A
CHARIVARI or skimmington was one way in which a community could show
disapproval of anti social or deviant behaviour. It was a mixture of
ridicule and horse play which could spill over into physical violence.
Sometimes the apparent reason for the charivari would be covering some
deeper resentment this was the case in Soham in 1822 it was the evening
of April 9th John Horsley had secured his door and retired to bed
early. At 8 p.m. four men broke in, pulled Horsley from his room,
dragged him across the yard, and threw him in a ditch.
The
original attackers Bryant, Bacton, Edgar and Liles were joined by
Robert Martin, George Houghton and James Dennis. They took Horsley
home, but then decided he had not been punished enough, so they took
him out again, and he was '' hauled up town with nothing on but my
shirt. ''
The party stopped, '' opposite Bishops where a large
mob had assembled, '' and after discussing whether to go, the Red Lion
way or the White Hart way, '' they headed of towards the Crown.
Isaac
Cock kept slapping Horsleys legs with a carpenters rule, and ; Tom
Edgar kept taking up my shirt to expose my person to the mob.'' once at
the inn, Horsley was, sat on the back of an ass, facing Houghton .....
my face was towards the ass's tail. this treatment was followed by a
second ducking, in a pond, and a further parade through the streets
back to the Red Lion. Horsley reckoned that it was only the
intervention of '' Mr Merrest and Mr. Addison, surgeon, and Mr. Orman
the clergy man, '' that saved him from being drowned. While they could
not rescue Horsley from the mob, Addison's advice that a third
immersion, this time in the river, might prove fatal, was listened to.
Horsley
was brought home and put to bed, and after some shouting and jeering,
the crowd broke up about 10 o' clock. Horsley's account of his
sufferings was sent to the Home Office by Sir Henry Bate Dudley,
Prebendary of Ely, Justice of the Peace, and self-proclaimed hero in
suppressing the Littleport riot in 1816. Dudley was trying to convince
Sir Robert Peel that there was, '' a dangerous spirit of
insubordination, '' abroad in the Isle of Ely once again and wrote of
burning granaries and '' despoiling Churches. '' Infact there had been
only one fire and one Church broken into, Saint Leonard's Downham. The
Soham Charvari was not a sign of incipient revolt, nor was it simply an
explosion of moral outrage against Horsley.
If there had been a
riot every time some breech of the moral code was unearthed, then the
whole country would have been in a state of permanent uproar. Horsley's
deposition provided the first clue as to why he was so disliked in the
village. He suggested that the intention of the rioters was to destroy
his reputation and so invalidate him as a witness against '' one Thomas
Tibbits, who now stands charged with felony. '' the Cambridge
Independent listed Tibbits among the prisoners due to appear at the
next assizes, to answer a charge of breaking and entry and stealing
leather from a Soham shop. Yet when Thomas Edgar had forced his way
into Horsley's house, he had said, '' damn you , you will swear the
men's lives away again. ''the Independent provided the probable answer
here as well. When it reported the committals of Edgar, Houghton,
Martin, Dennis and Cock, for the attempted murder of Horsley, it
described the victim as a man, mainly instrumental in bringing the
Soham gang to justice.
There was a spate of thefts in Soham and
in the surrounding villages, stretching over a period of two years,
between 1819 and 1821. Fowls and grain had been removed from farms in
Snailwell, Exning, Wicken, Freckenham, Fordham and Worlington ; Joseph
Truelove lost a sheep at Wicken, seven pigs had disappeared at Moulton
and William Delphs house at Wicken was burgled and plundered.
On
April 13th 1821 the Cambridge Chronicle noted the arrest of fourteen
members of the Soham gang. By the time the cases came for trial, there
was twenty two men in custody, and talking of so many in so short a
time pointed to there being an informer. clearly there were people in
Soham who knew, or strongly suspected, that Horsley had been
responsible. Considering what happened to the gang Horsley might have
counted himself lucky to have escaped with a couple of duckings and a
few bruises. Sixteen of them were found guilty. The judge decided on
exemplary sentences. William Day was sentenced to death for the
burglary at Delphs ; this was later commuted to transportation, along
with thirteen others, Thomas Isaacson and his sons George and Edward,
and Sam Wright the elder and Sam Wright the younger, Henry and John
Attlesey, James Bailey, William West, William Arnold, William Worlledge
and John Thurston.
Richard Cater was awarded 10 months hard
labour, and William Webb and William Canham, seven months each. Even
allowing for the severity of the penal code, these were harsh
punishments, and only John Thurston and Tom Isaacson had previous
convictions. The Chronicle pointed out that none of the men could plead
poverty as an excuse. Isaacson had a good house with a garden and kept
cattle, while his son Edward was having a house built at the time of
the arrest. Thurston, Bailey and the Wrights all had cottages and
gardens, the Attleseys were the sons of a small farmer occupying his
own estate, and William Wests father was the proprietor of a good house
and garden and several acres of land. A curious feature of the
Chronicles report was that it gave no details of the actual trials. The
only witness to be mentioned besides the prosecutors was Robert Bailey,
who claimed to have been an accomplice when Sam Wright stole and slayed
a sheep.
The only connection with Horsley was Thomas Wilkin, his
employer, and one of the gangs targets, tho the case of his stolen
greatcoat was never heard. At the Cambridgeshire assizes in the summer
of 1822, George Houghton, Thomas Edgar, James Dennis, Isaac Cock and
Robert Martin were convicted for riot and assault and gaoled for two
years with hard labour. Thomas Tibbit the man they were supposed to
have been trying to help, walked from the court a free man, no true
bill being found against him.
