1893 Featherstone Massacre

This week I look in detail at some of the entries in the Wakefield Collection

Since the launch of the burial registers for the cemeteries of Wakefield Metropolitan District, I have been looking further  into some of those recorded on the Deceased Online database. I was interested to find entries for two young men named James, who were buried on 12 September 1893. Today they are both remembered in Featherstone, Wakefield District and the wider mining community as victims of an unjust attack on a pit protest. The events surrounding their death are now referred to simply as the 'Featherstone Massacre'.

In 1893 Featherstone was a small West Yorkshire pit town with two coal mines, Featherstone Main and Ackton Hall. The owner of Ackton Hall was the Bradford textile magnate and inventor, Samuel Cunliffe Lister, First Baron Masham (1815-1906). Like other mine owners in the summer of 1893, Lord Masham tried to protect his interests against a fall in the price of coal by reducing the wages of his employees. Across the country 250,000 miners, led by the recently formed Miners Federation, stood firm in their demand for a "living wage" (a phrase used at the time). Masham and other mine owners had stockpiles of coal and were able to lock-out the miners until they agreed to the proposed reduction in wages. Without an income, the Featherstone miners were unable afford to pay their rent or buy food.

By September, groups of starving miners gathered daily at the pit side. On 5 September, riots began in pit villages in Derbyshire. Other protests spread across the country. The Featherstone miners gathered to face men loading coal for Lord Masham's textile business - the vast Lister's Mill in Bradford. Angry at what they considered a betrayal and that Lord Masham was profiting whilst they went hungry, the miners and their families blamed the pit manager, Alfred Holiday, who was assisting in the movement of coal. Holiday claimed this was for the pit engines rather than the Bradford mill, but the people disagreed. On 7 September, a group of men attacked Holiday and those loading the coal. Panicked, Holiday rushed to the local Pontefract police for assistance, but was sent to Wakefield. There he chanced upon Lord St Oswald, another local pit owner, who was seeking protection for his mine. He recommended to the Wakefield police that troops be brought in.

That afternoon, twenty-nine soldiers of the 1st Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment, under a Captain Barker, arrived to face a growing crowd of miners and onlookers. Angry at the presence of the troops, the crowd demanded their withdrawal. A later Report alleged that some of the mob threw stones and others set fire to timber. Flames could be seen "for miles round". As the afternoon passed, thousands more spectators appeared; many from outside Featherstone. 

By evening, fearful of the 2000-strong mob, the local magistrate Bernard Hartley JP took the drastic step of reading the Riot Act. This meant that anyone in the crowd remaining after one hour could be arrested. Accounts differ but it is believed that before an hour was out Hartley panicked and ordered warning shots be fired. Still the crowd remained. Mistakenly, they believed the troops were firing blanks. The troops shot again, this time injuring eight. Two of those injured would die of their wounds. They were twenty-two year old James Gibbs and twenty-five year old James Arthur Duggan. Both were passive bystanders. Both were miners, although Gibbs reportedly also volunteered as a Sunday School teacher in Normanton.

The entries for James Gibbs and James Arthur Duggan in the burial register of Featherstone Cemetery (Deceased Online)

Even though the two men had not been protesting, a Wakefield inquest concluded that Duggan's death was "justifiable homicide". The inquest into Gibbs' death took place in Featherstone itself. Here the jury blamed the lack of police and Holiday's overreaction. The difference in the verdicts led to a Parliamentary Commission being set up by the Liberal Home Secretary, H. H. Asquith. As a result of a speech by Keir Hardie, Gibbs' and Duggan's families received £100 but no compensation was awarded to the six injured, and the Government accepted no responsibility for the deaths. 

This screenshot from the Deceased Online website shows that James Gibbs was buried in the same grave as his father, Rowland Gibbs, and his young niece, Laura Gibbs.

The Report concluded:

It cannot be expected that this view should be adopted by many of the 

 crowd in Green Lane who were taking no active part in the riotous 

proceedings. Such persons had not, at the time, the means of 

judging of the danger in which the troops and the colliery stood. 

But no sympathy felt by us for the injured bystanders, no sense 

which we entertain of regret that, owing to the smallness of the

 military force at Featherstone and the prolonged absence of a

 magistrate, matters had drifted to such a pass, can blind us to 

the fact that, as things stood at the supreme moment when the 

soldiers fired, their action was necessary. We feel it right to 

express our sense of the steadiness and discipline of the soldiers 

in the circumstances. We can find no ground for any suggestion 

that the firing, if it was in fact necessary, was conducted with 

other than reasonable skill and care. The darkness rendered it 

impossible to take more precaution than had been already 

 employed to discriminate between the lawless and the peaceable, 

and it is to be observed that even the first shots fired produced 

little or no effect upon the crowd in inducing them to withdraw. 

If our confusions on these points be, as we believe them to be, 

correct, it follows that the action of the troops was justified in law.

This Report of the Commission drew national attention to the events of 1893. Across the country, particularly amongst the working classes, Asquith's popularity fell and he was nicknamed 'The Featherstone Murderer'.

Despite the tragedy, the miners' struggles continued. It was not until November 1893 that they were able to go back to work. In the aftermath, the pit manager Alfred Holiday's reputation was ruined. He died nearly thirty years later, aged 65. He was buried on 11 February 1921 at Featherstone Cemetery, not far from the graves of Gibbs and Duggan.

In 1993, the centenary of the events was marked by local people, many of whom drew parallels between the events of 1893 and their recent struggles with the colliery strikes and pit closures of the 1980s. The President of the Nation Union of Miners (NUM), Arthur Scargill, dedicated a memorial to the victims of the massacre in Featherstone's market precinct. The memorial reads:

The Featherstone Massacre 1893. 

This memorial records the centenary of an incident on 

September 7 1893 when, following a disturbance in 

Featherstone, the Riot Act was read and in the ensuing 

military action troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing James Gibbs and 

James Arthur Duggan and wounding several others. This 

was just another chapter in the struggle by miners for better pay 

and working conditions.

Were your ancestors present at the Featherstone Massacre? Or did any of them work as miners in the Wakefield area? Have you found any miners in our collections? We'd love to hear from you! Please contact us in the Comments box below, or on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Sources:

Report of the committee appointed to inquire into the circumstances connected with the disturbances at Featherstone on the 7th of September 1893 [C.—7234].
Lumb, Tony & Lewis, Brian, Featherstone & Its Disturbance (Briton 1992)
Nicoll, David, 'Bullets for Bread? The Featherstone Massacre' in The Anarchist: A Revolutionary Journal of Anarchist Communism (1896)
Scargill, Arthur, The Featherstone Massacre (1975)
Terrett, J. J., The Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, M.P. and the Featherstone Massacre (1906)
Home Office: Minutes of evidence, with appendices, taken before the committee appointed to inquire into the circumstances connected with the disturbances at Featherstone on 7th September 1893. (H.M.S.O. 1893)
http://www.wakefield.gov.uk/CultureAndLeisure/HistoricWakefield/FeatherstoneMassacre/default.htm