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‘The Chipping Norton Incident’
In the mid-19th century, rural Oxfordshire was one of the most economically depressed areas in England. The wages of agricultural labourers were amongst the lowest in England, and many families lived in poverty. Landowners and farmers were also under economic pressure and, with the rest of the Establishment, felt the need to resist any change that might upset the precarious balance of their community.
Trade Unions Act 1871
This Act encouraged the development of unions by permitting them to register as legal bodies, giving protection to their funds and enabling them to operate more effectively. In the following year the nucleus of the National Agricultural Labourers Union was founded under the leadership of Joseph Arch.
The Union and the Non-conformist Church
Membership of the union grew rapidly, assisted in part by support from some of the non-conformist churches, in particular the Primitive Methodists who had a chapel in Milton-under-Wychwood. Chapel membership and Union membership had a strong correlation and overlap. One of the key aims of the Union was to increase wages, and early in 1873 they began to push for 2 shillings a week rise.
Events at Crown Farm, Ascott
Ascott at this time was a small village with a population of about 460, at least two thirds of whom were agricultural labourers. On Crown Farm in Ascott-under-Wychwood, the largest farm in the village, all bar two men were soon members of the Ascott branch of the Union. With its backing, in mid-April the men asked Robert Hambidge, tenant farmer at Crown Farm, for a 2 shillings a week increase in their wages.
He refused to pay the increase to all the workers on his farm, so they withdrew their labour. Union members on the other farms in the village soon did likewise, having also had their requests for wage increases refused. The Union paid the men a small sum in strike pay and found others alternative work elsewhere in the area, possibly in a local timber yard.
An Escalating Situation
Feelings were already running high when about three weeks into the strike, Hambidge recruited two young non-Union men from Ramsden, John Hodgkins and John Millin, to hoe his bean field. According to contemporary press reports a large number of women from the village, perhaps as many as 30 accompanied by children, met the young men at the entrance to the bean field with the aim of persuading them not to break the strike.
What happened next depends on whose account you believe.
To what extent the women posed a real threat to the young men, who claimed to have been threatened, molested and prevented from going about their work, is unclear. For some of the younger women involved it was perhaps, as one of them recalled in later life, ‘just a bit of fun.’ But feeling in danger, the young men returned to the farm and eventually went back to work under the protection of the village constable.
The Farmers’ Reaction
Hambidge, who with other local farmers had been attending Stow fair when the incident took place, regarded the women’s behaviour as outrageous. He decided that steps must be taken to prevent this sort of action from spreading, and he brought a private prosecution against them.
Accusations and Sentencing….
Seventeen women were named as having taken part in the action and summoned to appear before the Chadlington Magistrates sitting in Chipping Norton Police Station. Subsequently two local clergymen, the Rev. Harris and Rev. Carter, acting in their capacity as magistrates, found sixteen of the women guilty and sentenced them to either 7- or 10-days imprisonment with hard labour in Oxford Gaol.
… and the Media and Political Response
Their sentencing provoked a riot in Chipping Norton and an attack on the police station. News of what had happened quickly reached the national press and pressure grew for the women’s release (and that of the two babies who had accompanied them into prison), as the rights and wrongs of the case were argued in a series of letters to The Times.
The matter was raised in the House of Commons and an enquiry into the matter quickly took place, but the decision to rescind their hard labour did not reach the prison soon enough to benefit the majority of the women involved.
The Women Return Home
The safe return home of the sixteen women, by then described as ‘Martyrs’ (to a good cause), was celebrated at an event on the village green on Friday 20 June. Joseph Arch and other Union leaders attended and were met at the station by fifteen of the women wearing dresses ‘in the Union blue with headgear to match’.
After a meal at the Swan there were speeches on the village green and each woman was presented with £5, raised by public subscription. Thereafter the women disappeared from all but their family histories and were not heard of again until well into the 20th century.
The Aftermath
Thanks to the presence in the village of correspondents from the Daily News and The Times, detailed accounts were provided of the living conditions endured by some of the poorest in the village. The press coverage of the incident also highlighted prison conditions for women with babies and led some to call for reform. Within two years of the event, in response to popular appeal, the Law under whose terms the women had been imprisoned was revised.
Although the women’s actions rallied support and attracted many new members to the Union, neither Arch nor other Union leaders thought the women had done either a wise or a womanly thing. After an initial increase in wages, the onset of a depression in agriculture soon saw wages fall and many labourers and their families emigrate to Australia, New Zealand and Canada in search of a better life.
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