class or colony? treatment of lower classes in relation to deportation.

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Like the Tolpuddle martyrs you mean?

CDfm wrote: »

can you explain and with numbers for what happened in the uk

I mean was deportation used for political purposes in the UK? Scotland ?

Press ganging sailors etc?

Exile 1798 wrote: »

I understand that there's a certain type of person who takes great delight in casually dismissing the troubling nature of the English system in Ireland. I'd say such joys are better confined to the After Hours forum, and the History forum should be a place for discussion of historical facts.

http://www.zyworld.com/albionmagazineonline/yorkshire_rebellion.htm

The Yorkshire Rebellion of the first half of April 1820 was one of the largest protest-insurrections of the classic industrial revolution era, and yet its scale and background remain only partially understood. Geographically confined to the West Riding of Yorkshire, it constituted outbursts in at least three different towns, involving up to 2,500 men. It can therefore be seen as the largest physical force rebellion of the pre-Chartist era of English history. Equally, if considered as part of the simultaneous and connected revolt in the West of Scotland, it was the largest pre-Chartist rebellion in British history. The purpose of this paper is to describe the Yorkshire Rebellion of 1820, to set it in its wider political and economic contexts, and to offer, where possible, causal explanations for its origins. [See also E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1968) and Alan Brooke and Lesley Kipling, Liberty or Death: Radicals, Republicans and Luddites c. 1793-1823 (1993).]

Aftermath of the Yorkshire Rebellion


Consistent with early nineteenth-century practice, the courts were not particularly vindictive in dealing with rebel workingmen in England. In September 1820 they reached an agreement with twenty-nine Yorkshire rebels that a common plea of guilty would save them from the death sentence. A similar bargain was struck with Thomas Farrimond, who had been captured later in 1821. The goal of the authorities was to use show trials to make examples of rebels, especially identifiable leaders, and to avoid creating martyrs. Death penalties were pronounced by a judge wearing a black hood, and these were later commuted to transportation to the Australian penal colonies or, in some cases, pardons after a period of detention in the hulks.


Interestingly, when the twenty-five Yorkshire rebels held in York Castle on charges of High Treason petitioned the Home Secretary to allow their families to visit them, 75% of them could sign their names, which indicates that they were literate. [Petition to Sidmouth, 29 May 1820, P.R.O., H.O. 20/1.] Then, in 1821, only eleven Yorkshire rebels were transported to Hobart aboard the convict ship Lady Ridley. During the voyage they once again petitioned their captors, but this time in very deferential terms. [P.R.O., Adm 102/42.] One convict, John Lindley, brought with him to Australia testimonials to his good character signed by about 100 Huddersfield area residents. [T.S.A., Colonial Sec. Office 1/267/6396.] The rebels certainly had a demonstrated propensity for litigious behaviour, as shown by their use of petitions and testimonials.


Once in Australia, most of the Yorkshire rebels passed through the early, worst stages of the convict system, settled down to a respectable life, received pardons, and became productive citizens. The exceptions were William Comstive, Joseph Chapiel, and Benjamin Rogers, who committed multiple offenses in the penal colony. By contrast, one of the Yorkshire rebels, Joseph Firth, made a fortune so large that in 1829 he owned 900 acres at Brown's River, as well as a farm and four houses in the Hobart area. In general, the Yorkshire rebels of 1820 received good reports in the penal colony, most had tickets of leave by 1825, and pardons followed in the 1830s. [T.S.A., CON 31, P.R.O., 10/44-50, H.O. 10/38 and H.O. 10/31 which, for example, contains the free pardon of William Rice dated 6 June 1837.] [See Note 2 for a summary of the fates of the Yorkshire Rebels.]

getz wrote: »

woman did not get the vote in england untill 1918,,during the time of the manchester martyrs one in every ten in manchester was irish

Voting rights before 1832
In early-19th-century Britain very few people had the right to vote. A survey conducted in 1780 revealed that the electorate in England and Wales consisted of just 214,000 people - less than 3% of the total population of approximately 8 million. In Scotland the electorate was even smaller: in 1831 a mere 4,500 men, out of a population of more than 2.6 million people, were entitled to vote in parliamentary elections. Large industrial cities like Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester did not have a single MP between them, whereas 'rotten boroughs' such as Dunwich in Suffolk (which had a population of 32 in 1831) were still sending two MPs to Westminster. The British electoral system was unrepresentative and outdated.

'A leap in the dark' (Punch cartoon)
Document | Transcript The Reform Acts
The three parliamentary reform Acts introduced in 19th-century Britain (in 1832, 1867 and 1884 respectively) satisfied moderate reformers rather than radicals. The Prime Minister, Lord Grey, supported reform to 'prevent the necessity of revolution' and was responsible for the first (or 'Great') Reform Act of 1832. However, the Act gave the vote in towns only to men who occupied property with an annual value of £10, which excluded six adult males out of seven from the voting process.

The Tory politician Lord Derby described the second Reform Act (1867) as 'a leap in the dark'. And yet only two in every five Englishmen had the vote in 1870. Even the third Reform Act (1884) - which enfranchised all male house owners in both urban and rural areas and added 6 million people to the voting registers - fell some way short of introducing universal manhood suffrage.
Third Reform Act:
Gladstone writes to the queen
Document | Transcript

Chartist demonstration in Birmingham, 1848
Document (252k) | Transcript Campaigns for universal suffrage
Radical reformers pressed for more extensive parliamentary reform throughout the 19th century. The six-point programme of the Chartists included demands for universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and voting by secret ballot. During the 1830s and 1840s, when Chartism was at its most influential, meetings to discuss 'constitutional reform' took place in towns and cities across Britain.

In the mid 1860s the Reform League - though less clearly committed to universal suffrage than the Chartists had been - also mobilised support outside Parliament for electoral reform. Throughout this period, election campaigns were sometimes disrupted by unrest and rioting.
Reform League poster, 1867
Document | Transcript

Election violence in Carlisle, 1841
Document | Transcript Conclusions
For many people, 19th-century parliamentary reform was a disappointment because political power was still left in the hands of the aristocracy and the middle classes. Universal suffrage, with voting rights for women (though not for those under 30), did not arrive in Britain until February 1918. By the time of the third Reform Act in 1884, Britain was less democratic than many other countries in Europe.

The changes made in the British political system between 1832 and 1884 were nevertheless important. The electorate increased substantially in size from approximately 366,000 in England and Wales in 1831 to slightly fewer than 8 million in 1885. Parliamentary seats were redistributed to give greater weight to larger towns and cities. Also, the Ballot Act of 1872, which introduced secret ballots, made it far more difficult for voters to be bribed or intimidated.