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 1822, 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.