – 720 sq. yds.Nunthorpe Mr. De Bing 30 180 – 720 sq. yds.Clementhorpe Mr. Waddington 30 100 – 400 sq. yds.

Figure 1Pencil drawing of an allotment in York, 1906

The tenants of the Rowntree allotments in Haxby Road and those run in conjunction with the Adult Schools all subscribed to the ‘York Cocoa Works Horticultural Society’. This organisation ran competitions and contests for allotment tenants offering prizes to the ‘best managed’ and the ‘most productive’ plots. The Society was also patronised by the leading Liberals of the city; Arnold Rowntree, Seebohm Rowntree and J.B. Morrell were all Vice-Presidents of the Horticultural Society. The presumed reforming nature

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of work on the allotment site appeared well-suited to the Liberal philosophy of an ‘organic society’ where individuals improved themselves and the society in which they lived. The ideal of this improvement is reinforced in the terms and conditions set out to tenants of the Rowntree allotments. The eleven conditions affirm the importance of the upkeep of the site and theresponsibility of the individual tenant both towards their allotment and their conduct on the site. Condition 10 stated that:

‘Betting and Gambling, bad language and the use of Intoxicating Liquors in the Allotment Gardens are strictly prohibited, and any tenant breaking this rule renders himself liable to suspension from the Gardens, and the immediate forfeiture of his tenancy.’.35

Figure 2The York Cocoa Works Horticultural Society c.1900s

These sites remained closed to many of York’s working poor, but their presence served to motivate the increasingly influential Labour andCooperative movements in the city to campaign for the wider availability

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of allotment gardens. In the municipal elections of November 1904 the Independent Labour Party candidate Fred Morley was successfully elected as a councillor for the Castlegate ward of the city.36 After only a month of his appointment, Councillor Morley had written to the Town Clerk requesting information as to the Corporation’s duty and ability to provide allotments for citizens.37 The increased activism of the Labour movement in York was further demonstrated in the actions of residents of the Holgate area of the city. In August 1904 the Town Clerk had received correspondence from Mr. W. Hoyle of Murray Street, Holgate. The letter was addressed from the, ‘citizens of York, resident in the Holgate District’, and contained an application for land on or near Holgate, ‘for the purpose of providing allotments’. The letter was signed by twenty residents and ratepayers of Holgate with the express intention of activating the Corporation’s obligation under the 1887 Allotments Act.38 The Liberal Party in the city followed these developments and in a conference organised by the Friends’ Social Services Committee, chaired by Seebohm Rowntree, a call was made that allotments were the, ‘cure for poverty’.39 With rising unemployment in the city, allotment gardens were seen by both Labour and Liberal interests as key in alleviating the burden of deprivation. Whilst working class activism was at the root of the movement to secure allotments for larger numbers of the city’s residents, it was the Liberal values of allotments as tools of social reform which would shape the development of allotments in York. Holgate AllotmentsAs the York City Corporation had no experience of setting up or maintaining an allotment site, other boroughs and cities that had already created allotment gardens were researched. Areas such as Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield,Bridport and Swindon were examined as to the methods of providing allotments and importantly the contracts between individual tenants and the Corporation. The main assistance for this process however came from the allotments already in the city operated by Rowntree’s. Arnold Rowntree was consulted by the Town Clerk as to the manner in which allotment gardens should be constructed and managed. Significantly, the contractsissued by Rowntree’s to tenants were also taken as the standard form to be replicated by the Corporation. The Rowntree allotments were therefore used as the template for the planned Corporation allotments, even down to the stipulations of the contracts.40

From January to April 1905 the Corporation engaged in a series of negotiations

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to secure a site for what was termed the Holgate Allotments. An area of land in the area, previously used as a football pitch, which was already owned by the council, was identified as suitable. The area was rented by the ReverendJ. Topham and Mrs. Roberta Grant Lawson, who signalled their intention to give up their tenancy so these, ‘worthy men’ could obtain allotment gardens. The Town Clerk was advised by the Corporation to advertise the availability of plots in the new allotments in the local newspapers. The Clerk was subsequently inundated with requests from residents in the Holgate area asking to be considered as a tenant for the site. Some chose to use this opportunity to state their worthiness for an allotment; one individual wrote how he was retired and needed the occupation, another that he had been resident in the area for many years. Some took the opportunity to find outmore about the allotments asking what could be grown on them, how long the tenancy would be for and one individual who inquired whether the plot would be big enough to keep pigs. This particular gentleman was quickly informed by the Town Clerk that the keeping of pigs on the site would not be allowed. Some, like Mr. Joseph Riches, drew attention to their need to provide for a large family. Mr. Riches, resident at 44 Mount Ephraim, worked as a labourer in the Scarcroft area and with seven children wanted to take on a plot at the new site in Holgate. Work was completed quickly and by January 1906 the first tenants were able to take their plots. One of thefirst given was plot 3 to Mr. John Hallam of 60 Lindley Street, his contractdating from January 1st 1906. The demand for allotments was so high that by September 1906 all the plots on the site had been rented. The process of selection however was strictly monitored with details of the occupation of tenants recorded by the Town Clerk.

The allotment holders soon formed themselves into the Holgate Allotment Holders Association and proceeded to engage and negotiate with the Corporation as to the responsibilities of the latter towards the maintenance of the allotments. In March 1906 for instance, plot holders requested a fence along the side of the path leading to the football field adjacent to Holgateallotments.41

‘As during the football matches held since the allotments were opened the players and followers have strayed on to the ground already dug over, and particularly on the hedge side, have stood to watch the play and tramples the soil down.’

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Figure 2The York Cocoa Works Horticultural Society c.1900s

The letter of complaint contained 47 signatories, nearly all the tenants of the site. The Corporation, in response to this expectation from tenants that the authority was responsible for the site, also demanded a particular responsibility from tenants. This was especially the case with the situations that arose when tenants could not fulfil their original contracts. Theexperience of keeping allotments was new to many tenants as the running of an allotment was new to the Corporation. Some tenants found they had taken on more than they could cope with, or family and employment meant

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they were unable to work the plot. Those willing to let go of their

Figure 2The York Cocoa Works Horticultural Society c.1900s

tenancy had to undertake a process of transfer. This stipulation from the Corporation allowed tenants to write to the Town Clerk, indicating their desire to be released from their contract, but giving the name and details of another individual who was willing to take on the plot. Between 1906 and 1911 nearly twenty-one transfers took place. The Corporation insisted that tenants fulfil this obligation as a means of ensuring no loss was madeon the allotment site, that the particular allotment plot was maintained and not allowed to overgrow and that tenants regard the tenancy agreement as significant. One instance was Mr. W.J. Stride, who in January 1908 wrote tothe Town Clerk requesting his tenancy to be transferred to another as having acquired his plot on the anticipation of being married, he was unable to get a house in the vicinity, and was now living elsewhere in the city.42

The impact of Corporation owned and run allotments in the city was substantial. Residents saw for the Corporation’s duty to provide its residents with allotments being fulfilled. This observation encouraged residents invarious other parts of the city to form themselves into associations and start writing to the Corporation requesting allotments be made available

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in their areas as well. Citizens in the South Bank and Burton Stone Lane areas were persistent in their attempts to get the Corporation to provide allotments for their districts. However, despite the working class activism which had secured the Holgate site for its residents, it was the Liberal ideal of self-improvement which defined the function of the sites. Oscar Rowntreewriting in the Yorkshire Gazette on the 25th of August 1906 stated.43

‘There is no doubt as to the popularity of allotment gardens, and if land is available the Corporation should have no difficulty in widely extendingthem in different districts in York…A glance at the map of York would lead one to believe that in the Haxby Road, Layerthorpe, Bishopthorpe Road and Heslington Road districts land could be acquired for the purpose of allotments if so desired.’

Rowntree defined the three principal values of an allotment to a workingman:

1) If a man puts labour into it he can add materially to his weekly wage from its produce.

2) He is always sure of a good supply of fresh vegetables.3) The cultivation affords pleasure and healthy exercise to one who

may have been cooped-up all day in some factory or other place of business. In addition his family will undoubtedly derive great benefit where they help its cultivation.

An anonymous comment in the same paper referred to the notion of improvement that the allotment offered to working class residents of York.

‘Gardens…bring the wives and children into the scheme of recreation and it is no mean blessing to bestow to associate the whole family with the husband’s and father’s use of his leisure hours. Nothing appeals more strongly to the man than the sight of the flowers and fruits thathave grown up under his own loving care; many a mother wearied by the monotony and drudgery of household cares, finds renewed healthstrength, and brightness while spending the cool of the evening in the midst of such delightful surroundings; and children learn early to associate their happiest hours with the soil’.44

The allotment as a resource both morally and materially were thereby

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reinforced, as through hard labour the individual was considered to be able to reap substantial rewards. Oscar Rowntree estimated the amount of produce that could be grown by one man in a year on a privately-owned allotment site measuring 345 square yards to be considerable.45

‘Vegetables: 42lbs of brussels, 2 bunch of carrots, 24 celery sticks, 7 bunches of lettuce, 2 bunches of onions, 39lbs of peas, 8 bunches of radishes, 18 savoys, 50 cabbages, 96 cauliflowers, 12lbs of Frenchbeans, 8 bunches of mint, 14 bunches of parsley, 320lbs of potatoes, 9 bunches of rhubarb, 4 bunches of turnips.Fruit: 3lbs of gooseberries, 6 quarts and 2lbs of raspberries, 9lbs of red currants, 17lbs of strawberries.Flowers: 245 bunches of flowers, 60 iris blooms, 7 lily blooms, 2 bunchesof polyanthus, 38 rose blooms, 16 tulip blooms, 2 bunches marguerites, 1 bunch of daffodils’.

Holgate allotments represented the achievement of organised public petition by the working class residents of York, but the operation of the site served to reinforce the Liberal ideal of self-improvement. This position was further strengthened by the passing of the Allotments Act of 1908 as the Liberal and Tory dominated Corporation gained a greater control over the creation and management of new allotment sites in York. Consisting of six councillors and aldermen, The Small Holdings and Allotment Committee sat for the first time on January 6th 1908 and their role at this meeting was clearly defined.46

‘…the Committee report to this council as to the obligations and powers of the (1908) Act and other matters, with a view to this council delegating to the Committee such of its powers and duties as may be deemed expedient.’

Bustardthorpe AllotmentsThe Small Holdings and Allotments Committee instructed the Town Clerk in March 1908 to advertise in the local newspapers for those interested in acquiring an allotment to make themselves known to the Committee. The residents of South Bank were the first to respond to this advert requesting anallotment site in their area. The Committee therefore focused their attention on securing land for these citizens. This proved highly problematical as the committee soon found many land owners in the area reluctant to sell or

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lease land that was to be used for allotments. A site at Bustardthorpe, just outside the city boundaries, owned by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, behind the grandstand of the racecourse was briefly considered, but wasdismissed as too far away to be suitable. After a series of setbacks in the attempt to acquire land elsewhere the Committee once again returned to the land at Bustardthorpe. The Committee asked the City Engineer in July 1908 to draw up possible plans to be presented to the newly formed South Bank Allotment Holders’ Association. On the 31st of August 1908 the City Engineer submitted his report.47

‘The Bustardthorpe site provided 152 plots, the areas of which are for the most part ¼ rood (approx. 300 sq. yds.) sections. Of the above number of plots 31 are larger than a ¼ rood, varying from an area of 321 yards to 630 yards. Provision is made for 2 main roads 10 feet wide and 80 yards apart with five cross roads, 7 feet 6inches wide and40 yards apart. It is proposed to make these roads with ashes only…12 stand pipes fed from the Water company’s main, with sunk tubs for the storage of water…Cost: £373-5-0.’

This report was dismissed by the South Bank Allotment Holders’ Association, stating that the Bustardthorpe site was indeed too far away from local residences to be practicable. Despite this objection the Committee pushed ahead with its plans to develop the site into allotments. It began negotiations with the Ecclesiastical Commission to obtain the fields in question inFebruary 1909. By August 1909 the parties had come to agreement as to terms and conditions, and on the 28th of September the two parties signed a contract to lease the land for an initial contract of 21 years at an annual rent of £48-12s-6d. The land measuring over 9 acres was designated in the contract as being procured under the 1908 Allotment Act and specificallyfor the residents in South Bank. Correspondence stated that the land was ‘to provide Allotments under the Act of this year for the labouring classes in the South Bank District of York…’48

On the 25th October 1909 the City Engineer laid out plans for the newly acquired site. It was decided to provide approximately 129 allotments on the two fields, with the plots varying in area from about 160 square yards to477 square yards, though the bulk were set out as 300 square yards. Three roadways were planned on the site with direct access from the adjoining road. Taps and water butts were also planned. To ensure the allotments were

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not operated at a loss the Committee suggested in October 1909 that the

Figure 5Plan of the Bustardthorpe Allotments

yearly rent was to be in the region of 15 shillings for an allotment of a quarter rood. A month later after complaints by the South Bank Allotment Holders Association that the rent to be charged was far too high, the committee agreed that rent should be set at 12s/6d for an allotment of a quarter of a rood (300 square yards). Construction was completed quickly and on the 14th March 1910 the new allotments were let by ballot at the Guildhall in the city centre. Rather than the petitions from working class residents which had led to the development of the Holgate allotments, Bustardthorpe allotments were a Corporation project. There was a great deal of interest in the use and development of Bustardthorpe allotments as a point of pride for the Corporation. On the 19th August 1911 the Yorkshire Gazette reported on the

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first of these shows at Bishopthorpe, marvelling at the speed in which onlytwo years after the site and the site’s allotments holders’ association was formed a competition was being held for their produce at the South Bank Adult School. The high regard for the Corporation’s project is seen in the membership of the Bishopthorpe Road Association in 1914. Not only were all the allotment tenants members, but the Lord Mayor was president and the City Sheriff was vice-president.49

The discussions between the Corporation’s Small Holdings and Allotments Committee and the individual tenants and collective associations of the sites at Bishopthorpe Road and Holgate, reflect the new relationshipsthat were formed through the provision of allotment gardens. The letters of complaints and suggestions submitted to the Committee by tenants also represent a means by which individuals could control and alter the hegemonic relationship between tenants and the Corporation. There were complaints about dogs being exercised on the Bishopthorpe site, for which the committee erected a sign. There was also a continuing debate over whether the Corporation should supply water to both sites and not be refunded by the tenants, which was continuously rejected by the Small Holdings and Allotments Committee. There were also discussions over whether poultry should be allowed on Holgate, as some tenants had already set up hen runs on their plots. Though the keeping of hens was not allowed in the tenancy agreement, the Committee eventually permitted this to continue. That was until other plot holders on the site complained that the hen runs attracted vermin which were damaging their plants. The situation was eventually solved in January 1914 when those plot holders at Holgate who wanted to keep poultry agreed to relocate to the other side of the allotment site on land rented by the Reverend Topham, where proper hen runs could be constructed. The first eviction of a tenant from a Corporation allotment wasalso carried out in this year, as the committee acted against a Mr. J. Berry in April 1914 who owed rent and had let his allotment site go uncultivated. The committee served notice and Mr. Berry was evicted a month later.50

ConclusionsThe provision of allotments in York during the first decades of the twentiethcentury represents the development of the relationships between the local authority and its citizens. These social relationships were created alongside the development of the political arguments regarding the reform of the city. As the working classes of the city became increasingly represented within

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the Corporation, a rise in activism in areas of the city was noticeable. This activism brought a demand for a greater degree of responsibility from the Corporation by its citizens. The effect of this campaigning was to activate a greater degree of control over the creation and planning of the allotment site by the city authority. The allotments in York shifted in meaning and function from the product of working class agitation and a significant socialand economic resource for citizens, to an implement of social reform and control for a dominant Liberal ideology. The granting of allotments to the urban poor of the city in the Holgate region initially represented the hurried response of the Corporation to the demands of citizens. As these allotment gardens were constructed they were subsumed within the wider programme in the city of allotment gardening, as defined by the Rowntree sites. Thepassing of the 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act, whilst superficiallyproviding a means by which citizens could demand the responsibility of local authorities, in practice represented a means of controlling the emergence of the allotment movement in the city. This demonstrates the hegemonic structure of the development of allotment sites in York. As the Holgate and Bustardthorpe sites extended the provision of allotments to larger sections of the urban poor in the city, it also acted to ameliorate the working class activism by institutionalising the ideals represented by the allotments. The 1908 Act and the following legislative acts throughout the twentieth century, which governed the construction of allotment sites, brought cultivation into the city of York but significantly it also served to cultivate its citizens.

NOTES1. B.S. Rowntree, Poverty, a study of town life. (Macmillan and Co. London. 1901).2. A.J. Peacock, York 1900 to 1914. (York Settlement Trust. York. 1992).3. E.M. Sigsworth, ‘Modern York’ in P.M. Tillot (ed.) A History of Yorkshire: The City of York. (Oxford University Press. London 1961). p.275.4. B. Keith-Lucas and P.G. Richards, A History of Local Government in the Twentieth Century. (George Allen and Unwin. London 1978). p.13.5. D. Eastwood, Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700-1870. (Macmillan. Houndmills. 1997). p.83-84.6. J. Redlich and F.W. Hirst, The History of Local Government in England. Second Edition. (Macmillan. London 1970). p.129.7. J. Morton, Better than Peabody: local authority housing from 1890 to 1919. (Joseph Rowntree Foundation. York 1991).8. J. Burns, Municipal Socialism: A Reply…to The Times. (London, 1902)9. The Evening Press, 28 October 1899.10. The Evening Press, 13 October 1899.11. The Evening Press, 11 October 189912. G. Briggs, Jubilee History of the York Equitable Industrial Society Limited. (Co-operative Wholesale Society’s Printing Works. Manchester 1909). p.139-140.13. The Yorkshire Herald, 23 October 1900.14. Briggs. op cit. p.139.15. Rowntree. op cit.

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16. A. Briggs, A Study of the Work of Seebohm Rowntree 1871-1954. (Longmans. London). p.25.17. Rowntree. op cit. p.115.18. Rowntree. op cit. p.118.19. Rowntree. op cit. p.313.20. Rowntree. op cit. p.116.21. The Yorkshire Herald 1900, 2 November 1900.22. The Yorkshire Herald 26 October 1900.23. Briggs. op cit. p.25.24. A.K. Russell, Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906. (David & Charles. Newton Aboot 1973). p.65.25. P. Lynch, The Liberal Party in Rural England 1885-1910: Radicalism and Community. (Clarendon Press. Oxford 2003). p.137.26. G.L. Bernstein, Liberalism and Liberal Politics in Edwardian England. (Allen and Unwin. London 1986). p. 96.27. C. Cook, A Short History of the Liberal Party 1900-2001. Sixth Edition. (Palgrave. Houndmills 2002). p.39-40.28. B. Short, Land and Society in Edwardian Britain. (Cambridge University Press. Cambridge 1997) p.9.29. P. Rowland, The Last Liberal Governments: The Promised Land, 1905-1910. (Barrie and Rockliff. London 1968). p.122.30. Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908. http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1908/cukpga_19080036_en_1. Page consulted 1st March 2009.31. Lynch. op cit. p.136.32. York City Archives. Small Holdings and Allotments Committee, 6 January 1908.33. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks. (Lawrence and Wishart. London 1971). p.181-182.34. York City Archives. Holgate Allotments, January 1906.35. York City Archives. Holgate Allotments, January 1906.36. The Evening Press. 2 November 1904.37. York City Archives. Holgate Allotments, January 1906.38. York City Archives. Holgate Allotments, January 1906.39. The Yorkshire Herald 11 January 1905.40. York City Archives. Holgate Allotments, January 1906.41. York City Archives. Holgate Allotments, January 1906.42. York City Archives. Holgate Allotments, January 1906.43. O. Rowntree, ‘Allotments: How and where to get them and their use’, Yorkshire Gazette. 25th August 1906. p.16.44. Comment, Yorkshire Gazette. 25th August 1906. p.28.45. O. Rowntree. op cit. p.16.46. York City Archives Small Holdings and Allotments Committee, 6 January 1908.47. Small Holdings and Allotments Committee V1, 1908-1919. March to August 1909.48. York City Archives. Lease 1909 Bishopthorpe Road 612/3.49. ‘Bishopthorpe Road Corporation Allotments Holders’ Association formed’, Yorkshire Gazette 19 August 1911. p.28.50. York City Archives. Small Holdings and Allotments Committee V1, 1908-1919. April to June 1910.

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TOPOGRAPHIES OF ANTI-NUCLEAR ART IN LATE COLD WAR LOS ANGELES

Michelle Moravec

With the tenth anniversary of the end of the Cold War drawing near, museums around the world mounted exhibitions that focused on the cultural aspect of the conflict. From the Victoria and Albert in London to the LosAngeles Museum of Contemporary Art , almost all considerations of culture in the Cold War focus on the first two decades. The periodisation of these exhibitions reflects the dominant trend in scholarship, which centers on theyears in which the slow simmer conflict experienced frequent flare ups.Studies of Cold War culture take one of two tacks, exploring the impact of the bomb on manifestations of culture, such as art, literature and film, as wellas fashion, design, and everyday aesthetics. Another school concentrates on the ways that high art was pressed into diplomatic service during the Cold War. This narrative strand ties the formalist concerns that dominated aesthetics to the zeitgeist of the Cold War. Since very little political content could be imputed to non-figurative or non-realist art, the story goes, this artmade the perfect expression of American culture for use by cold warrior administrations. In recent years, both accounts of culture in the Cold War have received considerable elaboration in some finely wrought studies. However, the focus still remains on the 1950s and early 1960s, with the rare work moving past the Cuban Missile Crisis. The influential historian ofthe Cold War, Charles S Meier, divides the long conflict into eight epochs.The lengthy period of dormancy in the 1970s, which Meier characterizes as ‘domestic reform and détente’ resulted in a decline in the Cold War cultural battles. It also coincided with the fading of the first wave of anti-nuclearactivism, as Paul Boyer has persuasively demonstrated in his analysis of the trajectory of anti-nuclear protests. By the 1960s, the American public had lost interest in the issue.

However the 1980s saw frightening developments in the area of U.S. foreign relations that led to a revived anti-nuclear movement. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Polish government’s crack down on solidarity worsened relations between the U.S. and the USSR The ascendance of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in January of 1981 ushered in a new era of nuclear uncertainty. Reagan’s support for NATO plans to place cruise and

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Pershing missiles in Britain and several other Western European countries seemed evidence enough to some people that nuclear Armageddon was imminent. Reagan’s frank, and to some frightening, remarks about the possibility of nuclear war in Europe as well as his proposed $180 billion military budget further fueled fears about nuclear war. After four years of treaty making and arms limitations under Carter, the nuclear threat once again became real as the government of the United States spoke of civil defense and strategies for surviving a nuclear bomb. While efforts to limit the proliferation of nuclear arms had begun almost as soon as the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nuclear freeze movement in the United States grew rapidly in early 1980s in response to Reagan’s proposed defense initiatives.

In a reversal of the early years of the Cold War, the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980’s was most notable for artists who protested against the state. Indeed, the very events that knocked Russia and the nuclear threat off the front page of United States’ newspapers in the 1960’s, the escalating civil rights movement and conflict in Vietnam, changed the practice of art formany artists. No longer dominated by coolly removed formalism, artists began making work that directly addressed political issues. Socially engaged and often overtly partisan, this art could not be used by political administrations to illustrate the superiority of the United States. Instead in the final decade of the Cold War, the past was inverted. Artists made workthat directly challenged what increasingly appeared to be an inevitable nuclear war.

This early 1980s art had a distinct edge. The earnestness of the 1960s no longer played well. Instead humor, irony, and sarcasm became stratagems of the activist artist. No where was this more apparent than in Los Angeles. Some three thousand miles from the long shadow of New York, artists developed their own oppositional art world style. Art critic Linda Burnham’s description of L.A. performance art as ‘an art that tries to right the world, that plucks images and philosophies, histories and music from the whole of human knowledge and tries to roll it together into one great ball of meaning to turn humankind from its fearful path’ is an apt description of the strand of the L.A. alternative art scene that explored in this essay.1 Developed at sites as diverse as the California Institute for the Arts, Woman’s Building, and the Social and Public Art Resource Center, this art scene was indebted as much to the identity politics of the 1960s as it was to the new art genres

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of that era.

Building on Reyner Banham’s Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, this article takes the reader on a virtual driving tour of early 1980’s Los Angeles anti-nuclear protest art. L.A. is, to borrow Banham’s felicitous phrase ‘the uniquely mobile metropolis’ best viewed from behind the wheel of the car.2 The fourth section of his classic riffed on the popular Disney attraction Autopia in which children play at driving. Endless circles of the track may be seen as a metaphor for the mindless, purposeless vapidity, of L.A. Yet for Banham the car became the ultimate metaphor for the freedom of the west, embodied in the sprawling architecture of Los Angeles. His influential work serendipitously appeared concomitantly with the rise ofLos Angeles as a cultural capital, not just of popular entertainment, but as a city that vied with New York to be the center of the American art world.

L.A. developed its own influential aesthetic. Unlike New York City,dominated by major institutions and with a street life more akin to European cities, Los Angeles is a fractured and dispersed metropolis. Appropriately artists working in LA developed a drive by aesthetic, fueled in equal parts by advertising, Hollywood, and the peculiar sense of inventiveness that characterizes the west combined to create a ‘sense of possibilities still ahead.’3 In early 1981, your average motorist tooling around Los Angeles might have done a double take at the sight of a now well known political poster Nuclear War?! … There Goes my Career (figure 1). Still some yearsbefore Robbie Conal gained fame for his scathing caricatures of Reagan, Mark Vallen, a well known chronicler of the punk scene and member of the growing Chicano art movement, created a piece calculated to appeal not only to the aesthetics but the pragmatics of activism in Los Angeles. Vallen modeled his figure in part on Wonder Woman, and with its obvious nod toLichtenstein’s pop art, his piece was both aesthetically familiar and initially non-threatening to the viewer. The deceptively brief text undercuts the familiarity of the image with a deeply ironic commentary on the priorities of the average American citizen. Vallen recalls that the work was intended as ‘a critique against those self-possessed and upwardly mobile individuals who were too busy with their careers to notice they were in part responsible for the state of the world.’4 It offered a grim view of American complacency in the face of the nuclear threat.

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Vallen was inspired to create Nuclear War?! ... There Goes My Career after the election of Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980. Reagan’s description of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ along with his support for NATO plans to place cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe and his proposed $180 billion military budget for a ramped up defense initiatives convinced some people that nuclear Armageddon was imminent. Finally Reagan’s frank, and to some frightening, remarks about the possibility of nuclear war revived the anti-nuclear movement in the United States.5

Return to our imagined motorist, stopped by a traffic light at the busiestintersection in Los Angeles. Wilshire Boulevard, the main east –west drag of Los Angeles, is bisected by Veteran Avenue, so called because it passes by the Los Angeles National Cemetery. Stuck at that seemingly interminable intersection, where gridlock means a car may remain for several cycles of the light, this driver might have glanced aimlessly out the window. On one side of the street stands the Spirit of ’98, a monument to the long forgotten Spanish American war.6 Liberty, her lamp aloft, is nude save for a flowingcloak. She is flanked by two soldiers, weapons at the ready, to defend herand her ideals. Looking the other direction on May 17 1982, that driver might have been startled by the view. In front of Federal Building, four nuns, clad in rainbow-hued habits, stood among a graveyard of shovels that invoked the acres of tombstones behind Liberty in the VA cemetery.

This concrete reminder of the outcome of war was Shovel Defense, a collaborative effort of Los Angeles artist Marguerite Elliot and a performance art group, Sisters Of Survival (SOS) comprised of Nancy Angelo, Jerri Allyn, Anne Gauldin, Cheri Gaulke, and Sue Maberry, all participants in the L.A. feminist art scene.7 Inspired by a cover story in Time magazine about anti-nuclear demonstrations in Amsterdam that drew 300,000 people in November of 1981, SOS decided to organize to let Europeans know that despite Reagan’s aggressive cold warrior stance, they, and other Americans, ‘heard their cry.’ 8 The group used the image of the nun because it represented an ordered community of women working to combat the chaos of nuclear war, but it was also humorous and slightly mischievous, characteristics of all SOS work.

The impetus for and imagery of Shovel Defense derived from a comment by T.K. Jones, an undersecretary of defense in the Regan administration that in a nuclear war ‘if there are enough shovels to go around, everybody's

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going to make it. Dig a hole in the ground, cover with a couple of doors, and then cover the doors with three feet of dirt. It's the dirt that does it.9 In response, Paul Conrad, a Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, drew a shovel graveyard captioned ‘Administration’s civil-defense plan for nuclear war.’

Elliot saw Jones’ remarks as ‘sheer lunacy’ and her pieced mocked the idea that ‘nuclear war can be survived.’10 She created an elaborate parody of Jones’ comments drawing on the imagery of Conrad’s cartoon. Fifty shovel handles formed a triangular graveyard, a reference to the geometric symbol that marked civilian fallout shelters. The banner ‘Shovel Defense: A Grave Mistake’ provided the backdrop of the piece and continued the satirical message by punning on the meaning of grave as a burial site as well as an adjective that means weighty, momentous, or important. Among this graveyard, the Sisters Of Survival performed a macabre dance of death that pantomimed a reaction to an imagined nuclear attack. The dance drew on the familiar ‘duck and cover’ drills propagated by the Federal Civil Defense Administration in the 1950s. An additional performer clothed in a radiation suit, distributed an explanatory flyer to the car-bound audience. It outlinedthe purpose of the art piece and offered contact information for viewers interested in nuclear disarmament.

Artists concerned about the looming nuclear threat seemed everywhere in the frightening days of the first Reagan administration. Once past thesurprising sight of Shovel Defense, a quick drive down Wilshire Boulevard to the intersection of Third Street provides another stop on our anti-nuclear art tour of Los Angeles. On the cusp of revitalization, the Third Street Promenade as it came to be known was still a somewhat edgy alternative area in the early 1980s. Home to the fabled Midnight Special Bookstore, the promenade was anchored at one end by Santa Monica Place, a shopping mall designed by famed architect Frank Gehry. USC for a while had a satellite gallery, Atelier, in this mall, which is where Sheila Pinkel installed Thermonuclear Garden, an information artwork, in October of 1983 (figure3).11 Drawing on her own meticulous research into the military industrial complex, Pinkel used a sly humor to focus on Los Angeles’ role in the worldwide production and distribution of nuclear weapons. Playing off the image of Los Angeles as an erstwhile garden of Eden, she created a Thermonuclear Garden of dead plants, punning on double meaning of plant as a military production site, to show that what Los Angeles increasingly

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grew was weapons of destruction. The visual invocation of the potential consequences for botanic life if the products of nuclear plants were ever used highlighted the vulnerability of Los Angeles as potential target of attack. This fifth version, which contained information about local Santa Monicacompanies, was appropriately installed within walking distance of Rand, the largest defense industry think tank in the United States. Pinkel’s piece was not only site specific but quite timely. After viewing Thermonuclear Garden a city official voted to reject an application for the expansion ofthe facilities of Lear Siegler Corporation, since she recalled from viewing Thermonuclear Garden that is was the second largest defense contractor in Santa Monica. When she withdrew support for the permit, other members of the committee followed suit and the permit was not granted despite pressure from local defense contractors who were outraged.12

If our imagined motorist left Santa Monica and travelled far, far downtown on 3rd street eventually she would arrive at the site of Target L.A., an anti-nuclear art and music festival that occurred on in 8-9 August, 1982. Appropriately for a city dominated by car culture, Target L.A. took place in one of the hulking concrete parking structures that dot the landscape. Occurring on the anniversary of the droppings of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Target LA, occurred at the intersection of 3rd Street and Alameda, two of the four streets that bound ‘Little Tokyo.’ Two Asian American anti-nuclear groups, Asian Pacific Americans for Nuclear Awareness and AsianAmericans for Nuclear Disarmament, helped organize Target L.A.

The origins of Target L.A. lay in the anti-nuclear art of Lee Waisler. In May of 1981, Los Angles Times art critic Suzanne Muchnic derided Waisler’s anti-nuclear paintings. In response, Waisler dumped a truckload of manure outside the Times’ office. Subsequent anti-nuclear pieces such a protestagainst nuclear proliferation that Waisler publicized by stenciling ‘Target L.A.’ at intersections throughout the city gained Waisler considerable notoriety. Dave Lumian, director of the Southern California Alliance for Survival contacted Wasiler regarding artist participation in Alliance events. What began as a group of eight artists meeting in Waisler’s down town loft soon expanded to over three hundred artists, calling themselves L.A. Artists for Survival (LAAFS), an offshoot of the Alliance for Survival. By January of 1982 LAAFS began planning a series of Target L.A. events, which included, among other things, Shovel Defense. An estimated four thousand people attended Target L.A. SOS member Gaulke, along with the veteran

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alternative music impresario Ed Pearl, coordinated an impressive roster of musicians and a host of poets and spoken word artists. Thirty or so visual artists displayed works, including Lee Waisler, Marguerite Elliot and SOS.

Mother Art, a feminist performance art group with a long history of addressing political issues in Los Angeles, created Mother Art, a feminist performance art group with a long history of addressing political issues in Los Angeles, created L.A./Guernica a transposition of Picasso’s famous anti-war mural to the skyline of Los Angeles (Figure 4).13 Life sized cut outs of women, based on the figures of Mother art members, stood throughoutthe installation in poses reacting to a nuclear attack. Picasso’s bomb light became a mushroom cloud. Recalling the infamous ‘daisy’ commercial (from the 1964 LBJ campaign), in front of the Picasso-inspired backdrop stood a sandbox for children’s play. The effect was a chilling tableau of the potential consequences of nuclear devastation in Los Angeles.

After listening to performers and viewing art, the audience at Target L.A. ascended to the upper level of the parking structure to play ‘games of nuclear chance.’ These clever participatory events drew in audience members to raise awareness about the personal threat of nuclear war, while stressing the need to pass the Bilateral Nuclear Weapons Freeze (Proposition 12) appearing on the upcoming November ballot. This citizen sponsored piece of non-binding legislation represented an effort by Californians to counter the increasingly aggressive nuclear posturing by the Reagan administration and it passed handily.

So maybe your average Angeleno did not make the long drive into downtown for Target LA, but happened to be driving over one of the odd little bridges in the Venice canals, another hotspot for the alternative arts in L.A.; a tide of light floats by. The poignant sight is toronagashi, a Japanese ritual duringwhich lanterns are floated down a river to guide the souls of the dead back toheaven. Since this festival takes place in August, it has become a means of commemorating the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. SOS used the ritual as the closing ceremony for their exhibition End Of The Rainbow. The two and a half year international art exchange was in many ways similar to the cultural exchanges that occurred in the early years of the Cold War -- with one notable difference. It resulted in a very different sort of artists’ diplomacy. SOS signaled not a message of distress, but one of hope. While SOS created Shovel Defense and participated in events like Target

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L.A., the group also collected documentation of North American artworks dealing with the nuclear threat, including among other pieces Mark Vallen’s graphics. To circumvent diplomatic channels, SOS decided to take messages directly to the people of Europe from American anti-nuclear groups. They translated these messages in to pictographic semaphore flags (figure 5A).These elements were combined in street installations in five sites in Europeduring the fall of 1982 (figure 5 B). While in Europe, SOS continued thevisual dialogue by collecting documentation of European anti-nuclear art as well as messages of hope from Europeans to Americans. On returning to the United States, SOS created a traveling exhibition of documentation and art works from all phases of End Of The Rainbow.

For a few years, overlapping networks of L.A. artists tweaked the consciences and the consciousness of Angelenos to provide a consistent reminder of the threat of nuclear war, at times supplementing the political process and at times supplanting it. However, by the mid 1980s a shift in the zeitgeist occurred. A harbinger was the failure of second Target L.A. in September of 1983.

The nuclear freeze initiative passed in California in November of 1982 was followed by a similar Congressional Bill in May of 1983. In January 1984 Ronald Reagan began evincing his more conciliatory tone that would lead the rapid conclusion of the four and a half decade Cold War. Then again, maybe it was nuclear burnout, a recurring phenomenon noted by historians of the anti-nuclear movement.14 In November of 1983, more than half the television audience watched The Day After a docudrama about the impact of a nuclear attack on the United States. Lacking the humorous touch of the L.A. artists, this movie shifted the tone to one of horror and dread. Faced with such a daunting vision of the future, it may have been easier to simply turn off rather than confront nuclear fear. Although still some years before the Cold war finally sputtered out, these events presaged the end of an anti-nuclear movement. As Meier so succinctly put it, by the mid 1980s, it was already apparently to many that ‘the cold war was indeed history.’15

While the earlier phases of the Cold War provide more interesting historical events and more concerted uses of culture in the conflict, the longer phasesof quiescence that occurred during the 1970s, and the reemergence of protests during the early 1980s need to be incorporated into the long span of the Cold War and considerations of the role culture played. Artists were not

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simply collaborators in the struggle between East and West. Increasingly they became activists on the other side, for peace, and for an end to the nuclear arms race.

Because L.A. is not a city given to monumentality, to again quote Reyner Banham, most of the work discussed here was ephemeral.16 While it was well known at the time, documentaries were made of both Target L.A. and about Lee Waisler’s work, many of these pieces have been forgotten.17 While the L.A. artists discussed in this piece continued to protest Reagan policies, particularly those in Latin America, by the middle of the decade, the network of anti-nuclear activism had faded.18 The drivers of Los Angeles were left with something less weighty than their own destruction to ponder while stuck in gridlock. Still perhaps an echo remained, as they sung along to the radio to Sting’s Russians (1985), with its haunting refrain ‘I hope the Russians love their children too.’

Figure 1. Mark Vallen Nuclear War? … There Goes my Career (1980)

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Figure 2. Sisters Of Survival and Marguerite Elliot Shovel Defense (1982)

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Figure 3. Sheila Pinkel Thermonuclear Garden (1985)

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Figure 4. Mother Art Flyer for L.A./Guernica (1982)

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Figure 5A and B Sisters Of Survival End of the Rainbow (1982-1984)

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NOTES1. Linda Frye Burnham, ‘High Performance,’ Performance Art, and Me’ The Drama Review: TDR, 30, No. 1. 1986. p.43.2. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), p.5.3. op cit. Banham. P.225.4. Mark Vallen. Nuclear War?! There Goes My Career!< http://www.art-for-a-change.com/blog/2005/08/nuclear-war-there-goes-my-career.html> 5. David S. Meyer, A Winter of Discontent: The Nuclear Freeze and American Politics. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990).6. Officially titled United Spanish War Veterans monument, it was createdby Roger Noble Burnhamin in 1950. The original marble crumbed in the 1971 earthquake and was recreated in plaster and concrete by sculptor David Wilkens in 1973. 7. All SOS members were part of the Woman’s Building, the center of the L.A. feminist art scene. Collaborative performance roots ran strong in the group. Cheri Gaulke and Nancy Angelo participated in the Feminist Art Workers, while Anne Gauldin and Jerri Allyn, were members of The Waitresses, and Sue Maberry was a longtime friend of the other women.8. Interview with Cheri Gaulke August 6, 1992, Los Angeles, California.9. Robert Scheer, ‘U.S. Could Survive War in Administration’s View’ Los Angeles Times. January 16, 1982, A1. 10. Marguerite Elliot and Cheri Gaulke, ‘Anti-nuclear Artists Protest Civil Defense’ (press release), May 3, 1982, possession of the author.11. Sheila Pinkel. ‘ ‘Thermonuclear Gardens’: Information Artworks about the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex’ Leonardo, 34, No. 4. 2001. pp. 319-326 12. Pinkel, ‘’Thermonuclear Gardens’: Information Artworks about the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex.’ p.321.13. Membership in Mother Art varied over the years. Suzanne Siegal, Laura Silagi, and Deborah Krall created this piece. Mother Art shared a history of involvement with the Woman’s Building, the center of the L.A. feminist art scene with members of SOS and Marguerite Eliot. The group also collaborated with Sheila Pinkel in 1978 on a protest against Proposition 13, a property tax reform initiative that curtailed funds for the arts.14 .Paul Boyer, ‘From Activism to Apathy: The American People and Nuclear Weapons, 1963-1980’ Journal of American History. 70, No 4. 1984. pp.821-844, and David S. Meyer, ‘Peace Protest and Policy: Explaining the Rise and Decline of Antinuclear Movements in Postwar America’ Policy Studies Journal. 21, No 1. 2005. pp. 35 � 51.15. Meier xiv.16. Banham, Los Angeles: Architecture of Four Ecologies. p. 5.17. The Art of Survival. Videorecording. Produced by Beth Block (1986) and Citizen Artist: Lee Waisler videorecording. Director Michael Herzmark. (1984).18. Laura Silagi and Suzanne Siegel two of the members of Mother Art created Gloria (1984) which explored the lives of Central American refugee women in Los Angeles. Pinkel worked extensively with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. Vallen created numerous posters satirizing Reagan’s foreign policies in Central America.

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SOCIAL ORDER AND DISORDER IN NINETEENTH CENTURY DRINK PLACE: AN EVALUATION OF MANCHESTER AND

SALFORD

Deborah Woodman

When considering the history of public drinking habits and the establishments in which it took place attention is often paid, either with horror or amusement, to the problematic behaviour that occurred. When analysing where such opinions on nineteenth-century drinking habits originate it is clear how numerous pieces of legislation, nineteenth-century newspapers, and contemporary accounts have emphasised the anti-social results of drinking habits and in turn influenced historical analysis. Equally, publicperceptions were shaped by the likes of temperance movement campaigns and eighteenth and nineteenth-century imagery such as that offered by Cruikshank, Hogarth and Rowlandson.1 However such conclusions are formed, it is apparent that overall the focus has been on negative social consequences. These preconceptions need to be rigorously tested as by looking deeper it is evident that views in this area are unbalanced and it is the intention of this article to refocus the debate by challenging conventional perceptions and argue that drinking establishments promoted social order as well as disorder. This research has been drawn from a range of sources including periodicals, newspapers and parliamentary select committee reports, and recent historical analysis. Much of the evidence available to the modern day historian is often from the ‘respectable’ and ‘official’contributor which offers only a partial viewpoint in the debate, though even here close analysis reveals glimpses into more positive social functions of drinking establishments, illustrating the degree of reliance on public houses for key social activities which in turn created a form of social order until the establishment of more formalised institutions. The article focuses on Manchester from around 1830 to the 1880s, a time of major change in both drinking habits and the legislation that influenced them in the wake of theBeerhouse Act of 1830 that allowed any householder that could afford the two guineas each year to obtain an excise license and sell beer from their own house. This legislation had a major impact on the quantity of establishments which supplied alcohol and consequent drinking habits.2 The article investigates issues that surrounded drunkenness and anti-social behaviour

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affecting Mancunian society alongside more orderly associations drinking establishments adopted, such as the development and role of societies and clubs. Friendly societies are used as a case study to illustrate how their relationship with drinking establishments created a degree of social order where the positive role they held in people's lives was evident from early on in the nineteenth century. Public houses offered a vital role in servicing such activities, and in doing so contributed to the social, economic, and political life of urban working-class districts. The article begins by examining recent historians’ debates surrounding the drinking place and social behaviour during the period in question. This is followed by synthesising a range of contemporary sources that emphasise degrees of social disorder, with subsequent analyses of evidence that support social order functions. It is here that the role of friendly societies, in particular, reinforces the concept of drink places sustaining a social order function.

It is when looking at recent historians’ work on drink and its establishments that it becomes evident that retrospective analysis often has a more nostalgic and positive conclusion to that of contemporary writers. The sense of social cohesion and working-class organisation that modern-day writers refer to emanates from the early part of the nineteenth century. For instance, when looking at this earlier phase Behagg argued that, ‘the public house, for example, provided far more than just a meeting place for the working-class club or trade society. As a central focus of leisure within the working community it was, if anything, more impenetrable to the social order than the workplace itself’.3 Equally we have a similar line of thought from E.P.Thompson, who considered that, ‘between 1780 and 1830 important changes took place. The ‘average’ English working man became more disciplined, more subject to the productive tempo of ‘the clock’; more reserved and methodical, less violent and less spontaneous’.4 Peter Bailey argues that, ‘in an age of social dislocation the pub remained a centre of warmth, light and sociability for the urban poor’.5 These views contrast with contemporary observers, whose portrayal of drink and pubs were in a less than flattering vein. The French journalist, Leon Faucher, for example,described Manchester in 1844 where, ‘drunkenness has infused itself into the bosom of society. Habits have conquered shame’.6 These views were echoed by Friedrich Engels, who writing at around the same time as Faucher regarded drink as one of the more negative vices of the working class.7 Jerome Caminada, a former detective in Manchester, emphasised how public houses were allowed to remain open from four in the morning to one o’clock

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the following morning with many of them well-known haunts of thieves and loose women.8 The period in question was one not only of industrial change, but one of major social and political transformation where challenges to the pre-existing order of society had led to middle- and upper-class concerns over their attempts to reform and control an increasingly articulate working class and it is therefore unsurprising that many contemporaries viewed their society with alarm and concern.9 Recent research on drink and violence in Victorian Britain has stressed how notions of violence in society were very different from our contemporary society, where acceptability of minor violent incidents was an integral part of daily life.10 Double standards often prevailed, where, for example, a working-class person had to adopt teetotalism if they were to be regarded as reformed, unlike middle-class indiscretions who were allowed to follow more temperance-style attitudes.11 Equally, female drinking was frowned upon regardless of social status.

When considering social disorder in relation to drinking establishments, what exactly is being referred to? Clearly, we are looking at drunkenness and its behavioural consequences, and this is probably the foremost thought, particularly when the very same issue is high on our current social agenda in present day society. However, problematic issues are extended in the nineteenth century to include publicans’ abuse of licenses in relation to opening hours. In particular Sunday trading and selling alcohol during the hours of divine service was a contentious matter and a particular problem in a more religiously-dominated society. Some beerhouse proprietors were even known to serve alternative drink products such as ginger beer after eleven o’clock in the evening which was the result of a technical loophole in contemporary licensing legislation.12 Furthermore, we are looking at the role of women in nineteenth-century society, particularly for those engaging in prostitution, frequenting drink places and often appearing in local beerhouses. Equally, there was the grey area of ‘harbouring disorderly characters’, which relied on the interpretation of the authorities to ascertain any breaches in the law. This quite often included drink place keepers allowing drunken and criminal behaviour on their premises, facilitating trading in dubious goods, harbouring hoax beggars, and receiving stolen property.13 These activities were the main focus of police attention, who were ultimately responsible for formally informing against houses and their keepers.14 Police watch committees provided annual reports to magistrates on levels of conduct in Manchester’s public houses and beerhouses. Some beerhouses operated widely out of official hours and ‘watches’ were

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employed to notify the keeper if the police were in the vicinity.15 Evidence from the 1852 Select Committee on Public Houses illustrates the grading of offences according to levels of severity. For example, harbouring thieves and prostitutes was regarded as a more serious offence than selling beer in the hours of divine service.16 Concerns over conduct in beerhouses were more prevalent than public houses, where full spirit licenses granted to public houses via magistrates guaranteed close supervision by the authorities who ensured that publicans kept their houses in better order. Whilst not conveying the impression public houses were faultless, a clear difference did emerge between different types of drink place and resulting social outcomes and this was largely the consequence of the different licensing mechanisms the two types of establishments operated within.

Evidence of the criteria for granting licences to drink places can be seen in the local press during the mid-1830s, which outlined three main considerations. First, the granting of licenses should be conduced sparingly. Second, there had to be consideration to the geography of any proposed license so that it did not add to already numerous establishments within the same locality. Finally, there were issues over the respectability of the potential licensee.17 There were, in fact, several stages before a license was finally removedfrom its keeper. Licensing committee evidence indicates how individuals were given warnings and fines before the sessions. If these were not heededlicenses were revoked. Examples of license removal included two keepers from Deansgate, John Ormrod of the Woolpack who had already been finedfive pounds, and William Green of the Sun public house, where there hadbeen considerable fighting and indecent conduct at the establishment.18

The 1830s were a pivotal turning point for drinking establishments and their interaction with society. Not only did this decade witness the emergence of beerhouses, but in a response to new competition and business threat against them many public houses opened up spirit vaults. The gin palace was a particular notorious type of establishment that appeared relatively quickly and became a social order concern. In 1834 it was reported that five of Manchester’s vaults: Gibsons in Market Place, Cuff’s, Crown Inn,George, and Garrick’s Head vaults, were all complained against owing to increased drunkenness.19 Charles Bagshaw, chaplain of Salford gaol, attributed drink-related crime in the Manchester area in the first half of the1830s to price cutting in the sale of alcoholic beverages, a related rise in spirit drinking, and the emergence of beerhouses. Bagshaw considered that

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Manchester and Salford crime rates directly correlated with intemperance, and estimated that approximately four out of five of the offences ofprisoners in Salford gaol were drink-related.20 Female drinking was also on the increase, where he argued that approximately one-fifth of those jailedwere women and many of these were for drink-related crime.21 Saturday and Sunday were notably problematic days for such behaviour, partly due to market day in central Manchester on Saturdays. Benjamin Braidley, a former Boroughreeve of Manchester, observed in the early 1830s that public houses were noticeably fuller on Saturday evening, and he also correlated this in response to the end of the working week and the payment of wages at this time.22 When looking at drink-related social disorder we are not only referring to Manchester’s indigenous population. The numbers of visitors and people in transit through Manchester and Salford were also a social order issue, where around 40,000 ‘strangers’ each week passed through the area, according to Cooke-Taylor.23

Charles Bagshaw’s reminiscences of his time at Salford gaol allow us to see some of the types of incidents that were recalled, though some stories were dramatised to add effect to their recollections. Here is one such recollection:

A man began to drink at half past six on Sunday morning, and was perfectly drunk by eight o’clock……I had it from the man, when he was lying in the hospital, that he and two others, in the course of Sunday morning, had drank eleven pints of gin amongst them, he went on drinking till the Tuesday, and was taken up for breaking the furniture of the public house; he had been a prize-fighter, he had fought more than twenty pitchedbattles, and was generally backed by the publicans to fight; he told mehe had been for many years so employed, that he would fight for twentyshillings a battle; that he had fought one hundred and fifty rounds on oneoccasion. This man is at present in the gaol: he was committed on 17th June, and on the 20th was admitted into the hospital, labouring under the effects of drinking; it was very soon found necessary that he should be muffled; the doctor pronounced it was unsafe that he should be at liberty;he had no perceptible pulse for six hours; in the course of four or fivedays he came around again; on the Sunday following his debauch, he gave me the recital of it.24

The case of Sarah Hulse was another instance, who was transported on 21st

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October 1833, and despite having been married just thirteen days earlier before her appearance in jail to a ‘respectable’ sort had continued her occupation as a prostitute. Her first visit into Manchester resulted in a gindrinking session, after which she plied her trade then robbed her client of twenty shillings.25

The development of spirit vaults created a new set of social order concerns. This was in part owing to their internal design where their size, splendour, facilities, and easy access from the street facilitated anti-social behaviour. These factors were highlighted in a variety of parliamentary reports. Not only did establishments that specifically sold spirits had created garishinteriors which were suitably enticing as to make them a supervisory problem, but many of Manchester’s estimated 130 ‘dram’ shops were attached to established public houses and inns that provided separate entrances to the vaults for easy access.26 Gin Palaces were a particular problem. ‘Of those we have in Manchester nearly fifty are of the mostsplendid description’, James Turner declared to the 1834 Select Committee on Drunkeness.27 Many of these outlets had little, if any, seating and their design was to encourage people to enter, quickly consume spirits, and then move on. Braidley estimated that two-thirds of licensed victuallers in the 1830s had opened dram-shops largely to offset the loss of trade in beer sales resulting from the increase in beerhouses after 1830. However, he was keen to separate out the most respectable inns and hotels from his calculations.28 Furthermore, he emphasised how spirit drinking in Manchester in the 1830s had become more visible compared to that of the 1820s. Many original dram vaults, whose private entrances emphasised anonymity had by the 1830s become brightly-lit attractions. What had been socially unacceptable behaviour now lacked the shame it once had, and the experience of visiting a spirit vault became less of an anonymous and private action into more of a public statement. However, despite concerns about such establishments, Manchester’s gin palaces did not attain the lavish status attributed to their London counterparts.29 1850s concerns surrounding spirit vaults had changed little from the 1830s. The former mayor and magistrate of Manchester, Elkanah Armitage reiterated earlier commentators when in 1852 he described local gin shops as ‘a great room for persons to come to the bar and ask for spirits, without the accommodation of sitting down’.30 Their internal layout and design remained both a cause for concern and a focus for complaint.31 Dr James Hudson, chairman of the Association for the Better Regulation of Public Houses, Beer Shops, and Houses of Public

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Entertainment in the Boroughs of Manchester and Salford, emphasised how, ‘in these houses the evil is in the drinking of spirits at the bar; the people of course drink hurriedly, and go into the streets again, return, and at last get an habitual taste for ardent spirits’.32 Deansgate, one of Manchester’s main thoroughfares, was a particularly problematic area, where in the early 1850s an estimated 28 spirit vaults were located on one highway alone and approximately 30 to 40 gin palaces in Manchester as a whole.33 Hudson attributed much of the drunken behaviour and resulting offences in the Deansgate locality primarily to the volume of spirit vaults in a confinedarea where the quantity of businesses and density of people attracted to the highway created ideal conditions for social disorder problems. His estimation that one-fifth of crime in Manchester and one-third of crime inSalford arose from drunkenness are, however, not empirically supported.34 By mid-century there is a curtailment in the development of gin palaces owing to new restrictions on licensing that ensured premises would no longer be converted into spirit vaults, particularly gin palaces. The treasurer of the UK Alliance, an organisation that advocated the suppression of alcohol, in giving evidence to the 1854 Select Committee on Public Houses, noticed that there were fewer gin shops in Manchester, indicating that the new restrictions were having some influence on spirit outlet numbers.35

In terms of the role of beerhouses in Manchester, a report by W.B. Neale in 1840 on juvenile delinquency highlighted both the neighbourhoods in which they were largely located and the nature of the establishments themselves. The report explained how Angel Meadow and the streets around St George’s Road, Oldham Road, Great Ancoats Street, Pollard Street, Little Ireland, Deansgate, Gaythorn, and Knott Mill were the most notable areas for juvenile offences. Such areas were generally known for their poverty and portrayed as having dirty narrow streets and low beer and spirit shops.36 James Turner’s evidence to the 1834 Select Committee had indicated that a problematic drink place was more to do with the influence ofthe keeper rather than its geographic location, but Neale’s report illustrated the degree to which there were spatial patterns to areas known for specifictypes of establishments and their social disorder.37 Deansgate was again emphasised as a particular low neighbourhood, both for spirit vaults and beerhouses.38 Detective Caminada, who policed Manchester for over two decades, highlighted key social disorder locations and particular drink places, including the Shakespeare public house in Windmill Street and the Dog Tavern in Deansgate. He described how,

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All of which have now disappeared…were then the resort of a better class of what were grimly called ‘gay’ women, who mostly reside about Boundary Street, Hulme. At these places also congregated young clerks, warehousemen, and shopkeepers, many for whom may thank these associations for their first steps in embezzlement. Concerts wereheld every evening (except Sundays) and vice and ribaldry went often undisguised.39

He referred to various parts of Deansgate as dens of thieves and vice. Wood St, Spinningfield, Hardman St and Dolefield, Fleet St, Lombard St and BoothSt, were all key notorious highways straddling the length of Deansgate. Charles Bagshaw noted how beer shops such as those on St George’s Road near Angel Meadow were associated with brothels.40 Superintendent James Bent, in his memoirs of his time in the Manchester Police, recalled an incident where he attended a beerhouse in Holland Street, Newton Heath, that had constructed a false wall which on removal revealed a bedroom that had been fitted out with a bar to sell out-of-hours alcohol. This beerhousedid not remain open for very long after Bent’s discovery.41

The accounts of Caminada and Bent allow us to see typical activities in local beerhouses and pubs. For example Caminada illustrates how,

Passing these the pedestrian’s ear would be arrested by the sound of music proceeding from mechanical organs, accompanied sometimes with drums and tambourines. On entering the premises he would find a number ofyouths and girls assembled in a room furnished with a few wooden forms and tables. The women generally lived upon the premises, the proprietor of the den often adding to his income by the proceedings of their shame. Some rude attempt would probably be made at an indecent song by a half-drunken girl for the edification of some collier lads, who were thechief victims of these haunts, but their voice would be drowned by the incessant quarrelling and obscene language of her companions.42

Beerhouses and some public houses were not only known for their drunkenness and immoral behaviour, but were also haunts of more organised criminal activity. Tales of people acting as disabled sailors and colliers, who were begging in the main streets of Manchester such as Market Street and whose disabilities disappeared once they were spotted in their local

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beerhouse, were commonplace. There were also small-time street tradesmen seen daily parading Shudehill or lounging at street corners and public house doorways. Victims were enticed to the back room of pubs where cheap smuggled articles such as cloth, cigars, and tobacco were traded.43

Witness testimony at select committees emphasised the distinction between different types of drinking place. In 1854, it was concluded that more respectable groups visited public houses, whereas the ‘low company’ often revert to beerhouses and spirit vaults.44 In fact some went as far as to emphasise a class-based distinction of the usage of drink places. The witness Thomas Wright, who had conducted enquiries into drunkenness in Manchester, informed the 1854 committee about a four-class category system he had formulated for drink place usage. The first class was thosewho completely succumb to drink and send their children begging and were usually associated with beerhouses; secondly, there were those who attended spirit vaults; the third class were perceived as those who attended public houses and were regarded as society’s middle class; and finally a fourthcategory of the higher class, who never visit any of these drinking places.45 The majority of public houses were not associated with criminal activity, although their reputations varied with some of lower esteem than others.46 Caminada provided further examples of known disorderly taverns, such as the Old Fleece Inn, described as a house ‘noted as a haunt of thieves’. Equally, he portrayed the undesirable activities that took place in the Grecian’s Head in Deansgate.47 Licensing sessions provide additional evidence on the policing of establishments. For instance, a licensing committee in August 1852 suspended five licenses until the next session owing to misconduct,and twelve were suspended until satisfactory arrangements had been put in place to improve the premises. These suspensions had been due to late night out-of-hours trading and had subsequently attracted the attention of thieves, prostitutes, and disorderly characters.48

When looking at qualitative evidence to examine a particular theme it can be difficult to quantify or assess an issue over time or geography. Drinkplace social order and disorder can be investigated from a quantitative perspective, which allows the development of statistical trends over time and in comparison with other localities. Such data that can be utilised is particularly commonplace in official parliamentary sources. These sourceson the one-hand offer in-depth data for analysis yet we have to be mindful of inaccuracies in the collection and the interpretation of data, as well as

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questioning its origins. As we have seen with official parliamentary reportnarratives witnesses were usually of ‘respectable’ status. Provided we are mindful of such issues statistics can offer the researcher some fascinating trends that complement qualitative narratives. A range of statistics is presented here for the 1840s and 1850s on the Manchester and Salford area. Table one examines evidence from the 1852 Select Committee on Public Houses, featuring actual and percentage reports against establishments and keepers for public houses and beerhouses in the Manchester Borough.

Table 1: Drinking Establishments & Keepers reported against in Manchester Borough, 1843-1852. (1852-3 House of Commons Select Committee Report on Public Houses, p. 168).

Year Total No of Houses in Borough

Total No of Houses Reported

Total No of Reports Against Publicans / Keepers

% Houses Reported against total no of Houses

% Reports onKeepers Against Total No of Houses

Public Houses1843 502 129 165 25.69 32.861844 490 147 210 30 42.851845 482 167 227 34.64 47.091846 487 91 114 18.68 23.401847 482 55 68 11.41 14.101848 475 49 58 10.31 12.211849 480 86 111 17.91 23.121850 481 49 57 10.2 11.81851 481 45 49 9.3 10.11852 481 81 108 16.84 22.57Beerhouses1843 781 301 384 38.54 49.161844 850 269 341 31.64 40.111845 1006 361 483 35.88 48.011846 1089 317 409 29.1 37.551847 1000 288 362 26.18 32.91848 1143 286 368 25.02 32.21849 1230 432 573 35.12 36.581850 1298 380 484 29.2 381851 1312 331 413 25.2 31.41852 1465 520 694 35.49 47.37

There are two points that have to be bore in mind when assessing the figures. First, the table indicates reports against keepers and their houses but not actual convictions. Second, an establishment or its keeper could have been

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reported against on more than one occasion in each year. The testimony of James Hudson, Chair of the Association for the Better Regulation of Public Houses, Beerhouses and Places of Public Entertainment in Manchester during the 1852 Select Committee on Public Houses enforces this point when iterating how for the 481 public houses recorded in 1852, 62 were reported just once, with 19 between two to four times. During the same year for beerhouses, 383 were reported just once with 137 two to four times.49 The figures demonstrate how, in terms of public houses, 1845 had the highestactual and percentage reports against both keepers and houses. Beerhouses had the highest actual number of reports against houses and keepers in 1852, and the highest percentage reports against both houses and keeper in 1843. The overriding conclusion from the table is that the mid-1840s was a pivotal time for reports against houses and keepers, with 1843 to 1845 having the highest rates of reports for both types of drinking establishment. The severity of offences is not emphasised, but James Hudson’s testimony suggested that the majority of misdemeanours related to Sunday trading offences.50 In 1850 the House of Lords produced a Select Committee Report which largely focussed on beerhouses, with brief references to public houses.51 Evidence of Manchester came from the Chief Constable of the time, Edward Willis. He regarded beerhouses as problematic and attributed this to the manner in which beerhouse licenses were obtained, going through the excise route rather than via magistrates. Willis had undertaken a report in 1848 for Manchester Council where he concluded that public houses had in fact seen an improvement with reports against them having declined since 1845. Table one supports this conclusion but at the same time the reduction he mentions comes after two of the highest years for reports against public houses.52 Complaint against establishments or their keepers focussed around serving out of hours and during the hours of Divine Service, and harbouring drunken behaviour, particularly on Sundays. More serious offences included beerhouse keepers receiving stolen property and opening out of official licensing hours.53

Having looked at the role of drinking establishments in creating social disorder, their role in providing social order will now be investigated. Both contemporary and secondary literature sources acknowledge that public houses and other drink establishments were not always the problem portrayed and in fact performed a crucial social role in providing key facilities and services. For example, the Bull’s Head Inn in Market Place was known to have hosted Manchester’s earliest post office and held one of the earliest

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recorded manufacturing clubs.54 Equally, the same establishment had a place in the religious and moral life of the town, for it was from a meeting held here that Sunday schools originated in Manchester.55 J T Slugg in his memoires of early nineteenth century Manchester life highlights the role of building societies that in their early days were hosted in public houses. He stated how, ‘they seem to have been in a great measure public-house clubs, but were conducted with order and decorum, as the stringency of the rules indicates’.56 Landlords held a key position in these, usually acting as Secretary or other similar role. Slugg mentions a number of public houses in Manchester that hosted building societies, which included one at the Salutation public house, off Oxford Road, where the workers of Hugh Hornby Birley established such a facility in the late 1820s.57 Morris outlines how,

For many generations, the public house had been the focus for community, class, trade and other interest groups, who had met with little formality or structure to their proceedings. Such groups were a crucial base for voluntary societies. The Building Societies and the Loan Clubs emerged from the public house in the 1840s. The Friendly Societies, the most numerous of all the voluntary societies, never became detached from their public-house origins despite the building of Oddfellow Halls and the like in many of the larger towns. The discussion society and the public and subscription libraries all had origins in the public house or replaced similar public house functions.58

Modern-day historians have equally recognised the general social functions that drinking establishments provided. Beside the cordiality and social function of drink places, Bailey identified other functions such as facilitatingfriendly societies and trade clubs, in finding employment and the paymentof wages, offering credit facilities and newspapers to read as well as food and accommodation.59 F M L Thompson echoes this view, emphasising the importance the public house played in working-class culture, where it had a virtual monopoly in providing meeting facilities and where ‘the social functions of the pub were founded on and lubricated by drink’.60 Harrison concludes how drink was ‘a convenient, generally acceptable, easily consumed article of symbolic exchange and so featured prominently in the reaffirmation of social relationships’.61 The role of the drink place held a pivotal role in not only providing physical and psychological relief from an exhaustive working week, but communication and social cohesion.

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Equally, the transport function of inns and public houses where drinking establishments held a key role in the movement of both goods and people, offered a vital community service.62 Bailey observed how the publican engaged in a multifunctional social and management role, by providing prizes for competitions, singing at events, managing sweepstakes, selling refreshments at fairs, and acting as a defender of the pub against temperance campaigns, the beerhouse threat, and the emergence of gin palaces.63 Walvin emphasised the social importance of drink at this time, with festive and family occasions lost without drink and its establishments, life generally miserable without it and the accompanying social interaction.64

Whilst contemporaries offer one-off examples based on Manchester’s more respectable drinking establishments and recent commentators offer generalised viewpoints, they do offer us a tempting insight into the notion that pubs and inns did perform a vital social, political, and economic function, and one beyond the simple notion of having a drink and the occasional bout of drunkenness and social revelry. Pickering’s chapter on Working-Class Self Help in his research on Chartism in Manchester and Salford illustrates the self-organisation of working-class people that had associations with drink places. His research focuses primarily on 1840s Chartism, but at the same time highlights the role of friendly societies and other self-help organisations, together with the location of their meeting places during the period in question.65 However, there was considerable alarm amongst the authorities as a result of numerous working-class societies and organisations meetings being held in drinking establishments. Contemporaries such as Benjamin Love and Samuel Bamford were of the view that not only did friendly societies appear to have political radical undertones they were in fact fronts for seditious activity and often it was hard to distinguish which groups were meeting. Friendly society gatherings could often be confused with other groups such as the Chartists and trades unions.66 Many Manchester Chartists were also friendly society members, reinforcing the link with organisations of concern to the authorities and an already strong association with the public house.

The relationship between drinking establishment and friendly societies is a particularly interesting case study to investigate in more detail owing to the social order the two produced when working together. For instance, friendly societies provided a vital service in offering burial and sickness contributions for paid-up members. Research into friendly societies by historians such

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as Gosden, Gorsky, and others, and detailed evidence on Manchester’s benefit societies through the analysis of contemporary parliamentary selectcommittee reports, establishes a direct relationship between friendly society and drinking establishment. Gorsky explained how the alehouse’s continued role as the centre of business activity and commercial function allowed benefit clubs to flourish, where the publican or keeper had a pivotal role inoffering sources of credit amongst other services. The business potential from hosting club evenings and annual dinners encouraged publicans to be pro-active in initiating friendly societies, where they often acted as a secretary or treasurer and often had responsibility for the security of club funds.67 The use of drink places for friendly society meetings became a contentious issue in a century dominated by its struggle to come to terms with drink and social control arguments, particularly in the wake of temperance societies. Gosden’s research into the mid nineteenth-century explains how,

In the early years the convivial activity of societies was of the utmost importance, and while it may have been less important in 1875, it was still regarded as an essential part of the life of any self-respecting society. The ritual of initiation, the good fellowship of the lodge room and the celebrations of the annual ‘club day’ meant much to members. The early trade unions indulged in somewhat similar practices and met a similar need. …Both friendly societies and trade unions usually held their lodge meetings at public houses and the practice of paying the rent of the room by buying pre-arranged quantity of ‘lodge liquor’ prevailed in both. It is interesting to notice that pressure to end the practice and to substitute formal cash rent came from the central organisation in both the unions and the most highly affiliated order, the Oddfellows of the ManchesterUnity.’68

Smaller local societies with limited membership were often formed around local drinking establishments. Often the local inn was the only appropriate place in which to meet and innkeepers did their upmost to promote the creation and continuation of friendly societies. Often societies would not pay room hire but agreed to purchase a certain amount of drink which was sometimes paid for by an extra levy on members and occasionally even out of club funds.69 The unease amongst government and official bodieswith this practice was evident, and cases like Thomas Steinthorp who was reported to have drunk so much whiskey at a Manchester club meeting that he died on his way home, did nothing to alleviate this.70 Gosden’s work

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demonstrates how society lacked the ability to grapple with the perceived threat of the drink ‘problem’ and the association of friendly societies with such establishments. Despite working-class people actively investing in their own future interests and demonstrating a great deal of initiative and responsibility in the face of little social provision and financial alternativesat this time, friendly society association with the drinking place was a persistent problematic issue, not only in terms of social control issues, but within the societies themselves in a bid to acquire and retain a much needed respectable image.

This was an issue that especially affected the Rechabite society. The Rechabites were a teetotal friendly society that opposed to meeting or having any connection with public houses. Formed in Salford in 1835, they provided an alternative for those with strong views on friendly society association with the drink question. Whilst they acknowledged that findingsuitable rooms in which to meet was an issue which created an attraction to the public house, the association with a pub remained a hindrance to the development of their principles.71 The Rechabites were strict in their application of the principles of their society. However, even here many people found it hard to keep up with the moral stance they represented. A branch of the society in Stockport was formed, but it was soon clear that many of its members could not maintain the pledge and it was reformed into a public house club.72 This issue was raised again in the early 1860s at one of the society’s annual conferences where it was emphasised how many friendly societies were still meeting at public houses, and was described as a convenient place but also one filled with moral danger.73

Despite concerns that existed, the largest friendly society that emerged, the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, succeeded in becoming a well-established and enduring organisation.74 Burn’s contemporary history of the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows outlined the development of the organisation, which included the opening of one of its first lodges at the British Volunteer publichouse in Minshull Street, Manchester.75 Further lodges quickly appeared in the Manchester area, including the ‘Loyal Abercrombie’ lodge which opened in Salford in 1810.76 It was during the 1820s and 1830s that the society achieved a well organised network that combined a Manchester focus with a true national dimension. In general the period 1835 to 1845 saw a larger increase in friendly society organisation than at any other time during the nineteenth century, though the Manchester Unity saw a reduced growth rate

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during this time, and which reflected an easing off after an initial upsurge inits development.77

We can examine different perceptions in the use of public houses for society meetings in Manchester through testimony provided at Select Committee hearings. Testimony from 1834 reveals that there were around 66 Oddfellow lodges, 34 Foresters Societies, and numerous Druid meetings in Manchester, with other reported secret societies meeting in rooms hired in drinking establishments. Drink was not particularly consumed or encouraged at the meetings themselves, but any problems that occurred were usually after the completion of the evening’s business.78 Findlaison, in giving evidence to a select committee hearing in 1849 was asked whether it would be better to hold meetings at places other than public houses. He conceded that opinion on this matter was mixed stating, ‘I think there is difficulty in finding a placethat will satisfy them all, or in finding a place better suited to them than apublic house; they are more independent at a public house, and can act more freely there, and there are many more objections avoided that exist in other places’.79

Earlier concerns that friendly society subscriptions were contributing to ‘beer money’ were evaporating and the practice started to decline.80 There is evidence to suggest that the Manchester Unity Order of Oddfellows met wherever they could, regardless of the drink attraction. For example, in 1849 John Braidley, an office-holder in the organisation, acknowledgedthat some lodges met in schoolrooms and literary institutions, as well as public houses. Later in the century testimony from John Diprose, whose society rented a meeting room in a public house, objected to the fact that the police frequently barged into the room in which they were meeting. He maintained that the Oddfellows required the use of public house rooms since they provided the only suitable accommodation in which to meet. Rent for the facilities were paid annually to publicans since they often would not agree to any other arrangement.81 Diprose was asked, ‘and that the public house, in this particular case, is only serving as it does very often in other cases, the purpose of being the only place available? His reply was, ‘that is so’.82 When questioned, ‘And, therefore, it is doing a public service in being placed at your disposal in this way?’, ‘I believe so’, was his response.83

Research has indicated that friendly societies utilised the notion of respectability not only to acquire protection from the law but to use as a

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defence mechanism to shield them from the criticism of utilising public houses.84 We are fortunate in that we can gain an insight into the Manchester Unity Order of Oddfellows as a detailed case study to reveal the society’s internal debates of such issues through their regular periodicals, together with contemporary histories of the society. Here, we reveal a society that was often not at peace with itself when it came to the drink question. However, the same debate not only permeated friendly societies, but also applied to the Chartists and Trades Unions. The essence of the problem was the simple yet controversial issue of where to meet. The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows initiated annual general meetings, referred to as ‘Grand Moveable Committees’, to assemble all lodges of the society in one place. These gatherings were in a different town each year. The first of thesewas held in Manchester in 1822. A further one was hosted in Manchester in 1826 at the Prince’s Tavern on Tasle Street, where it was described as ‘a committee that has not been surpassed since, for talent and men of integrity’.85 It was at this meeting that many vital reforms were introduced into the organisation.86 This allows us to conclude that the hosting of meetings, including large formal events, in public houses, as well as the respectability of those participating was not a problematic issue during the early phase of the organisation.

We can see further examples of such practices when looking at a sample of Oddfellows periodicals, which contained reports of lodge openings and anniversaries. Samples of these have been examined between the late 1820s and the 1870s. It is interesting to see how these periodicals changed in format over the years and there are many more examples of the association between Manchester public houses and lodges during the early phase of the society than those produced post-1850. Early examples of a positive association between friendly societies and public houses include an anniversary of the Cumberland Lodge in Manchester in 1828 which reportedly which took place at their lodge house, the Griffin Inn on Long Millgate. It wasrecorded that, ‘the company was numerous and respectable, and did ample justice to the very superior catering of the host Rothwell, who cannot be too highly praised for the spirited manner in which the whole was got up’.87 We have a similar report of an anniversary event of the Nelson Lodge at the Wilton Arms, Mayes Street, where the gathering was also described as ‘very numerous and respectable’, and where the publican provided an equally excellent dinner.88 It was in the interests of publicans to provide the best service since the revenue from room hire, food, and refreshments

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ensured it was a worthwhile business transaction in which to enter. In turn they were enhancing the organisational development of friendly societies, which according to Burn were ‘perhaps the best attempt which has ever been made by the working class and self-government’.89 And he continues, ‘and I must say that they have proved themselves in every way competent to the task’.90 Yet despite the positive relationship, and resulting outcomes in terms of a successful organisation, between public house and friendly society, publicans were subjected to criticism. Burn asserted a different tone when he concluded,

Another cause of the bad management and premature decay of lodges arose from landlords of public houses getting lodges up to suit their purposes in trade. Some of these gentlemen have been fortunate in their speculations, while others have both injured themselves and the order, and disgusted sensible men with the character of a society which was liable to be so wantonly sported by mercenary or ambitious tools.91

By the 1830s, the debates on where to host Oddfellow meetings became an intense affair. A member of the Victory lodge in Manchester, Daniel Hadfield, commented in an 1836 edition of the Oddfellows Magazine on the consequences of the 1834 Select Committee on Drunkenness, where it was reported that a major cause of drunkenness among the urban working classes was the numerous meetings of friendly societies and secret orders. Hadfield did not actually challenge this view, but suggested that societiesrelocate their operations to temperance hotels, which would allow both the same level of security and rent.92 A Stockport Oddfellow member responded to the debate in September of the same year where it was suggested that the society should be aspiring towards their own premises rather than renting from others. The advantages of this were clear. Not only would there be a financial saving through not spending on rent and drink each year, butofficers would no longer be ‘forced’ to sit in public houses for long periods. This was designed to raise the respectability of the organisation, and weaken the argument that friendly societies were little more than drinking clubs.93

By mid-century it was generally accepted that friendly society members were in a position to govern their own affairs more effectively, but at the same time the issue of alcohol and usage of public houses remained a contentious issue. This was not only between society lodges but between friendly societies and the state.94 Tholfsen highlighted the occasion where

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Queen Victoria visited Manchester where friendly society members were relied upon to maintain order rather than the deployment of policing.95 By the 1870s some meetings were still being hosted in central Manchester public houses, which included one at the Old Swan on Long Millgate to open up a new branch of the Manchester District of Oddfellows.96 In neighbouring Newton Heath, a lodge at the public hall provided an alternative venue to those not wishing to utilise a drink place.97 There were important changes in the manner in which societies were organised between the 1830s and 1870s, where alternative meeting facilities became more prevalent, and other public meeting venues away from the public house continued to be pursued.

The article so far has analysed Manchester and Salford in relative isolation in terms of the drink place and social order and disorder. The final aspect tothe research is to test the levels of social order and disorder statistically with other areas to assess the level of the problems Manchester and Salford faced in comparison with other urban centres. Official data for 1867-8 allows sucha comparative analysis. The statistics have been condensed into tables 2a, 2b and 2c below, which look at proceedings against and conviction rates for public houses, beerhouses and customers.

Table 2a: Public House Reports and Convictions Against in Key Urban Areas, 1867-8 (Return of the number of public houses and

beerhouses proceeded against and convicted of offences against the tenor of their licenses and the number of persons proceeded against,

convicted and discharged for drunkenness, 1869).98

Area No. of licenses PH

No. proceeded against PH

% PH proceeded against

No.convictedPH

%PH No. deprived of licenses for misconduct PH

% licenses deprived

Liverpool 1,926 144.00 7.48 71.00 3.69 9.00 0.47Newcastle U p o n Tyne 493 117.00 23.73 75.00 15.21 3.00 0.61Mcr & S a l f o r d combined 596 102.00 17.11 92.00 15.44 2.00 0.34

482 93.00 19.29 83.00 17.22 2.00 0.41Sheffield 536 40.00 7.46 38.00 7.09 0.00 0.00Leeds 374 23.00 6.15 18.00 4.81 1.00 0.27Bradford 141 10.00 7.09 9.00 6.38 0.00 0.00Salford 114 9.00 7.89 9.00 7.89 0.00 0.00

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250 7.00 2.80 7.00 2.80 0.00 0.00*PH – Public House

Table 2a illustrates that in terms of public houses Manchester and Salford combined had one of the lowest percentages of licenses deprived, but this shows a marginal increase when looking at Manchester city in isolation. Tables 2a and 2b highlight differences in the management licensing policy and policing in different areas, especially between Liverpool and Manchester, where the control of drink establishments in Liverpool led to the reverse of Manchester in numbers of public houses and beerhouses. Overall the data suggests that public house misdemeanours for Manchester and Salford were comparable with other urban areas of the time and it is misleading to argue that Manchester and Salford were a particular social order problem.

Table 2b: Beerhouse Reports and Convictions Against in Key Urban Areas, 1867-8 (Return of the number of public houses and beerhouses proceeded against and convicted of offences against the tenor of their licenses and the number of persons proceeded against, convicted and discharged for drunkenness, 1869).99

Area No. of licensed BH

No. proceed against BH

% BH No. convicted BH

% BH convicted

No. deprived of licenses for

% BH licenses

Mcr & Salford combined 2,609 784.00 30.05 809.00 31.01 0.00 0.00Manchester (City) 2,070 620.00 29.95 668.00 32.27 0.00 0.00Sheffield 843 132.00 15.66 127.00 15.07 0.00 0.00Liverpool 736 597.00 81.11 411.00 55.84 8.00 1.09Leeds 565 94.00 16.64 71.00 12.57 1.00 0.18Salford 539 164.00 30.43 141.00 26.16 0.00 0.00Bradford 409 48.00 11.74 42.00 10.27 0.00 0.00N e w c a s t l e Upon Tyne 337 151.00 44.81 107.00 31.75 0.00 0.00Nottingham 210 9.00 4.29 9.00 4.29 0.00 0.00

*BH - Beerhouse

Table 2b provides a quite different scenario where trends on beerhouses are significantly different to that of public houses. As it has already beenmentioned the ratio of beerhouses and public houses between Liverpool and Manchester are opposite, with far fewer beerhouses than pubs in Liverpool and vice versa in Manchester and Salford. Manchester in fact has by far

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250 7.00 2.80 7.00 2.80 0.00 0.00*PH – Public House

Table 2a illustrates that in terms of public houses Manchester and Salford combined had one of the lowest percentages of licenses deprived, but this shows a marginal increase when looking at Manchester city in isolation. Tables 2a and 2b highlight differences in the management licensing policy and policing in different areas, especially between Liverpool and Manchester, where the control of drink establishments in Liverpool led to the reverse of Manchester in numbers of public houses and beerhouses. Overall the data suggests that public house misdemeanours for Manchester and Salford were comparable with other urban areas of the time and it is misleading to argue that Manchester and Salford were a particular social order problem.

Table 2b: Beerhouse Reports and Convictions Against in Key Urban Areas, 1867-8 (Return of the number of public houses and beerhouses proceeded against and convicted of offences against the tenor of their licenses and the number of persons proceeded against, convicted and discharged for drunkenness, 1869).99

Area No. of licensed BH

No. proceed against BH

% BH No. convicted BH

% BH convicted

No. deprived of licenses for

% BH licenses

Mcr & Salford combined 2,609 784.00 30.05 809.00 31.01 0.00 0.00Manchester (City) 2,070 620.00 29.95 668.00 32.27 0.00 0.00Sheffield 843 132.00 15.66 127.00 15.07 0.00 0.00Liverpool 736 597.00 81.11 411.00 55.84 8.00 1.09Leeds 565 94.00 16.64 71.00 12.57 1.00 0.18Salford 539 164.00 30.43 141.00 26.16 0.00 0.00Bradford 409 48.00 11.74 42.00 10.27 0.00 0.00N e w c a s t l e Upon Tyne 337 151.00 44.81 107.00 31.75 0.00 0.00Nottingham 210 9.00 4.29 9.00 4.29 0.00 0.00

*BH - Beerhouse

Table 2b provides a quite different scenario where trends on beerhouses are significantly different to that of public houses. As it has already beenmentioned the ratio of beerhouses and public houses between Liverpool and Manchester are opposite, with far fewer beerhouses than pubs in Liverpool and vice versa in Manchester and Salford. Manchester in fact has by far

the greatest number of beerhouses of any key urban area outside London. Despite this, Liverpool has the highest proceedings against and convictions than any other place. It is also important to note that the numbers and percentage of licenses deprived is surprisingly small. This indicates that a keeper was fined several times before license removal was resorted to.

Finally, table 2c reflects the effects of alcohol and related behaviour in keyurban areas. Once again Liverpool had the highest actual number of both proceedings against and convictions for drunk and disorderly behaviour. However, if this is looked at in relation to total population, Manchester and Salford combined had a slightly higher rate than Liverpool and the highest rate of any urban area illustrated. The numbers initially proceeded against emphasise the particularly large populations that were being controlled.

Table 2c: Offences relating to drunkenness, 1867-8 (Return of the number of public houses and beerhouses proceeded against and convicted of offences against the tenor of their licenses and the number of persons proceeded against, convicted and discharged for drunkenness, 1869).100

Area Drunk & disorderly conduct - no proceeded against

Drunk & disorderly conduct - no convicted

Drunk & disorderly - no discharged

no proceeded against per 1000 popn

Liverpool 14,451.00 10,071.00 4,380.00 32.56Mcr & Salford combined 10,177.00 7,514.00 2,663.00 34.41Manchester (City) 9,540.00 6,893.00 2,647.00 28.20Leeds 1,304.00 1,269.00 95.00 6.58Newcastle Upon Tyne 1,752.00 1,137.00 595.00 16.03Sheffield 1,022.00 932.00 90.00 5.52Salford 637.00 621.00 16.00 6.22Nottingham 179.00 143.00 36.00 2.40

To summarise data for the late 1860s, Manchester and Salford had some social disorder problems but statistically they are comparable with other key urban areas outside London. The issues the region faced are magnifiedby the size of the city and its population. Official data published a decadelater in the House of Lords Select Committee Report on Intemperance is summarised in table 3 below. This illustrates numbers of apprehensions and the ratio of public houses per 10,000 of the population in key urban areas.

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Table 3: Apprehension per 10,000 population by key urban areas for 1878 (taken from the House of Lords Select Committee on Intemperance, 1878, pp. 586-7).

City/Town Apprehensions Public Houses per 10k population

Liverpool 420 50Newcastle 372 62Manchester 276 68Salford 270 64Leeds 73 40

Liverpool had the highest quantity of actual apprehensions, followed by Newcastle, then Manchester. Manchester city had a moderate rate of apprehensions, despite having the highest ratio of public houses per rate of population. The data is limited in its scope, since for example, it is exclusive of beerhouses. However, it indicates that Manchester did not have a particular social order problem by the late 1870s in comparison with other urban centres. To sum up this section, a range of official data hasbeen presented during the second half of the nineteenth century that puts Manchester and Salford in a national context with regard drink and social disorder. The data emphasises particular differences in the quantities and governance of drink places between Manchester and Liverpool. It equally suggests that Manchester was not as overcome by social disorder than has been portrayed.

To conclude, the article has presented a range of both qualitative and quantitative evidence that points to drink places being a contributor of both social order and disorder in Manchester and Salford. There was overwhelming anxiety, particularly from the 1830s that changing drinking habits were exacerbating social control problems. These problems were intensified by legislation encouraging the development of a range ofalternative drinking places to those of the public house. Both beerhouses and spirit outlets such as gin palaces were responsible for elements of social disorder. However, it is misleading to suggest that drinking establishments were collectively an endless social problem. Whilst there is evidence that some types of establishments were regarded as more superior than others, which resulted in the attraction of different clientele that did have an impact on social outcomes, there is a need to acknowledge that public houses and

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other drinking establishments supported a range of functions that were central to everyday living such as social interaction, leisure, payment of wages, reading of newspapers, and transportation. The case of social order has been primarily demonstrated through a case study of local friendly societies which allow an insight into their associations with the drink place and the subsequent internal debates over the moral suitability of using licensed premises. It could be argued that drinking places provided the original institutional basis for the development of social welfare provision in the absence of more formalised state organisation. However, even here problems of perception became an issue when organisations were attempting to acquire levels of social acceptability. Working-class self-help mechanisms and the places where this should be conducted became antagonistic issues that attracted the attention of temperance advocates.

NOTES1. M. D. George, Hogarth to Cruikshank: Social Change in Graphic Satire. (London, 1967).2. H. Monckton, History of the English Public House. (London, 1969). p. 77; The UK Statute Law Database, Department for Constitutional Affairs.3. C. Behagg,'Secrecy, ritual and folk violence- the opacity of the workplace in the first half of the nineteenth century', in R.Storch (ed.), Popular Culture & Custom in Nineteenth-Century England. (London, 1982).p. 166. 4. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class. (London, 1980). p. 467.5. P. Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian Britain 1830-1885. (London, 1978). p. 10.6. L. Faucher, Manchester in 1844: Its Present Condition and Future Prospects. (London, 1844). p. 49.7. F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Classes in England, translated and edited by W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner. (Oxford, 1971). p. 115.8. J. Caminada, 25 Years of Detective Life in Victorian Manchester, vol. 1. (Warrington, 1895). p. 18.9. R. Storch, ‘The problem of working class leisure. Some roots of middle-class moral reform in the industrial north: 1825-50’, Social Control in Nineteenth Century Britain, edited by A. Donajgrodzki. (London, 1977). p. 138.10. J. Rowbotham, 'Only when drunk': the stereotyping of violence in England, c1850-1900’, Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850-1950, edited by S. D'Cruze. (London, 2000). p. 156.11. ibid. p.164.12. House of Lords Select Committee Report on the Operation of the Acts for the Sale of Beer, (398) XVIII.483. 1850. p.19.13. ibid.14. House of Commons Select Committee Report on Public Houses, (855) XXXVII.1. 1852. p. 161.15. Caminada, vol 1. p.17.16. House of Commons. 1852. p.161.17. Manchester Times, 13 September 1834. p.3.18. ibid.19. ibid.20. House of Commons Select Committee Report on Drunkenness, (559) VIII.315. 1834. p.354.

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21. ibid.22. ibid., p.52.23. W. Cooke-Taylor, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire: in a series of letters to his grace the Archbishop of Dublin. (1842). p.254.24. House of Commons. 1834. p.359.25. ibid.26. ibid.. p.54.27. ibid. p.373.28. ibid., p.53.29. ibid. p.54.30. House of Commons. 1852. pp. 165-6.31. ibid. p.161. 32. ibid. p.212.33. ibid. p.166 & p 212.34. ibid.35. House of Commons Select Committee Report on Public Houses, (367) XIV.231. 1854. p.104.36. W. B. Neale, Juvenile Delinquency in Manchester: its causes and history, (1840). pp.1-85.37. House of Commons. 1834. p.373.38. House of Commons. 1854. p.113.39. J. Caminada, 25 Years of Detective Life in Victorian Manchester, vol. 2. (Warrington, 1901). p.384.40. House of Commons. 1834. p.359.41. J. Bent, Criminal Life: Reminiscences of Forty-Two Years as a Police Officer.(Manchester, 1891). p. 153.42. Caminada. vol 2. p.16.43. Caminada. vol 1. pp.12-13.44. House of Commons. 1854. p.112.45. ibid. p.117.46. ibid. p.20.47. Caminada. vol. 1. p. 206 & 384.48. Manchester Examiner & Times, 28 August 1852. p.3.49. House of Commons. 1852. pp.216-7.50. ibid. p.217.51. House of Lords. 1850.52. ibid. p.18.53. ibid. p.19.54. R. Ainsworth, History of Ye Old Bull's Head Hotel, Old Market Place (Manchester & London, 1923). p.19.55. ibid.. p 33.56. J. T. Slugg, Reminiscences of Manchester Fifty Years Ago, (Shannon, 1881). p.293.57. ibid. p.292.58. R.J.Morris, ‘Voluntary Societies & British Urban Elites, 1780-1850: An Analysis’, The Historical Journal, 26. 1. 1983. p.105.59. Bailey. p.9.60. F.M.L. Thompson, ‘Social Control in Victorian Britain’, Economic History Review, 34. 2. 1981. 189-20. (pp. 201-2).61. B. Harrison, Drink and the Victorians. (London, 1971). p.43.62. B. Harrison, ‘Pubs’, in The Victorian City: Images and Realities, edited by H.J. Dyos and M. Wolff, (London, 1973).63. Bailey, p.27.64. J. Walvin, Leisure and Society, 1830-195., (London, 1978). p.34.65. P. Pickering, Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford. (London, 1995), pp.123-4.

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66. ibid. p.124.67. M. Gorsky, ‘The Growth and Distribution of English Friendly Societies in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Economic History Review, 51. 3. 1998. p.506.68. P. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England, 1815-1875. (Manchester, 1961). pp. 10-11.69. ibid. p.117.70. ibid. p.170.71. R. Highet. Rechabite History: a record of the origin, rise and progress of the Independent Order of Rechabites (Salford Unity) Temperance Friendly Society from its Institution on August 25th to the present time 1935 (one hundred years), (Manchester, 1936). p.22.72. ibid. 73. ibid. p.128.74. Gosden. p.207.75. J. Burn, An Historical Sketch of the Independent Order of Oddfellows (Manchester, 1845), p. 26.76. ibid. p.27.77. Gosden, p. 208; Burn. p.208.78. House of Commons. 1834 pp.374.79. House of Commons Select Committee on Friendly Societies, (458) XIV.1. 1849. p.62.80. ibid., p.62.81. Peel’s Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing, [C.8355] [C.8356] XXXIV.247, 253. 1897. p.160.82. ibid., p.164.83. ibid.84. S. Cordery, ‘Friendly Societies and the Discourse of Respectability in Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 34.1. 1995. p.40.85 Oddfellow Quarterly Magazine, June 1836. p.115.86. Burn. p.35.87. Oddfellow Quarterly Magazine. September 1828. p.6188. ibid. p.69.89. Burn. p.137.90. ibid.91. ibid. pp.87-8.92. Oddfellow Quarterly Magazine. March 1836. pp.74-5.93. Oddfellow Quarterly Magazine. September 1836. pp.234-5.94. Cordery. p.51.95. T.R.Tholfsen, Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England. (New York, 1977), p.299.96. Oddfellows Quarterly Magazine. January 1875. p.57.97. Oddfellows Quarterly Magazine, July 1875. p.190.98. Return of Number of Persons convicted and discharged for Drunkenness, 1867-68; Return of Number of Public Houses and Beerhouses proceeded against and convicted of Offences against License, 1867-68; Return of Amount of Indictable Crime committed in Bradford, Derby, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Salford, Sheffield, Stockport and Sunderland, 1867-68.99. ibid. 100. ibid.

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Alan Fox, A lost frontier revealed: regional separation in the East Mid-lands. (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2009); paperback, 210pp., ISBN 978-1-902806-97-63, £18.99.

This book is volume seven in the ‘Studies in Regional and Local Histo-ry’ series published by the University of Hertfordshire Press. As a work of applied regional history it is a welcome addition to the set. The au-thor, Alan Fox, refers to the development of the subject of his research while undertaking postgraduate study at the Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester. He also acknowledges the inspiration of a supervisor and former head of the Centre, Charles Phythian-Adams.

The purpose of the book is to test out Phythian-Adams’ ‘cultural provinces’, or, as later redefined, ‘regional societies’ thesis. In carrying out this task thestudy engages relatively more in the doing of regional history rather than its thinking. Thus, the volume discusses and applies the Phythian-Adams thesis, but refrains from developing a full critical analysis of it. In addition the author does not engage in a consideration of the state of regional his-tory more broadly, in order to locate the significance of the thesis. Thereis little reference to the work of other regional history theorists, notably J. D. Marshall and Pat Hudson, for example. However, Alan Fox’s study is not to be regarded as less for its limiting of the quantity of more abstract theorising and contextualisation. The thinking of Phythian-Adams is intro-duced and then elaborated upon through the study in order to effectively inform empirical research. The function of Fox’s work is to thoroughly apply in practice an existing theoretical framework, and this is done well.

The study commences with chapter one and ‘The hypothesis’. Here Fox considers the work of Charles Phythian-Adams and the relevance of his ‘regional societies’ framework. The coincidence of major drainage ba-sins and watersheds with areas of economic activity and the pre-1974 counties that Phythian-Adams explores is of importance to Fox. The study then turns to ‘The test area’. The research takes as its geographi-cal scope the East Midlands, and more specifically areas either side ofthe Leicestershire-Lincolnshire border. The descriptive and contextual content is very readable and complemented by many carefully chosen and well-taken photographs, making the book very accessible to read-ers unfamiliar with this part of England. The border area forms part of one of Phythian-Adams watershed divides between the regional soci-

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ety of the river Trent (Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire) and that of the Whitham (Lincolnshire and Rutland).

Fox admits to requiring some years of work before being persuaded that a regional society ‘frontier’ existed between Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. As a result the work benefits from a broad and thorough marshalling of evi-dence and application of analytical techniques in order to test out the case. The research touches on the East Midlands more broadly, buts concentrates most on the test area stretching from a just west of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire to a little east of Grantham in Lincolnshire, and at various points in the analysis on a smaller fourteen parish ‘Focus Area’ either side of the county divide. The test area encompasses seven ‘landscapes’, with the county boundary and ‘frontier’ between the two ‘societies’ running along the top of Lincolnshire limestone heath country. The range of spa-tial scales incorporated in the study is accompanied by a great diversity of methodological approaches. Various themes are pursued: geology and geo-morphology, vernacular architecture, dialect, customs, farming practices, landownership, enclosure, employment, population trends and distribution, marriage patterns, wills and probate, and transport. The relevance of the ‘open-close’ settlement model is also put to the test with useful results. A database was constructed and is employed to inform reconstitution at the levels of families and individuals. The research centres on the eighteenth century, although draws on much documentary evidence stretching back into the later seventeenth century and forward up to the mid-nineteenth.

The work concludes by summarising the inconclusive and the persua-sive. The evidence for networks existing across the county boundary is set against that indicating that there was border that acted as a deterrent against communication, exchange and mobility. The case for the presence of a di-vide between regional societies is seen as on balance convincing. The fi-nal chapter turns to the difficulty of discerning cause and effect within thepatterns and processes that have been revealed. To what extent was the interaction between environments and economics, or the development of frameworks of government and administration, the key determinants, and when? Fox pursues these considerations by making reference to a broader chronological context, considering further evidence from the medieval pe-riod, and the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here the study picks up on the longstanding and enduring significance of this particular frontier.Indeed the conclusion points to further work and wider contextualisation

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that may shed more light on the connections underpinning the regional societies thesis and theoretical thinking in regional history more broadly.

Regional history is understood to be an approach that can cultivate higher levels of theoretical and practical application within the pursuit of local history widely defined. It demands forms of contextualisation, analysis andexplanation that inevitably lead local historical study away from its leanings towards the parochial in its horizons. However, a concern that arises from this is that the theoretical and methodological requirements of regional his-tory test the viability of the professional-amateur constitution of local his-tory, that regional history is clearly an undertaking for the ‘professional’ lo-cal historian. Alan Fox’s study is undoubtedly professional, but it is written and presented in such a way as to make it accessible to a broad range of local history practitioners and enthusiasts, and to enable inspiration and ideas to be drawn from it. In particular, the book points to the value of exploring the empirical realities and mental constructs of regions. Processes may alter over time, and the significance of boundaries may fluctuate, but regions clearlyendure. The regional-societal border atop the Lincolnshire Heath may not be one of the more prominent, but its historical and contemporary significanceis perhaps a surprising and somewhat satisfying finding of this volume.

Andrew J. H. JacksonBishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln

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TheInternational

Journal of Regional and Local Studies

Series 2Vol. 6 No. 1 Spring 2010

CONTENTS

Taming the Governors: The Swinging Pendulum of Power over the Ottoman Provinces in the Nineteenth Century, Abdulhamit Kırmızı

Rural Housing in Early Nineteenth Century Northumberland, Michael Barke

Cultivating the City and its Citizens: The Creation of Corporation Allotments in York, Ross Wilson

Topographies of Anti-Nuclear Art in Late Cold War Los Angeles, Michelle Moravec

Social Order and Disorder in Nineteenth Century Drink Place: An Evaluation of Manchester and Salford, Deborah Woodman

Book Reviews

Alan Fox, A lost frontier revealed: regional separation in the East Mid-lands. Andrew J.H. Jackson