Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm trace
Speaker 1: Ev Wilson and I'm Holly Fryne. Lately, I've been seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of people, especially in discussions of AI, kind
Speaker 1: of throwing around the word ludites in a way that
Speaker 1: irritates me, and I know there's some irony there. We've
Speaker 1: talked a bunch of times on the show about how
Speaker 1: language evolves and rules are made up, but the word
Speaker 1: ludite has come to sort of mean sort of a stubborn,
Speaker 1: backward person who's opposed to progress and technology. But what
Speaker 1: the ludite protests were really about was technical advances that
Speaker 1: were threatening people's livelihoods and leading to the production of
Speaker 1: lower quality goods. So if we're talking about somebody who's
Speaker 1: objection to AI is badly written articles replacing the work
Speaker 1: of paid freelancers, ludites pretty appropriate for that. But people
Speaker 1: have also used it to sort of imply that people
Speaker 1: who have these concerns are against all technology, and that
Speaker 1: bothers me. We've done an episode on the ludites that
Speaker 1: was all the way back in twenty thirteen. But as
Speaker 1: I was you know, mulling over this use of language.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about workers smashing machines and this semi
Speaker 1: mythical figure of ned lud who was part of the
Speaker 1: Ludite uprisings, and how some of the men who were
Speaker 1: breaking machines during this uprising did so in dresses and
Speaker 1: called themselves general luds wives. That brought me then to
Speaker 1: the Rebecca Riots, which took place in Wales a couple
Speaker 1: of decades after the Ludite uprising took place in England,
Speaker 1: and there are some parallels there. That includes the smashing stuff,
Speaker 1: also the wearing of dresses, and beyond that, there's been
Speaker 1: kind of a similar narrowing of how these two events
Speaker 1: are remembered a lot of the time today, the one
Speaker 1: sentence description of the Rebecca Riots would be something like
Speaker 1: men in dresses smashed down the tollgates to protest against
Speaker 1: the really egregious fees that they were having to pay
Speaker 1: for using the roads. But those tolls and the tollgates,
Speaker 1: that was really just one part of it. The Rebecca
Speaker 1: Riots took place in western and southwestern Wales from eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine to eighteen forty three, primarily in Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire
Speaker 1: and Carmarthenshire. The town of Comerthen in Carmarthenshire was at
Speaker 1: the time the fourth largest town in Wales, with a
Speaker 1: population of about ten thousand people. It was an important
Speaker 1: market town and sort of an administrative and political center
Speaker 1: within the area. Also, there are seemingly countless ways that
Speaker 1: different organizations and government bodies divide Wales into regions. Were
Speaker 1: just talking about the general area to the southwest and west,
Speaker 1: not any specific regional definition. At the time, people outside
Speaker 1: of Wales often imagined it as sort of an expanse
Speaker 1: of farmland where nothing much happened. And while farming was
Speaker 1: a key part of the economy, Wales was also industrializing
Speaker 1: really rapidly in the first decades of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: During the Rebecca Riots, most people in this part of
Speaker 1: Wales were working in agriculture or in domestic service, but
Speaker 1: about ten percent were employed at iron works. Some of
Speaker 1: those iron works were newly built. The Welsh population was soaring,
Speaker 1: with towns that were home to iron works and other
Speaker 1: industries growing just a lot faster than ones that weren't,
Speaker 1: and there were rural areas that were nearly depopulated as
Speaker 1: people moved into these cities and towns to try to
Speaker 1: find work, and the Rebecca Riots were not the first
Speaker 1: uprising to happen in Wales in the first decades of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. In addition to agriculture, two of Wales's
Speaker 1: biggest industries were coal and iron and agricultural products. Coal
Speaker 1: and iron were all in high demand during the Napoleonic
Speaker 1: Wars and the War of eighteen twelve, although Britain was
Speaker 1: still variously at war. After these ended in eighteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: demand for a lot of these goods started to fall.
Speaker 1: Combined with a more general economic depression, This meant that
Speaker 1: workers faced lost jobs and reduced wages. This came to
Speaker 1: a head in Mercer Tidville with an uprising in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty one. Demonstrators protested against job cuts and wage cuts
Speaker 1: and as many as twenty four people were killed after
Speaker 1: soldiers were deployed to try to restore order. There was
Speaker 1: also an armed uprising in Newport on the River Usk
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty nine. This one was connected to the
Speaker 1: Chartist movement. The Chartist movement was a working class movement
Speaker 1: that was calling for a number of political reforms Those
Speaker 1: included universal voting rights for men over the age of
Speaker 1: twenty one, secret ballots, elimination of property requirements to become
Speaker 1: a member of Parliament, and payment for MPs so that
Speaker 1: would make serving as an MP a lot more accessible
Speaker 1: to more people. More than twenty Chartists were killed in
Speaker 1: this uprising as well, and its leaders were convicted of
Speaker 1: high treason and hanged, drawn and quartered. So while there
Speaker 1: were contemporary discussions of the Rebecca Riots that had a
Speaker 1: tone that was almost like a riot in Wales really
Speaker 1: like Wales like, this was not really an isolated incident.
Speaker 1: Although most historians don't describe the Rebecca Riots as part
Speaker 1: of the Chartist movement. One of the issues involved with
Speaker 1: the riots was representation within the government. Although the Great
Speaker 1: Reform Act of eighteen thirty two had made changes to
Speaker 1: the electoral system in England and Wales, only men could vote,
Speaker 1: and those men had to own property or pay specific
Speaker 1: taxes to be eligible. This meant that tenant farmers and
Speaker 1: farm laborers, who made up most of the population in
Speaker 1: southern and western Wales, still could not vote. Compounding this
Speaker 1: was that most of the people who did meet those
Speaker 1: requirements spoke English, while most of the farmers and farm
Speaker 1: workers spoke Welsh. In some cases, these were essentially English
Speaker 1: absentee landlords holding office to represent Wales, so people naturally
Speaker 1: felt like they didn't have true representation in Parliament, and
Speaker 1: the absentee landlords were also their own issue. Most of
Speaker 1: the people in this part of Wales were tenant farmers,
Speaker 1: so they did not own the land that they lived
Speaker 1: and worked on for centuries, though families had leased the
Speaker 1: same land for their entire lifetime, so they really had
Speaker 1: some stability. They felt a sense of ownership over the
Speaker 1: land that they were working and typically they were renting
Speaker 1: from a landlord who lived locally. There were some social
Speaker 1: expectations that landlords do things like donate money to charitable
Speaker 1: causes and the church, and to we have kind of
Speaker 1: a paternalistic interest in their tenants well being. This is
Speaker 1: not at all to say that every single landowner was
Speaker 1: generous or accommodating with their tenants, but there was an
Speaker 1: overall perception that absentee landlords who did not live in
Speaker 1: the area only cared about whether or not their tenants
Speaker 1: paid the rent, not whether their tenants were dueing. Okay,
Speaker 1: in the decades before the Rebecca riots. A lot of
Speaker 1: landlords had also moved away from these lifetime leases. More
Speaker 1: and more farmers are basically tenants at will, with leases
Speaker 1: as short as only a year, so not a lot
Speaker 1: of stability the possibility of having to just move over
Speaker 1: and over and over again. In the eighteen thirties, it
Speaker 1: was also just getting harder to pay rent. Most small
Speaker 1: farmers were operating at a subsistence level, and poverty was widespread.
Speaker 1: Common ground that had been used for grazing animals had
Speaker 1: largely been enclosed, making it harder for people to raise livestock.
Speaker 1: In a lot of places, the land was most suited
Speaker 1: for raising sheep, but that lack of access to grazing
Speaker 1: land meant that people were trying to grow crops instead.
Speaker 1: Work was also harder to find, and a series of
Speaker 1: poor harvests stretched from eighteen thirty nine to eighteen forty one.
Speaker 1: Many tenants tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a reduction in the
Speaker 1: rent to make up for all of these problems. Bad
Speaker 1: harvests also meant that people had less money to give
Speaker 1: to the church, and giving to the church was something
Speaker 1: they were required to do by law. People were expected
Speaker 1: to donate ten percent of their income to their local parish.
Speaker 1: Before eighteen thirty six, this had been an kind payment,
Speaker 1: so people donated part of their harvest or wool from
Speaker 1: their sheep, or something else they had grown or raised.
Speaker 1: But the Tithe Act of eighteen thirty six instead made
Speaker 1: this a cash payment, and the amount of the payment
Speaker 1: was based on the price of various crops a ridged
Speaker 1: out over the past seven years. So if the harvest
Speaker 1: was particularly bad one year, that did not immediately reduce
Speaker 1: the amount of the tithe that people were required to pay,
Speaker 1: and since that one bad year was averaged together with
Speaker 1: six other years, that might not actually reduce the tithe
Speaker 1: at all. To add to that, these payments were made
Speaker 1: to Anglican parishes, but most of the people living in Wales,
Speaker 1: especially working class people and farm laborers, were Nonconformists, so Methodists,
Speaker 1: Congregationalists or Baptists. They didn't attend the parish church, and
Speaker 1: many didn't really want to be paying a tithe to
Speaker 1: the Anglican Church at all. So bad harvests, high rents,
Speaker 1: cash tithe payments, all this other stuff. It meant that
Speaker 1: a lot of people were really struggling. And then the
Speaker 1: Poor Law of eighteen thirty four also made financial hardship
Speaker 1: a way more frightening prospect. Before the passage of this law,
Speaker 1: various relief projects were funded through taxes that were paid
Speaker 1: by the middle and upper classes, and they were mostly
Speaker 1: locally administered. But as the population of the UK had
Speaker 1: increased in the wake of industrialization and other economic changes
Speaker 1: had led to an increase in poverty, it had become
Speaker 1: increasingly expensive to care for the poor. There was also
Speaker 1: a perception among a lot of the people who had
Speaker 1: enough money to be paying these taxes that the poor
Speaker 1: people were just lazy and didn't want to work. So
Speaker 1: the Poor Law of eighteen thirty four was meant to
Speaker 1: ease the purported burden of poverty on communities. Parishes were
Speaker 1: grouped into poor Law unions, and each one was required
Speaker 1: to build a workhouse if they did not have one already.
Speaker 1: Conditions in the workhouses were intentionally harsh and cruel to
Speaker 1: discourage people from using them and to punish people for
Speaker 1: their poverty. While people were housed, fed and clothed in
Speaker 1: the workhouse, the housing was overcrowded, uncomfortable, and often filthy
Speaker 1: and infested with vermin. Food was meager and uniforms were
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and threadbare. Families were broken up and housed separately,
Speaker 1: and while children were theoretically educated in the workhouse, they
Speaker 1: could also be hired out as workers in minds and
Speaker 1: on farms. There were still some other forms of relief
Speaker 1: besides the workhouse, but needing help carried the risk of
Speaker 1: winding up in one. The workhouses were also funded through
Speaker 1: a local tax known as the poor rate, and pretty
Speaker 1: much everyone who had enough money to not be in
Speaker 1: the workhouse had to pay this tax, even if they
Speaker 1: didn't really have a lot of money to spare. The
Speaker 1: tollgates get the most attention in discussions of the Rebecca Riots,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it sounds like they were the whole focus.
Speaker 1: But really, in the face of all this, the tolls
Speaker 1: were more like the last straw, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: The roads in Wales in the start of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century weren't really great. A network of roads, footpaths and
Speaker 1: cart paths connected farms to small towns and market villages,
Speaker 1: and then eventually to cities. Scottish engineer John McAdam had
Speaker 1: developed the road surfacing known as McAdam around eighteen twenty,
Speaker 1: and it was a lot more durable and efficient to
Speaker 1: lay down than other earlier road surfaces had been. But
Speaker 1: there was not a national agency that was responsible for building,
Speaker 1: maintaining or improving the roads. This was a lot like
Speaker 1: what we talked about happening in the US in our
Speaker 1: episode on Kitty Knox and the bike Boom from this
Speaker 1: past January. For a long time, road maintenance fell mostly
Speaker 1: to local landowners and the results could be all over
Speaker 1: the place. Landowners in the UK were allowed to set
Speaker 1: up toll houses if the tolls that they collected were
Speaker 1: used to pay for repair and improvements to the roads.
Speaker 1: These toll houses were typically built so that the keeper
Speaker 1: had a good view of the road and anyone who
Speaker 1: might be approaching on it, because even before the Rebecca
Speaker 1: Riots the tolls were not popular and attacks on toll
Speaker 1: houses and their keepers were an ongoing issue. Usually there
Speaker 1: was a gate across the road to force people on
Speaker 1: horseback or with some kind of horse and cart to stop,
Speaker 1: but if you were on foot or pushing a hand cart,
Speaker 1: you might be able to go around by a smaller path.
Speaker 1: An assortment of laws also empowered the creation of turnpike trusts.
Speaker 1: These were trusts that were established by businesses or groups
Speaker 1: of landowners to manage the tolls and the road maintenance
Speaker 1: they were meant to pay for and when we say assortment.
Speaker 1: By eighteen thirty six there were nine hundred and forty
Speaker 1: two acts for new turnpike trusts in England and Wales.
Speaker 1: In some cases, the trust that built the toll gate
Speaker 1: didn't actually manage it, but they instead least that out
Speaker 1: to somebody else. There is some suggestion that on the whole,
Speaker 1: the creation of turnpikes and turnpike trusts did improve the
Speaker 1: quality of the roads, but this was also a situation
Speaker 1: that could lead to a lot of mismanagement and abuse.
Speaker 1: At the same time, some of the trusts were not
Speaker 1: breaking even. It was really expensive to build and maintain
Speaker 1: these roads, and the cost of doing so just outstripped
Speaker 1: the money collected from the tolls a lot of the time,
Speaker 1: So whether they were trying to make more money or
Speaker 1: just break even, turnpike trusts raised the price of tolls
Speaker 1: and also built more toll gates so that people had
Speaker 1: to pay the tolls more often, and eventually toll collectors
Speaker 1: also started adding sidebars on smaller roads and paths that
Speaker 1: kept people on foot from being able to go around
Speaker 1: the gate on the main road, collecting tolls on foot
Speaker 1: traffic as well. So this might have been less of
Speaker 1: an issue if people only had to pay a toll
Speaker 1: one time time to get to where they were going,
Speaker 1: but the turnpike trusts and the toll gates that they
Speaker 1: were putting up just proliferated. At the peak of the
Speaker 1: Rebecca Riots, there were at least twenty different trusts operating
Speaker 1: in southwestern Wales, and there was a gate or a
Speaker 1: bar about every four miles. Camarthen, where a lot of
Speaker 1: people took their goods to market, was basically surrounded by
Speaker 1: twelve gates that were controlled by five different road trusts.
Speaker 1: Different trusts also set up gates on the same turnpikes,
Speaker 1: and then all of them would all charge their tolls
Speaker 1: to the people who tried to pass. As the Rebecca
Speaker 1: Riots were going on, One newspaper reporter took a fifteen
Speaker 1: mile trip from Camarthen to Pontardalas and encountered eleven different
Speaker 1: gates on the way. This affected farmers and farm laborers tremendously.
Speaker 1: They often had to pass through multiple gates to get
Speaker 1: two and from their fields and two and from market.
Speaker 1: Farmers in this part of Wales also used lime extensively
Speaker 1: to try to improve their soil, usually transporting it in carts. Initially,
Speaker 1: some trusts had exempted lime carts from the tolls, but
Speaker 1: when that stopped, farmers found that they were paying almost
Speaker 1: as much in tolls as they were for the lime
Speaker 1: they were carrying, and there was really no other option.
Speaker 1: Farmers and laborers had to use the roads to do
Speaker 1: their work. A farmer deciding to just not treat the
Speaker 1: soil with lime anymore because the tolls made it too
Speaker 1: expensive might wind up with a bad harvest as a result,
Speaker 1: and that would have its own financial consequences. So the tolls,
Speaker 1: combined with the high rents and the poor laws and
Speaker 1: the tithes and the poor rates and everything that we
Speaker 1: talked about before the break, eventually working people just felt
Speaker 1: like they were drowning. In May of eighteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: a new toll gate was built in a vile wind
Speaker 1: on the border between Commercentshire and Pembrokeshire, on a road
Speaker 1: that a lot of people used to cart their lime
Speaker 1: back to their arms from the coast. It was built
Speaker 1: on the order of the Whitland Turnpike Trust, which had
Speaker 1: contracted Thomas Bullen as toll collector. Bullen was involved in
Speaker 1: a lot of the gates that were put up during
Speaker 1: this period. On May thirteenth, a large group of locals
Speaker 1: attacked and destroyed the new gate and set the toll
Speaker 1: house on fire. The next day, handbills were posted around
Speaker 1: the area calling for a meeting to discuss quote the
Speaker 1: propriety of its tollgate. The Whitland Turnpike Trust rebuilt the
Speaker 1: gate and in June the demonstrators destroyed it again in
Speaker 1: broad daylight. At this point there were not professional police
Speaker 1: forces in Western Wales, and special constables had been brought
Speaker 1: in to try to guard the gate after that first incident,
Speaker 1: but when they saw the demonstrators coming, they all fled.
Speaker 1: This toll gate was once again rebuilt and members of
Speaker 1: the Castlemartin Yeomanry and soldiers from the town of Brecken
Speaker 1: were called in to help try to protect it, but
Speaker 1: on July seventeenth of eighteen thirty nine, the gate was
Speaker 1: once again attacked and demolished. Although other attacks had been
Speaker 1: carried out by men in dresses, accounts of This one
Speaker 1: included the first written reference to the Daughters of Rebecca
Speaker 1: or myrrhead Rebecca, which would become one of the most
Speaker 1: memorable parts of the uprising. The men wore dresses, sometimes
Speaker 1: combining them with false beards and horsehair wigs. In the
Speaker 1: words of a nineteen ten book on the riots by
Speaker 1: Henry Tobot Evans quote, it was decided at a vilewind
Speaker 1: and Whitland that the rioters should be clothed in women's dresses,
Speaker 1: with blackened faces and fern in their white caps. Their
Speaker 1: arms were to consist of sticks, pikes, spades, hatchets, old swords, guns,
Speaker 1: in fact, any weapon they could get hold of. The
Speaker 1: leader to be called Rebecca was invariably to be mounted
Speaker 1: and accompanied by a bodyguard. All their doings were to
Speaker 1: be conducted under the superintendence of Mother Rebecca, and all
Speaker 1: arrangements and commands were to be made and given by her.
Speaker 1: There are two different stories about where the name Rebecca
Speaker 1: came from. One is that a man called Toomcarnabooth or
Speaker 1: Thomas Reeves had a hard time finding a dress that
Speaker 1: would fit him. This was a real person. He was
Speaker 1: definitely involved in the Rebecca riots and he was a
Speaker 1: large man who was locally well known as a pugilist.
Speaker 1: In this version, he finally did find a dress that
Speaker 1: belonged to a quote, tall and stout old maid, and
Speaker 1: that person was named Rebecca. Some historians find this to
Speaker 1: be the less likely of the two origin stories, in
Speaker 1: part because Toomcarnabooth was known to be active in these
Speaker 1: protests in eighteen forty two, not so much in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, when this name was first used. The other
Speaker 1: possible origin is from the Book of Genesis, chapter twenty four,
Speaker 1: verse sixty. Rebecca was the wife of Isaac and the
Speaker 1: mother of Jacob and Esau, and this verse comes from
Speaker 1: the account of how she was chosen to be Isaac's wife.
Speaker 1: Isaac's father, Abraham, had sent a servant to the place
Speaker 1: of his birth to find a wife for Isaac. The
Speaker 1: servant prayed to God for a sign directing him to
Speaker 1: the right woman, basically saying, quote, when I ask a
Speaker 1: woman at this fountain for water, let the one who
Speaker 1: offers me and my camel's water be the woman God
Speaker 1: has chosen to marry Isaac. Rebecca comes to the fountain,
Speaker 1: the servant asks for water, and she offers it to
Speaker 1: him and his camels. Skipping ahead a little bit, they
Speaker 1: go to the home of Rebecca's father, where the servant
Speaker 1: tells him that he's a servant of Abraham, who God
Speaker 1: has blessed with wealth, and that he's come to find
Speaker 1: Abraham's son Isaac a wife. She and her family agree
Speaker 1: to the marriage, and then later, when she is leaving,
Speaker 1: her family blesses her and says, quote, thou art our sister,
Speaker 1: be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let
Speaker 1: thy seed possess the gait of those which hate them.
Speaker 1: Regardless of origin story play, the role of Rebecca was
Speaker 1: a mark of honor. There was also an almost theatrical
Speaker 1: element to these demonstrations, with mother Rebecca portrayed as elderly
Speaker 1: and blind, riding a white horse and finding her way
Speaker 1: blocked by a gate. The assembled men in dresses the
Speaker 1: daughters of Rebecca would answer that nothing should block an
Speaker 1: old woman's way, and then they would tear the gate down.
Speaker 1: So a note on the blackening of the faces. None
Speaker 1: of the sources I found really gave a specific explanation
Speaker 1: for the demonstrators rationale and doing this. Blackened faces were
Speaker 1: also part of a sort of mock trial and public
Speaker 1: humiliation in Wales called the cafil Prenne or the wooden Horse,
Speaker 1: in which a mob of men wearing dresses with their
Speaker 1: faces blackened would tie somebody who had committed some kind
Speaker 1: of an offense to a wooden frame and then parade
Speaker 1: that person around the town. So this might have just
Speaker 1: been something that people were used to doing in this
Speaker 1: kind of public protest already. There's some speculation that in
Speaker 1: the case of the Rebecca Riots, this was to make
Speaker 1: the Rebeccaites harder to see at night, but since they
Speaker 1: were also described as wearing white dresses, that doesn't totally
Speaker 1: add up. It may have been more about disguising the
Speaker 1: demonstrator's identities. Various illustrated newspaper reports from the time don't
Speaker 1: portray the rioters in what we might think of as
Speaker 1: blackface or in any way that resembles the minstrel performers
Speaker 1: that were becoming popular in the US around this same time,
Speaker 1: but there have been more recent reenactments of the riots
Speaker 1: in which participants do look like they're in blackface. Around
Speaker 1: the same time as the gate in Ivalwin was being
Speaker 1: repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, another new gate was attacked and
Speaker 1: destroyed at Flamboidy in Camarthen Sure. In that case the
Speaker 1: gate was not rebuilt, and after the third time the
Speaker 1: gate was destroyed at Ivowwan it was not rebuilt either.
Speaker 1: For a while, no more toll gates were attacked by
Speaker 1: large groups of men in dresses being led by Mother Rebecca.
Speaker 1: There were, however, ongoing theft's attempts to evade the toll
Speaker 1: and assaults on tollkeepers and the gates on a much
Speaker 1: smaller scale. Large scale riots returned in November of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty two, and we'll get to that after another quick
Speaker 1: sponsor break. As we said before the break. After the
Speaker 1: toll gates had been destroyed at Ivowin and Flamboidi in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine, they were not rebuilt. There was this
Speaker 1: sort of pause in Rebeccaite demonstrations in Wales, although general
Speaker 1: unrest was still ongoing. Then in eighteen forty two, agriculture
Speaker 1: prices declined sharply, and that October a new gate called
Speaker 1: the Mermaid was built on the Lime Road in Saint
Speaker 1: Clear's and Carmarthenshire. On November eighteenth, Rebecca It attacked it
Speaker 1: and tore it down. Not long after, Rebecca Heites tore
Speaker 1: down the gates at Pooshtrap near Saint Clear's and at
Speaker 1: Trevaugh near Carmarthen. Demonstrations continued after that, and by December
Speaker 1: twelfth all the gates in Saint Clear's had been destroyed.
Speaker 1: There were local leaders of this movement in various towns
Speaker 1: and nighttime meetings to organize and rally support, but there
Speaker 1: was no one Rebecca who was the key to all
Speaker 1: this across all of Wales. In addition to planning out
Speaker 1: which tollgates to attack next, these meetings looked at other
Speaker 1: issues farmers and workers were facing. Rebeccaites encouraged one another
Speaker 1: to withhold their rent or to pay only the amount
Speaker 1: they thought was reasonable. This eventually became contentious, with Rebecca
Speaker 1: Heites attacking landlords whose behavior they thought was predatory, but
Speaker 1: also sometimes attacking other farmers who refused to participate in
Speaker 1: these rent protests or signed leases that the Rebecca Eight
Speaker 1: thought were unfair. As attacks on the gates escalated in
Speaker 1: late eighteen forty two, magistrates called for help. Royal marines
Speaker 1: were deployed from Pembroke Dock and police were called in
Speaker 1: from London, but they really couldn't stop these demonstrations. By
Speaker 1: March of eighteen forty three, every gate being managed by
Speaker 1: the Whitland Road Trust had been torn down, and in
Speaker 1: one town an armed mob had forced a toll collector
Speaker 1: and his wife out into the street naked and then
Speaker 1: tore down part of their house. The gates around Carmarthen
Speaker 1: were destroyed in May. Then on June nineteenth, demonstrators tried
Speaker 1: to destroy Camarthen's Workhouse, releasing the people being housed there,
Speaker 1: throwing beds and bedding out the windows and demolishing what
Speaker 1: they could. It's not clear how many people were involved
Speaker 1: in the attack on the workhouse. Estimates range from hundreds
Speaker 1: to two thousand, and it seems to have been a
Speaker 1: somewhat spontaneous assault. Unlike most of the Rebecca tests, the
Speaker 1: crowd included women and children, and aside from one man
Speaker 1: dressed as Rebecca, people were wearing their regular clothes. They
Speaker 1: were planning to march to Gildall Square to take their
Speaker 1: grievances to the magistrates, but along the way part of
Speaker 1: the crowd split off to attack the workhouse. In response
Speaker 1: to the workhouse attack, the light dragoons were deployed under
Speaker 1: the command of Colonel James Frederick Love, and authorities read
Speaker 1: the Riot Act. That's the text that was read alowed
Speaker 1: to demonstrators, ordering them to disperse their face criminal charges.
Speaker 1: Sixty people were arrested and eleven were convicted. After this,
Speaker 1: this was really when the Rebecca Riots started to get
Speaker 1: attention outside of this region of Wales. Eventually, the riots
Speaker 1: were well known enough that the imagery associated with them
Speaker 1: was being used to connect to other issues. The satirical
Speaker 1: magazine Punch carried an illustration in eighteen forty three that
Speaker 1: blended Irish nationalism with the riots, depicting Daniel O'Connell and
Speaker 1: the Repeat Association as Rebecca Rioters. The Repeal Association was
Speaker 1: advocating for the repeal of the Acts of Union of
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred, which had dissolved the Irish Parliament and created
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In this cartoon,
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Robert Peel is a toll collector and men
Speaker 1: in dresses are attacking a gate with slats that are
Speaker 1: labeled Church rate, Union tides and poor laws. Sometimes this
Speaker 1: is reprinted with the caption cutoff as a straightforward illustration
Speaker 1: just of the Rebecca riots, but the caption makes the
Speaker 1: connections to Peel O'Connell and the Repeal Association completely clear.
Speaker 1: The Time sent reporter Thomas Campbell Foster to Wales and
Speaker 1: he reported on the disturbances for about six months. Most
Speaker 1: of the local newspapers in Wales were really critical of
Speaker 1: the rioters, although some of them did also print letters
Speaker 1: that had been written by Rebecca Itites. Overall, though, Foster's
Speaker 1: reports were more sympathetic to all the social and economic
Speaker 1: issues that were at the heart of the riots, although
Speaker 1: without condoning the rioter's actions. I also want to know
Speaker 1: that I haven't read through Foster's reporting. I'm kind of
Speaker 1: relying on sources that have described it as more sympathetic,
Speaker 1: at least relatively speaking. But not long after this, Foster
Speaker 1: also went to Ireland to report on the Great Famine,
Speaker 1: which started in eighteen forty five, And while there were
Speaker 1: aspects of that reporting that were sort of similarly sympathetic
Speaker 1: to the hardships that Irish people were facing, it could
Speaker 1: also be really disparaging and reflect a lot of anti
Speaker 1: Irish bias. So while I read a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of summaries that described this reporting as like more sympathetic.
Speaker 1: It would not be surprising to me at all if
Speaker 1: some of those same threads were present in his reporting
Speaker 1: on Wales. He was an English reporter, presenting himself as
Speaker 1: an impartial outside observer in both cases, but he was
Speaker 1: still definitely coming at it from an English perspective, and
Speaker 1: English society saw itself as superior to both Ireland and Ways,
Speaker 1: as well as a long list of other countries. So
Speaker 1: many authorities also started taking stronger actions to try to
Speaker 1: stop the protests after the Carmarthen riots, but initially military
Speaker 1: units that were sent to the area to try to
Speaker 1: keep order weren't very effective at doing so. Basically, marching
Speaker 1: soldiers were loud and visible, so rebecca Itites were easily
Speaker 1: able to avoid them, and a common pastime among locals
Speaker 1: was feeding the soldier's false information about which gates were
Speaker 1: likely to be attacked next. They definitely come across as
Speaker 1: pretty bumbling at this point in the story. In the
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen forty three, there were overall fewer attacks
Speaker 1: on the toll gates, but the attacks themselves tended to
Speaker 1: be a lot stronger and more violent, and then beyond
Speaker 1: just the Gates. Rebecca Itites also sent threatening letters to
Speaker 1: landlords and debt collectors, and they committed other acts of
Speaker 1: arson and vandalism. This included burning crops and haystacks and
Speaker 1: outbuildings as well was damaging trees. By August of that year,
Speaker 1: rebecca It's were also holding mass meetings to discuss and
Speaker 1: push for political changes. Sometimes there were thousands of people
Speaker 1: in attendance. Also, there are a lot of accounts of
Speaker 1: men dressed as Rebecca doing things like forcing men to
Speaker 1: marry the mothers of their children who had been born
Speaker 1: out of wedlock, or if that was not possible, forcing
Speaker 1: those men to support those children, or punishing men who
Speaker 1: had abused or abandoned their families. So in addition to
Speaker 1: sort of fighting back against all of these social and
Speaker 1: economic issues in Wales, kind of maintaining a social order
Speaker 1: within the Welsh laboring and farming classes. The riot's only
Speaker 1: known death took place in September of eighteen forty three.
Speaker 1: That was when Sarah Williams, tollkeeper in Hindi Gate near Swansea,
Speaker 1: was shot. Some modern descriptions of Williams's death say she
Speaker 1: was young, but newspaper reporting from the time just scribe
Speaker 1: her as seventy five. An inquest was convened and a
Speaker 1: jury ruled that her cause of death was unknown, despite
Speaker 1: a surgeon testifying about evidence that she had been shot
Speaker 1: in the chest. Authorities offered a reward of five hundred
Speaker 1: pounds for information on who had killed her, but a
Speaker 1: culprit was never identified. She was very obviously shot, and
Speaker 1: I've seen some analysis of this that has like concluded
Speaker 1: that it was a case of jury nullification, somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to protect the actual culprit, something like that. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the UK government deployed eighteen hundred soldiers and two cannons
Speaker 1: to Wales and sent more police officers from London. Colonel
Speaker 1: Love's attempts to keep order clearly had not been effective,
Speaker 1: so Major General George Brown was also dispatched to start
Speaker 1: overseeing the effort. Love had mostly responded to riots and
Speaker 1: demonstrations after they were already happening, but Brown started trying
Speaker 1: to station police and soldiers all around the world region
Speaker 1: and to just be more proactive. Arrests really increased over
Speaker 1: the autumn, and the number of incidents at the tollgates
Speaker 1: dropped sharply. However, since a lot of the tollgates had
Speaker 1: been destroyed and then either replaced with chains or not rebuilt.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were just passing by the tollgates
Speaker 1: without stopping to pay anything. A Royal Commission was convened
Speaker 1: to investigate the toll roads in October of eighteen forty three,
Speaker 1: with MP Thomas Franklin Lewis presiding. This commission issued its
Speaker 1: report in eighteen forty four and didn't find that there
Speaker 1: was widespread or systemic mismanagement of the toll system or
Speaker 1: wrongdoing by the toll trusts. But the commission did find
Speaker 1: some issues like multiple trusts all putting their own toll
Speaker 1: houses along the same road, and trusts building toll gates
Speaker 1: and then expecting the local community to repair and maintain them.
Speaker 1: In response to this, Parliament passed Lord Cauday Act, or
Speaker 1: the Turnpike South Wales Act in eighteen forty four, which
Speaker 1: simplified the toll system, reduced the number of toll houses,
Speaker 1: and regulated the turnpike trusts. The large Rebeccaite demonstrations had
Speaker 1: really ended by the time this law was passed, and
Speaker 1: trials of people who were arrested in connection to them ended.
Speaker 1: In early eighteen forty four. Although rioting was punishable by hanging,
Speaker 1: mostly Rebeccaites were convicted of lesser charges. Some of them
Speaker 1: were transported to Australia. In the decades that followed the
Speaker 1: Rebecca Riots, some of the issues that had led to
Speaker 1: the unrest improved, at least to some extent. The development
Speaker 1: of railways in Wales made it easier for people to
Speaker 1: travel and to transport their goods. Gradually, the toll gates
Speaker 1: were removed, with the last toll gate of this era
Speaker 1: ceasing operation in eighteen ninety five, although a number of
Speaker 1: toll roads and toll bridges have come and gone since then.
Speaker 1: There were also changes to the poor laws, and the
Speaker 1: corn Laws were repealed in eighteen forty six. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk about the corn Laws at all in this episode,
Speaker 1: but these were tariffs that were generally seen as favoring
Speaker 1: rich landowners over working people, and in times of scarcity
Speaker 1: they could make food prohibitively expensive for poor people to buy.
Speaker 1: They were repealed in part because of the effects of
Speaker 1: the Great Famine in Ireland. The riots also became the
Speaker 1: subject of fiction and theater, starting even before they ended.
Speaker 1: As examples, there was a play called Rebecca and Her
Speaker 1: Daughters that was staged at Royal Amphitheater, Liverpool. In eighteen
Speaker 1: forty three, Elizabeth Amy Dillon published a novel called The
Speaker 1: Rebecca Rioter, a Story of a Kila life in two
Speaker 1: volumes at eighteen eighty. Dylan Thomas wrote a screenplay called
Speaker 1: Rebecca's Daughters in nineteen forty eight that eventually became a
Speaker 1: film much later in nineteen ninety two. There are also
Speaker 1: a couple of different bands that have named themselves the
Speaker 1: Rebecca Riots, including an acoustic folk trio out of Berkeley,
Speaker 1: California in the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands.
Speaker 1: There's a wooden sculpture commemorating the Rebecca Riots in Saint
Speaker 1: Clair's which was commissioned by the Saint Clair's Council and
Speaker 1: unveiled in March of two thousand and eight. It depicts
Speaker 1: three men in dresses, one on horseback, breaking down a fence.
Speaker 1: The men and horses are carved from cedar and the
Speaker 1: fence is ash. Some of the toll gates from this
Speaker 1: era are also still standing and in some cases are
Speaker 1: being lived in as homes. Yeah, there are a couple
Speaker 1: others that are more like museums community spaces. We will
Speaker 1: wrap it up with a quote from the introduction of
Speaker 1: that nineteen ten book we've referenced a couple of times.
Speaker 1: This introduction was written by Gladys Tobat Evans. Quote. Rebeccaism
Speaker 1: was the spirit of revolt which filled the whole nature
Speaker 1: of the peasant against the tyranny of the government, the
Speaker 1: oppression of the masses by the classes, the fostering of
Speaker 1: the individual rights at the expense of they at large.
Speaker 1: Rebeccaism was the embodiment of the peasants anger and righteous
Speaker 1: indignation at the trampling underfoot of his rights and his feelings.
Speaker 1: Rebeccaism was the spirit of a nation asserting itself against
Speaker 1: the wrongdoings and evil actions of the few, that is,
Speaker 1: the Rebecca Riots. Do you have a bit of listener mail?
Speaker 1: I do. This is from Sarah, and Sarah wrote, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy. I just listened to your recent episodes on
Speaker 1: mourning Dove. I found it incredibly informative, thought provoking, and
Speaker 1: it was actually relatable to the goings on in our library.
Speaker 1: Recently we had Emma Noise or author of Baby Speaks Salish,
Speaker 1: give a talk about her experiences as a member of
Speaker 1: the Synix Band of the Confederated Tribes of the Callville Reservation.
Speaker 1: She spoke about coyote stories, the importance of listening, and
Speaker 1: her discussion about her language was more than interesting. I've
Speaker 1: been listening to your podcast for years now, and every
Speaker 1: episode as a learning opportunity. Thanks for all the hard
Speaker 1: work and for the thoughtfulness that goes into episodes such
Speaker 1: as this. A brief description of the book, quote Baby
Speaker 1: Speaks Salish as a one of a kind manual created
Speaker 1: by a mother seeking to share more call the Okanagan
Speaker 1: Salish language with her daughter than she herself was exposed
Speaker 1: to as a young girl. Created for caregivers and the
Speaker 1: language curious, this book provides simple examples for how to
Speaker 1: integrate more Salish words into adult and child interactions. This
Speaker 1: book can be purchased in some local bookstores in Spokane, Washington.
Speaker 1: It's also online at from here Spokane dot com. Thanks Sarah,
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Sarah. I had not heard about this book,
Speaker 1: but I love this idea and it also gives me
Speaker 1: a moment to say. Our colleague Whune Lance Twitchell, who
Speaker 1: is host of the podcast The Tongue Unbroken, which is
Speaker 1: coming back for a new season in the beginning of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Has also written a book which is
Speaker 1: called Kuhanti. And this book was written in conjunction with
Speaker 1: ling It language speakers and is written only in the
Speaker 1: indigenous language without translations. So it's like a book written
Speaker 1: in that language for kids, which is an idea I love.
Speaker 1: And I was so happy when I learned that Hune
Speaker 1: had gotten it published. So thank you Sarah for this
Speaker 1: email for giving me a chance to name drop that
Speaker 1: if you would like to send us a note about
Speaker 1: this or any other podcast or history podcasts at iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: dot com and we're all over social media at mist
Speaker 1: in History, and you can subscribe to our show on
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