Diversification – A Case of Necessity |
The Post-Napoleonic Depression Thomas James Chard and Mary Warren Atkins, born in the early 1800's, quickly became familiar with poverty as their once-prosperous families faced economic challenges unlike those of the previous century. Although the threat of a French invasion diminished after the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, the ongoing expenses of the distant continental conflict with Napoleon caused frustration among the British people. High taxation, soaring food prices, unemployment due to wartime trade restrictions, and the growing use of labour-saving machinery all fueled discontent within the working class. While Napoleon's defeat at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo raised hopes for financial relief, the British parliament's enactment of the Corn Laws Bill soon dashed those expectations. |
The Winds of Change When Thomas and Mary married in 1828, the Industrial Revolution was accelerating. Farmers who lived as tenants were being replaced by casual workers operating machinery, especially threshers, and other new technologies. The gap in wealth and social status between landowners and their agricultural labourers was rapidly increasing, leading to significant civil unrest. |
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The population overall was experiencing significant hardship and facing a reduction in their “real wage”, meaning the purchasing power of their earnings had fallen [1]. The larger market towns, in particular, witnessed daily riots, and during one such event in Exeter, 20-year-old Thomas Chard was arrested and, as noted above at the Devon Lent Assizes of 1831 and reported in the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, was brought before the magistrates. Although he was released with a warning, his name was recorded in the court records, a circumstance that had serious repercussions in the years that followed. |
The people living in the Blackdown Hills parishes, who had relied solely on farming for generations, were not exempt from the country's hardships and had to adjust quickly to survive. |
The Stapley Mill, Churchstanton The history of Stapley mill in Churchstanton is somewhat unclear, but records from the parish church mention a flax [2] mill, employing approximately 150 persons, located nearby in the late 1700's. These same records also document the mill's transition to silk manufacturing during the early 1800's increasing the workforce tenfold. |
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| The Stapley Mill. Photograph courtesy of The Geoffrey Berry Collection. |
The transformation of the mill into a silk production facility was credited to Lamech Swift, a silk thread manufacturer from Milverton, Somerset, who effectively utilized the high lime content in the Culm Valley water along with the slower operation of waterwheel-powered looms to create lace of better quality than that produced by the larger steam-powered machines in the northern counties. As noted earlier, the mill's change demanded workers. Numerous men who had once worked in the flax fields or looked after sheep and cattle took on roles as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and carpenters, while women and children became involved in the thriving Ő™cottage industry՚ known as silk throwsting [3]. Located 12 miles south of the Stapley mill and the closest market town, Honiton had gained a reputation as the country’s premier producer of sheer cloth and lace. In fact, James Atkins Chard’s family had connections to the trade dating back several centuries. With Stapley now manufacturing high-quality silk thread, the Honiton silk lacemakers were surpassing their already outstanding reputation. This excellence led Queen Victoria to commission the Honiton lacemakers for her wedding dress in 1840. |
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| A silk throwster (left) and Queen Victoria's wedding dress (right). Throwster photograph (left) courtesy of The Museum of English Rural Life. |
Thomas and Mary Chard were among those who supplemented their work at the mill — Thomas transporting goods to and from the Honiton wholesalers, while Mary worked at the mill looms during the day and did throwsting at Munty farm in Redlane in the evenings. |
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| Areas (circled) where Thomas and Mary Chard lived in Churchstanton parish. Map courtesy of Colchester, Essex: History Data Service. |
During their time at Redlane, Mary gave birth to five children; James Atkins (1829 — 1924), Elizabeth “Betsey” (1832 — 1891), John (1836 — 1914), Richard (1839 — 1911) and Mary (1840 — 1865), all baptised in Churchstanton's St Peter and St Paul church. |
Like many labourers and mill workers in Churchstanton's rural community, Thomas and Mary Chard struggled to keep food on the table during this period and, like numerous others, held their hand out to the church for poor relief [4]. The introduction of the new Poor Law Act by the British government in 1834 led to significant public discussion and controversy, especially regarding the expansion and implementation of the workhouse system [5]. Many people feared that workhouses were merely Ő™Prisons for the Poor՚ and convenient detention centers for the unemployed, sick, or elderly. With reduced parish funding, rural towns experienced widespread riots and a notable rise in crime. At 29 years of age, and a father of five children under the age of eight, Thomas found himself once more caught by circumstance and temptation, and once again, facing the magistrates in Exeter. |
The Chards at Biscombe, Churchstanton When husband Thomas was convicted and committed to irreversible transportation in 1840, life for Mary and her young family at Munty farm changed significantly. Now with virtually no financial resources, Mary turned to the parish church for assistance, thereby becoming a pauper. Similarly, the 1841 census noted that the entire family was supported by the government poor law and living at Biscombe farm. The family's circumstances worsened when James, the oldest son, who had been apprenticed to a yeoman in Plymouth, was caught stealing from his employer. Although his conviction was contested, James, like his father, was sentenced to permanent transportation in 1843. With husband Thomas and eldest son James banished from England, Mary Chard’s children were pressed into the workforce at a very early time in their lives. Barely into her teens, eldest daughter Betsey gained employment as a house servant in Honiton before moving to Taunton where at 21, she married William Cox. The couple raised seven children. John laboured as a farm hand for their Biscombe landlady Mary Edwards, whilst the youngsters Richard and Mary remained with their mother learning the art of throwsting silk. Possibly at their mother's behest, or more likely out of sheer desperation, both John and Richard quickly showed an inclination to take up a trade. By his late teens John was a blacksmith apprentice in Biscombe and by the age of 25 had become a wheelwright working alongside blacksmith Joseph Sparks in the neighbouring Taunton village of Bishops Hull. Three years later John married Elizabeth Fry in Wellington and it was here that he expanded his business to become a Master Smith and wheelwright. The couple had no children. As soon as Richard reached recruitment age, he enlisted in the Royal Navy and at twenty years of age, the 1861 Census tells us that he was a marine private being trained as a ship’s carpenter. Eight years later the Churchstanton marriage register records the union of Richard to a local dairyfarmer's daughter Anna Valentine. The couple settle at Malpit farm where they raised eleven children. Mary, the youngest daughter, was urged to leave Biscombe when she was in her early teens and made her way to Bristol, where she assisted her aunt Elizabeth by caring for her children as a nanny. As a young woman eager to explore, she then travelled to Wellington to live with her brother John. It was there that she met and married James Blackmore, a journeyman carpenter, in 1863. Unfortunately, Mary passed away two years later, likely due to complications from childbirth. Mary Warren Chard stayed in Biscombe into her sixties, no longer a pauper but listed as an agricultural labourer in the 1861 census. By then quite frail, Mary relocated to Wellington to live with her son John, where she died in 1870 at the age of 68. Considering the family's difficult beginnings, Mary would have been very proud of her children's accomplishments and, if she had known, equally pleased that her eldest son James had become a skilled craftsman in several trades on a different continent. |
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