The Food Riots of 1801

On 6 April 1801, in the midst of the most serious subsistence crisis of the Napoleonic war years, four or five hundred Kingswood colliers struck work in an attempt to persuade city magistrates to reduce the price of provisions in Bristol market. Two days earlier, disturbances had broken out in the streets of the city over the price of meat, butter and potatoes; indeed the whole south-west region had been gripped by marketplace rioting, chiefly over bread supplies, for a number of weeks, leaving civil and military authorities severely stretched. It was not the first time the colliers had taken collective action over the price of food. Similar tactics had been used in 1709, 1740, 1753 and, to a lesser extent, in 1795, but the 1801 dispute marked a watershed in relations between the Bristol crowd and the corporation over the principle of marketplace intervention. Quite simply, magistrates were no longer disposed to cooperate.

However, the colliers’ confidence was initially strengthened by knowledge that a customary mix of mobbing and formal parleying had earned crowds in Bridgwater, Taunton and several other regional centres, substantial market reductions. A list of these ‘agreed’ Somerset prices were accordingly drawn up by the colliers into a petition to the mayor of Bristol, and pressure put upon farmers in the region to add their signatures to it. ‘Our whole intention is peace’, insisted the colliers, but ‘through hard living, many of us are not able to perform the labour we wish to do’. But the mayor had no intention either of receiving the petition or adopting Somerset prices.

The so-called Bridgwater agreement had been brokered after crowds forced dealers to accept price reductions at Wellington and Taunton at the end of March, then walked from Stogursey to Nether Stowey, Goatchurch, North Petherton, Bridgwater and Otterhampton, in search of a magistrate to sign a petition of endorsement for lower prices. Although magistrates consistently refused to do so, they had been unable to disperse the crowd by persuasion or military force, without promising assistance. A day later they called together the farmers, gentlemen and principal inhabitants of the district and contrived a public agreement to relieve the markets with plentiful supplies of cheaper food the following week.