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‘The whole of the proceedings were very orderly’: Gunpowder Plot celebrations, civic culture and identity in some smaller Kent towns, 1860–1890

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2015

IAIN TAYLOR
IAIN TAYLOR*
Affiliation:
The Granary, Else's Farm, Morleys Road, Sevenoaks Weald, Kent TN14 6X, UK
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Abstract:

This article looks at how and why Bonfire Night celebrations became more peaceful in the later nineteenth century in some smaller Kent towns and what this process reveals about local civic cultures and identities. The drive towards respectability is seen both in the changing business relationships between participants, spectators and local tradesmen and in the evolving role of satire within processions. The ‘social energy’ visible at these events was channelled such that earlier class and other vertical conflicts within these towns were superseded by horizontal rivalries without, as they competed against each other (an important local variant of civic boosterism) to build free public libraries, for example. Moreover, more peaceful ‘Fifths’ and better reading facilities were linked, since both formed part of the much-altered prevailing civic cultures in these towns – their comprehensive, continuous, identity-driven efforts to present themselves in the best possible light against their rivals.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , November 2016 , pp. 517 - 538
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

1 South Eastern Gazette (SEG), 10 Nov. 1877. Both this newspaper and the Sevenoaks Chronicle are available digitally; all the others referenced in this article are not.

2 Cannadine, D., ‘The fifth of November remembered and forgotten’, in Buchanan, B. (ed.), Gunpowder Plots (London, 2005), 6 Google Scholar.

3 This term is derived from literary sources, in particular Stephen Greenblatt's conviction that Shakepeare's plays emerged from a ‘sublime confrontation between a total artist and a totalising society’. This confrontation found its expression in social energy, or a ‘collective, dynamic circulation of pleasures, anxieties and interests’, which neatly describes how many of the contested spaces identified in this article operated. See Greenblatt, S., Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley, 1988), 2 Google Scholar, 6.

4 Tonbridge Telegraph (TT), 12 Nov. 1870, 13 Nov. 1880.

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20 SEG, 9 Nov. 1852, 11 Nov. 1856, 13 Nov. 1860.

21 Kent Times, 9 Nov. 1861; Sevenoaks Free Press (SFP), 10 Nov. 1877; TT, 10 Nov. 1888.

22 SEG, 11 Nov. 1878.

23 Ibid ., 8 Nov. 1880. Perhaps significant here is that Tonbridge and Sevenoaks became part of the newly formed Kent County Constabulary in 1857. They built combined police stations and magistrates courts, both of which opened in 1864 and offer further examples of local desires for ‘progress’, exemplified in their wish to improve law and order – and thus respectability. Tunbridge Wells, on the other hand, was a borough and had formed its own force as early as 1835, although the quality of its operations had suffered badly by the 1850s. See Killingray, D. and Purves, E. (eds.), Sevenoaks: An Historical Dictionary (Andover, 2012), p. 133 Google Scholar; www.tonbridgehistory.org.uk/history/timeline.htm, accessed 20 Jan. 2015; www.kent-police-museum.co.uk/core_pages/pasttimes_early_days_pt3.shtml, accessed 20 Jan. 2015.

24 CKS C/PO/2/18 #365, 6 Nov. 1880.

25 Storch, ‘“Please to remember”’, 92; SEG, 11 Nov. 1882.

26 West Kent Journal (WKJ), 10 Nov. 1863; SEG, 8 Nov. 1873, 9 Nov. 1878.

27 SEG, 8 Nov. 1869.

28 SEG, 12 Nov. 1861; WKJ, 10 Nov. 1863.

29 Kent Police Letter Books: CKS C/PO/1/1, 4 Nov. 1864, C/PO/1/4, 1 Nov. 1880.

30 SEG, 12 Nov. 1881.

31 Another useful vehicle for mocking the upper classes during the second half of the nineteenth century was satirical poetry. One proficient exponent was the Radical Ernest Jones, whose Chartist Songs (1846) were ‘recited and sung all over Britain’ – Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Ernest Jones (1819–69). See also Jones, S.E., ‘Nineteenth-century satirical poetry’, in Quintero, R. (ed.), A Companion to Satire: Ancient and Modern (Oxford, 2007), 342–57Google Scholar.

32 For more on Albert Bath and the politics of ridicule, see my ‘Pressure, melodrama, “subversion” and the politics of ridicule in Sevenoaks, Kent, 1881–85’, Journal of Victorian Culture (forthcoming).

33 SEG, 10 Nov. 1877, 9 Nov. 1878, 8 Nov. 1880, 7 Nov. 1881.

34 SEG, 8 Nov. 1879; SC, 12 Nov. 1886. Cross dressing seems to have been a regular feature of Guy Fawkes and other celebrations/events in Sevenoaks during the 1880s, for reasons which are, as yet, unclear and about which more research would be appropriate – see also SC, 9 Nov. 1888, for example. For more on Wood, see Vamplew, W. and Kay, J., Encyclopaedia of British Horseracing (London, 2012), 213 Google Scholar; SC, 9 Nov. 1888, 8 Nov. 1889.

35 SEG, 11 Nov. 1876.

36 SFP, 10 Nov. 1877; Tonbridge Free Press, 13 Nov. 1880.

37 Killingray and Purves (eds.), Dictionary, 169; Killingray, D., ‘Grassroots politics in Kent since the late eighteenth century’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 129 (2009), 47 Google Scholar.

38 SC, 10 Nov. 1882; SEG, 13 Nov. 1886.

39 SC, 9 Nov. 1883, 7 Nov. 1884. For more on the access dispute, see Killingray, D., ‘Rights, “riot” and ritual: the Knole Park access dispute, Sevenoaks, Kent 1883–85’, Rural History, 5 (1994), 63–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 SC, 7 Nov. 1884, 12 Nov. 1886, 8 Nov. 1889.

41 Thompson, Respectable Society, 360; Killingray and Purves (eds.), Dictionary, 53–4; Cunningham, H., ‘The metropolitan fairs: a case-study in the social control of leisure’, in Donajgrodzki, A.P. (ed.), Social control in nineteenth-century Britain (London, 1977), 173 Google Scholar.

42 SC, 13 May 1881.

43 Thompson, Respectable Society, 360.

44 Tonbridge Chronicle (TC), 7 Nov. 1868; TT, 10 Nov. 1888.

45 SEG, 11 Nov. 1876.

46 Walton, J.K., ‘Towns and consumerism’, in Daunton, (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. iii, 723 Google Scholar.

47 See T. Evans, Riot Damages Act Reform, House of Commons Standard Note SNBT-6949, 28 Aug. 2014, www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06949.pdf, accessed 1 Feb. 2015. Since a number of fairly recent leading cases have tested the provisions of the 1886 Act (for example Yarls Wood Immigration Ltd v. Bedfordshire Police Authority, paragraph 9, Court of Appeal, judgment handed down 23 Oct. 2009) more information may be found there, too.

48 Sevenoaks Express, 14 Nov. 1865; SEG, 7 Nov. 1881.

49 TC, 7 Nov. 1868.

50 SC, 8 Nov. 1889.

51 SEG, 7 Nov. 1896.

52 Vovelle, M., ‘Ideologies and mentalities’, in Samuel, R. and Stedman-Jones, G. (eds.), Culture, Ideology and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm (London, 1982), 5 Google Scholar. The Fifth at Staplehurst in 1898, when a lit paraffin cask burned down the town forge, was celebrated with ‘a deal too much wantonness’ and was by then most atypical. Kent Messenger, 12 Nov. 1898.

53 SEG, 8 Nov. 1873.

54 Ibid ., 7 Nov. 1881.

55 TT, 10 Nov. 1888.

56 Beckett, J., City Status in the British Isles, 1830–2002 (Aldershot, 2005), 27 Google Scholar. ‘Boosterism’ was coined in the US in the late nineteenth century and the corrupt, eponymous hero of Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt is described as a ‘big booster’.

57 Stobart, J., ‘Building an urban identity. Cultural space and civic boosterism in a “new” industrial town: Burslem 1761–1911’, Social History, 29 (2004), 485–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, A., ‘Civic identity, municipal governance and provincial newspapers: the Lincoln of Bernard Gilbert, poet, critic and “booster”’, Urban History, 42 (2015), 113–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miskell, L., Meeting Places: Scientific Congresses and Urban Identity in Victorian Britain (Farnham, 2013), 41 Google Scholar. For twentieth-century boosterism, see Hayes, N., ‘Civic perceptions: housing and local decision making in English cities in the 1920s, Urban History, 27 (2000), 211–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larkham, P. and Lilley, K., ‘Plans, planners and city images: place promotion and civic boosterism in British reconstruction planning’, Urban History, 30 (2003), 183–2005 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapely, P., ‘Civic pride and redevelopment in the post-war British city’, Urban History, 39 (2012), 310–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For theoretical perspectives on boosterism, see for example Kearns, G. and Philo, C. (eds.), Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; Boyle, M., ‘Growth machines and propaganda projects: a review of readings of the role of civic boosterism in the politics of local economic development’, in Jonas, A. and Wilson, D. (eds.), The Urban Growth Machine: Critical Perspectives Two Decades Later (New York, 1999)Google Scholar.

58 See Morris, R.H. and Trainor, R.H. (eds.), Urban Governance: Britain and Beyond since 1750 (Aldershot, 2000)Google Scholar.

59 Hill, K., ‘Thoroughly imbued with the spirit of ancient Greece: symbolism and space in Victorian civic culture’, in Kidd, A. and Nicholls, D. (eds.), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain 1800–1940 (Manchester, 1999), 99–111 Google Scholar; Stobart, ‘Urban identity’, 487.

60 Killingray and Purves (eds.), Dictionary, 101. In 1860, the Sevenoaks Literary and Scientific Institution boasted a lending library of 2,132 volumes, CKS U/1000/32/03.

61 SEG, 24 Jul. 1882.

62 Hodge, G., ‘Tonbridge free public library, 1881–1900’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 103 (1986), 53–68 Google Scholar. Avebury Avenue is still in existence.

63 SEG, 30 Oct. 1900.

64 SEG, 2 Jan. 1894.

65 Ibid ., 21 Nov. 1905.

66 SC, 17 Nov. 1905; SEG, 12 Jul. 1910; www.tonbridgepool.co.uk/cgi-bin/buildpage.pl?mysql=1670, accessed 29 Jan. 2015; Killingray and Purves (eds.), Dictionary, 195–6.

67 After a successful career in the City, Swaffield was for many years one of the town's most generous benefactors. See Killingray and Purves (eds.), Dictionary, 194; SC, 17 Nov. 1905.

68 R. Trainor, ‘The “decline” of British urban governance since 1850 – a reassessment’, in Morris and Trainor (eds.), Governance, 35; Killingray and Purves (eds.), Dictionary, 186.

69 SEG, 4 Mar. 1878.

70 SC, 2 Oct. 1903.

71 Stobart, ‘Urban identity’, 498.

72 Killingray and Purves (eds.), Dictionary, 72–3.

73 Stobart, ‘Urban identity’, 498.

74 SEG, 24 Jul. 1882, 30 Oct. 1900.

75 SC, 17 Jul. 1914.

76 Dangerfield, G., The Strange Death of Liberal England (London, 1970 Google Scholar; first published 1935).