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20th February 1855: Second day of Bread riots

THE CRISIS OF FEBRUARY 1855

On Saturday, February 17th, 1855 the Liverpool Mail carried a report of the desperate conditions of the labouring poor of Birkenhead and Liverpool. The immediate cause of their distress was the bitter weather conditions which drastically affected the work of the port. The Mail reported that:

“In Liverpool - the severity of the weather - the prevalence of easterly winds and the consequent paucity of shipping, the freezing of the docks and other causes, have thrown thousands out of employment. When it is remembered that vast numbers of our poorer fellow townsmen are dependent for their daily bread upon casual employment at the docks, it will be evident that such a state of things as that which now exists, in which scarcely six ships arrive in as many days, must be attended with severe and extensive destitution.”

…The casual labour system kept a large part of the labouring population of Liverpool in a state of mere existence; as a labour market it ensured only its own continuation, the human losses were enormous but the system itself persisted. When it broke down, however, as it did in February 1855 then whole sections of the population, denied even casual and intermittent earnings were plunged into near or actual starvation. The safety network was a complex system of relief and charity which operated in the city. In February 1855, however, the relief agencies faltered and proved momentarily inadequate. The magnitude of the distress, the strain of virtually substituting itself for the local economy, rendered the relief system insufficient. This led to a good number of the people of the Vauxhall Ward to themselves take the food from the shops. There was a bread riot in one of mid-Victorian England’s greatest cities and one of the world’s leading seaports…

THE RIOTS

Early on Monday morning crowds began to assemble between 8 and 9am in the Vauxhall Road and Scotland Road area of North Liverpool. The crowd, reported to have numbered between 800 and 1,000, attacked the bread shop of Mr. Huntington at the corner of Collingwood Street:

Mr. Huntington heard of their approach and was preparing with five or six of his men ready to throw out all his bread, expecting to keep the mob outside. Although the men threw the loaves of bread out as fast as they could, this did not pacify the rioters or appease their fury. Marching up in military order they raised a loud cry ‘Make way for the Russians’ and after breaking the bars, shutters and sashes of the window, they forceably entered the shop, which was then instantly ransacked of everything it contained.
Some of the women took 3s loaves in their aprons and were so loaded with the bread that they could not stir away; others turned up their dresses and filled them all round with flour and so marched off. The meal and flour were recklessly thrown upon the shop floor and the rabble waded 7 or 8 inches deep in them.

During Monday and the next two days Liverpool was in turmoil - bread and provision shops were plundered, the military were put on alert and the civil authorities regained control of the streets only after 200 special constables and extra police were drafted in…

The riot was a relatively disciplined and discriminating affair: rioters concentrated their attacks on particular people as well as particular areas. Some bakers went untouched; others had their shops attacked. Mr Lunt, for example, had four shops attacked including the one in Paddington. This was a long way to go to raid a bakers shop especially when the crowd ignored some on the way. It seems likely that Mr Lunt’s shops were specific targets. The same seems to be true of Mr Huntington’s whose five shops were all raided Huntington was one of the bakers working for the relief committee and this may be a clue to the crowd’s behaviour; by-passing the relief system they went straight to the bread which they considered was being kept from them by inefficiency or worse.

Taken from The Liverpool Bread Riots, 1855 by R.M.Jones. In North West Labour History Society Bulletin 6, 1979-80

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