In the Cleveland market town of Stokesley at the beginning of the 19th century, festivities were lively and raucous. As the decades went by, organised and decorous Victorian celebrations took their place. This is a story about Stokesley – but it will have been true of so many towns and villages!
As I explain in Radicalism in Stokesley in the 1820s, during the Napoleonic Wars the town was particularly outward looking and full of activity. There were nearly twenty inns and the Stokesley markets were the trading hub of a wide area. Handloom weaving was at its height and weavers were known for their independence of thought. The town was very much part of the coastal economy of Cleveland and was the home in the winter months of East India Company captains, merchant seamen, whalers and men of the Royal Navy – and there were plenty of places for them to drink and spend their wages.
When the Wars ended in 1815, a severe economic depression followed – but all the same, during the 1820s when George IV was on the throne, Stokesley was a Georgian town riven by fractious debate and with a raucous sense of humour.
A lasting reminder of one of the acrimonious debates is the collection of pamphlets produced in the Stokesley Paper Wars (1822-4). This was a war of the printed word between the radical watchmaker Robert Armstrong and the Methodist tradesman Thomas Mease (much more about his ventures here). It was a bitter and noisy debate between the supporters of radicalism, Freethought and atheism on the one hand and the supporters of religion and orthodoxy on the other.
That wasn't the only division – there was also ill-feeling between the various forms of Christianity. The injustice of the system of tithes lay behind this because it meant that the Methodists, Calvinists and other Nonconformists, who were already financing their own chapels, had to support the Church of England as well in the person of its local representative, Stokesley's very well-to-do rector. Thomas Mease was an active opponent of tithes and, according to his enemy Robert Armstrong, used to go to the parish church with his friend Robert Kneeshaw "for the purpose of laughing at the Parson".
The town's bawdy sense of humour can be seen in the newspaper report of an event that took place in the spring of 1825. The people gave themselves over to hours of fun to celebrate the moment when a 16 year old youth married a 55 year old woman. The church and factory bells rang, the town-crier made his announcement, the barber shaved the groom with a 30-inch razor, everyone followed the town band to the church and after the ceremony the band led the married pair, carried on chairs and followed by a crowd of people, around the town. "Rustic festivities followed", said the newspaper report, which can be found here in the account of the flax-spinning mill behind the High Street, where the bride and groom both worked.
By 1828 things were changing and Clarke's Topographical Dictionary described Stokesley as having rather an "air of retirement than business". But it was still a lively place – in the winter of 1832/1833, there was something like a riot when the Tory candidate Hon William Duncombe visited the town electioneering. Thomas Mease, who opposed Duncombe's politics, was said to have instigated it.
