1 - Early Troubles, 1633–99

Summary

In the latter part of the sixteenth century, as supplies of wood diminished and demands for coal as an alternative fuel increased, the rapidly expanding industry brought an influx of workers into Tyneside. The population of Newcastle, estimated at 10,000 in the mid-sixteenth century had doubled by about 1760 and the growth continued with increasing rapidity thereafter. In the early part of the period, many of these workmen hailed from areas notorious for lawlessness, and, as a report to the central government in or about 1638 pointed out, their presence in or near Newcastle was a source of anxiety for the municipal authorities, especially when the coal trade was interrupted:

There is in Newcastle upon Tyne of keelmen, watermen, and other labourers, above 1800 able men, the most of them being Scottish men and Borderers which came out of the Tynedale and Reddesdale. By reason of the stop of trade occasioned by cross winds this year, they have wanted employment and are thereby in great necessity, having most of them great charge of wives and children. And unless they have employment they must be relieved by the charity of others, the inhabitants of the town, many of whom are so poor that they are scarce able to maintain themselves, or else we doubt, that in regard of their great necessity and rude condition, they will be in danger to assemble themselves and make an uproar in the town, as they did of late.

The late tumult was probably that of 1633 which, started by some apprentices, soon involved the whole working population, ever apt ‘to turn every pretence and colour of greivance into uproare and seditious mutinye’. The keelmen were a particularly formidable group. In 1653, a customs official, George Dawson, suggested that in the prevailing scarcity of seamen one or two hundred keelmen might be impressed into the navy, but their poverty and uncouth condition soon caused him to doubt the wisdom of the measure. ‘We find they have nothing but what they have on their backs and no means of procuring clothes’, he reported, ‘and such nasty creatures on board would do more harm than good’. Nevertheless more than one hundred keelmen were impressed.