William Benbow, Francis Macerone and Revolutionary Transmission 1819-1831

In this paper I talked about about citizen armies and the influence of technology through citing four figures: the radical pornographer William Benbow, Colonel Francis Macerone, Robert Wedderburn and George Edmonds. Historians, such as Iorwerth Prothero and E. P. Thompson, identify that ‘1819 was a rehearsal for 1832. In both years a revolution was possible’. E. J. Evans concludes that ‘Britain has never in modern times been closer to revolution than in the autumn of 1831’. My argument is that there are two important distinctions between the 1819 revolutionary uprisings after Peterloo that occurred at Cathkin, Bonnymuir, West Riding and Cato Street in early 1820, and those promoted in 1831. Firstly, there are technological differences between the 1820 rebellions and those being fostered on eve of the Reform Bill. Famously, participants of the 1820 uprisings had few weapons: for example, at Bonnymuir, among the twenty-five to thirty people who took part, there were only five muskets, two pistols and eighteen pikes. By 1831 the working classes had greater access to new means to create weapons, including cheap literature in the form of mechanics’ magazines, as well as emerging technology in machine tools and steam ships. What also changed was the focus on who the enemy was. By the 1830s it had enlarged to include the liberal middle classes, William Benbow’s, ‘shopocracy’, who were no longer allies.