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'A lasting and salutary warning': Incendiarism, rural order and England's last scene of crime execution

Poole, Steve

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Abstract

Agricultural incendiarism was a perennial factor in social relations in some areas of nineteenth-century rural England and is often understood by historians as an expression of 'covert' social protest. However, such categorisation risks oversimplifying what may be diverse and locally specific factors. In 1830, the high sheriff of Somerset presided over England's last ever scene of crime execution at the Somerset village of Kenn following the conviction of three labourers for incendiarism. This requires explanation. Crime scene executions were not only anachronistic and rare, but unfashionably brutal and expensive by this time, and were not undertaken lightly; moreover arson was soon to be removed from the list of capital statutes. Yet, oddly, the case was not obviously connected to the agenda of 'social protest' characterised by Swing as it emerged just months afterwards; indeed understanding the behaviour of the county authorities here requires an appreciation of a considerably more specific and parochial set of concerns and conditions. The Kenn incendiaries, it is argued here, were put to death at the scene of their crime to protect and uphold the principle of informing in a rural community whose dysfunctional social relations made the practice a judicial necessity. © 2008 Cambridge University Press 2008.

Citation

Poole, S. (2008). 'A lasting and salutary warning': Incendiarism, rural order and England's last scene of crime execution. Rural History, 19(2), 163-177. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793308002471

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Sep 25, 2008
Deposit Date Nov 10, 2010
Publicly Available Date Jul 24, 2016
Journal Rural History
Print ISSN 0956-7933
Electronic ISSN 1474-0656
Publisher Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 19
Issue 2
Pages 163-177
DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793308002471
Keywords agricultural labourers, rural protest, Somerset, Kenn, incendiarism, execution, cider, hanging
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1009133
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0956793308002471
Additional Information Additional Information : This article © Cambridge University Press 2008

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