The Swing Riots

 
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Extract from Wikipedia reference:

"The Swing Riots were a widespread uprising by the rural workers of the arable south and east of England in 1830. The rioters, largely impoverished and landless agricultural labourers, sought to halt reductions in their wages and to put a stop to the introduction of the new threshing machines that threatened their livelihoods. They reinforced their demands not only with riots in which objects of perceived oppression such as workhouses and tithe barns were destroyed, but also with more surreptitious rick-burning, the destruction of threshing machines and cattle-maiming. The first threshing machine was destroyed on Saturday night, August 28th, 1830. By the third week of October, over one hundred threshing machines had been destroyed in East Kent.

The name Captain Swing was appended to several of the threatening letters sent to farmers, magistrates, parsons, and others. The "Swing letters" were first mentioned by The Times on the 21 October. Captain Swing is regarded as a mythical figurehead of the movement. [1]

The Swing Riots had many immediate causes, but were overwhelmingly the result of the progressive impoverishment and dispossession of the English agricultural workforce over the previous fifty years, leading up to 1830. The anger of the rioters was directed at three targets that were seen as the prime source of their misery: the tithe system, the poor law guardians, and the rich tenant farmers who had been progressively lowering wages while introducing agricultural machinery ............"

The full Wikipedia item provides further background on this 'revolt'.

In addition the Dorset Life published an excellent article giving details of the events in Dorset.

Short extract from the Dorset Life:

"The uprisings had started in Kent some time in June 1830 and spread across the south, county by county, into Surrey and on into Hampshire and Wiltshire. By the autumn of 1830, Dorset farmers were being sent threatening letters demanding that wages be increased or at least remain the same .........."

 

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