"Some examples should be made": Prosecuting reform bill rioters in 1831-32

Poole, Steve

Abstract

Following the House of Lords’ rejection of the parliamentary Reform Bill in the autumn of 1831, severe rioting broke out in a number of English towns. In the judicial retribution that followed, some 259 people were prosecuted, seven of them hanged and 43 transported. This essay takes a detailed look at the local circumstances and the choice of courts in which suspected rioters were brought to trial and the variable outcomes achieved as a consequence. Reform was a divisive and regionally nuanced issue and shaping a measured response was neither straightforward nor uniform. While prisoners at Nottingham and Bristol were tried with rigour by Special Commission, magistrates at Loughborough, Mansfield and Worcester were keen to confine cases to local courts, eschewing judicial terror in the interests of healing social wounds.

Citation

Poole, S. (2018). "Some examples should be made": Prosecuting reform bill rioters in 1831-32. In M. T. Davis, E. Macleod, & G. Pentland (Eds.), Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions: Britain and the North Atlantic, 1793—1848 (237-263). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98959-4_10

• Online Publication Date: Dec 31, 2018
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2018
• Deposit Date: Sep 24, 2019
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 237-263
• Series Title: Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice
• Book Title: Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions: Britain and the North Atlantic, 1793—1848
• Chapter Number: 10
• ISBN: 9783319989587
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98959-4_10
• Keywords: House of Lords, Reform Bill 1831, riot, court, trial, Nottingham, Bristol, Loughborough, Mansfield, Worcester
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/3241120
• Publisher URL: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319989587