NOSTALGIA
IT was 1740. The German-born King George II was on the throne and Britain had its first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole.
The patriotic song Rule Britannia was performed for the first time, and the early months of the year saw the nation crippled by the ‘Great Frost’.
Newcastle was a town on the up in 1740.
More than 20,000 people lived there and its population was spreading north and west beyond the ancient Town Walls.
The Tyne was busy with shipping as the region’s coal trade boomed.
The town’s movers and shakers might meet in one of the fashionable coffee shops – and the Assembly Rooms, opened in 1736, would play host to balls and functions for the wellheeled.
But day-to-day life for poverty-stricken working people was a struggle and there was trouble brewing.
As a response to serious food shortages, the so-called Corn Riots exploded in 1740.
Spearheaded by miners, keelmen and their wives, the riots took place over several months.
Now, 279 years later, a nine-month project organised by Shoe Tree Arts in partnership with others will recall the 18th century Newcastle Corn Riots and examine parallels with the problem of soaring food bank use in modern Britain. The project kicks off tomorrow.
The background to the riots saw heavy rains in August and September 1739 which led to a bad harvest. By the following spring there were food shortages as the price of grain rocketed so that the hardworking miners and keelmen of Heaton could no longer feed themselves or their families.
Riots broke out in the hungry towns and cities of Britain. In Newcastle, women took to the streets in May 1740. Troops from Berwick marched south to Newcastle to quell escalating trouble.
In June, 100 pitmen marched into Newcastle towards Sandgate demanding food, and that grain prices be stabilised and working conditions improved. They were joined by keelmen and iron workers from North and South Shields.
Much of the anger stemmed from the fact that grain was still being exported from Newcastle and Gateshead while people starved.
More people arrived and the Riot Act was read, before a 1,500strong crowd – including women and children – gathered outside the Guildhall on Newcastle Quayside.
A newspaper account described how “the mob got up again in a terrible manner, preceded by music, colours flying, and drums beating, marching through the streets...”