Captain Swing

[3] The main causes of the disturbances were due to an excess of labour, predominantly by men who had been involved in the Napoleonic wars, returning home.

A resident of Lewes in Sussex, Gideon Mantell the English obstetrician, geologist and palaeontologist noted in his diary of 1830: It is all bad, our peasantry are in a state of ignorance and slavery: almost starving without the knowledge to attempt obtaining redress without violence, without violating laws, which are made to oppress the poor and protect the rich.Popular protests by farm workers occurred across agricultural areas of southern England.

[7] The main targets for protesting crowds were landowners/ landlords, whose threshing machines they destroyed or dismantled, and whom they petitioned for a rise in wages.

The act of marching towards an offending farmer's homestead served not only to maintain group discipline, but also to warn the wider community that they were regimented and determined.

[b] Letters had been sent to farmers, in the Reading area, suggesting that they should get rid of their threshing machines as early as 1811, the following two were reproduced in The London Gazette:Whitehall September 3 1811 Whereas it hath been humbly represented to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent that Two anonymous threatening Letters have been received by Mr William Shackell of Early Court and Mr James Fuller of Loddon Bridge near Reading in the County of Berks of which the following are Copies viz.

Mr Fuller Loddon Bridge Farm Berks On Saturday night, 28 August 1830, in the Elham Valley, Kent a threshing machine was destroyed by rioters.

The local paper reported that farmers who received the first two letters, were so terrified that they placed their machines in the open field inviting their destruction.

[4] Initially the authorities were not clear who was responsible for the wrecking of threshing machines and other farm equipment blaming it on poachers, smugglers or deer-stealers.

Signed on behalf of the whole... SwingNot all letters were from impoverished farm labourers trying to improve their lot; other people saw the use of the eponymous 'Swing' purely for private gain.

For example a letter sent to a Mrs Chandler of Church Farm, Pursey, Wiltshire, was an obvious attempt at extortion: Madam — I have to request that you will send me by return of post the sum of £10, or else your house will be burned with the ground very shortly, as I know that you can well afford to spare that sum for a short time, until I have the effects to repay it.