![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2024\/02\/GettyImages-463918919-cmyk-cb1129c-e1707989420747.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C412\" "\\"A")
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Despite its shocking outcome, the sequence of events leading up to the incident would not necessarily have been a surprise to British newspaper readers. Boatmen were notorious for their hard drinking, violence and dishonesty, as were the navigators who dug the canal network, which had been spreading since the boom years of the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | History explorer: the rise of the canals<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These vital arteries of trade had slashed transport costs by almost half, bringing manufacturers increased profits and making products cheaper for all. But this welcome new prosperity had a price, and from the earliest days, canals \u2013 aflush with plenty of goods to steal and vast quantities of alcohol to drink \u2013 attracted crime.<\/p>\n
Finding solace in drink<\/h2>\n
In many ways, crime on the canals was symptomatic of life in 19th-century Britain, particularly for the labouring classes who endured a precarious existence of drudgery, gnawing hunger and constant dread of unemployment. Workers flocked to urban manufacturing centres, where thriving industries like the cotton trade were serviced by this sprawling, 4,000-mile network linking towns to rivers and ports, carrying essential cargoes of coal, corn, fresh fruit, pottery and all kinds of finished goods.<\/p>\n
Working long hours to meet the relentless demands of commerce, some people found solace in drink \u2013 with disastrous consequences. In September 1838, a London bargeman named Thomas Townsend went berserk following a weekend binge with \u201cgin and shrub cocktails\u201d and a skinful of beer at the Noah\u2019s Ark pub in Limehouse. At 5pm on the Sunday, he refused to pay for a pot of porter and proceeded to punch the landlord, smash several windows, and boot the policeman who came to arrest him. It ultimately took several officers to drag him outside, and he was later fined \u00a35 for assault.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | The 18th-century craze for gin<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Yet, concerns about alcohol-related violence were neither new nor limited to the waterways. Fears that members of a drunken underclass were threatening the fabric of society had been voiced centuries earlier in pamphlets such as A Monster Late Found Out<\/em> and Discovered<\/em>, published by London writer Richard Rawlidge in 1628.<\/p>\n
![\"Gin]( "\\"Gin")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Gin palaces, such as the establishment depicted in this c1879 illustration, were regarded as dens of iniquity by 19th-century temperance campaigners. (Image by Alamy)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n But as wine and spirit consumption soared \u2013 along with instances of disorderly behaviour \u2013 the government decided to tackle the issue by introducing the Beer Act. Passed in 1830, the law loosened restrictions on the sale of beer in a bid to wean Britons off more potent beverages, such as gin. It had a rapid effect: 24,000 beer shops opened their doors within the space of just six months.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | Where and when was wine first made?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Unsurprisingly, this only exacerbated the problem. In 1834, a parliamentary select committee was set up to investigate what one MP described as a \u201ctorrent of drunkenness that desolates the land\u201d. One proposed remedy was education, with suggestions that libraries and museums should offer \u201cmore innocent refreshments than the liquid poison now consumed\u201d.<\/p>\n
But others defended the right to drink, with the Essex Standard<\/em> exclaiming: \u201cIf a man be thirsty, what avails showing him an alligator stuffed, a dried monkey, or a snake in a bottle? Museums, indeed, for the chimney-sweepers, and the canal-diggers, and the coal-heavers, and the dustmen, and all the rest who, tired with work, like a little comfort.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abusive behaviour<\/h2>\n
For many, heavy drinking was simply a fact of life, especially among boatmen free to indulge whenever they wanted. Unlike other workers, men in the canal trade frequently found themselves in remote places away from the prying eyes of employers, but still close enough to the hundreds of canal-side pubs that lined the waterways.<\/p>\n
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- Listen | The history of alcohol: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The hardest drinkers were usually found on board the non-stop \u2018flyboats\u2019, whose four-man crews worked around the clock with very little sleep. This rough work tended to attract unsavoury characters, and in 1839 the reputation of the flyboats sank to an all-time low when a brutal attack on a lone female passenger created a national outcry.<\/p>\n
On 15 June, a former magician\u2019s assistant named Christina Collins had set out on a journey by flyboat from Liverpool on the way to join her husband in London. Two days later, however, her body was found floating in the water at Rugeley in Staffordshire. Witnesses testified that Christina seemed distressed at several places on the Trent & Mersey Canal, and confirmed that they saw abusive behaviour by the inebriated boatmen, who later said they couldn\u2019t remember what had happened. Captain James Owen and boat-hand George Thomas blamed each other, while Bill Ellis, the other crewman, said Christina had left the boat of her own accord. \u201cI never saw anyone ill-treat her,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n
In July 1839, Owen, Thomas and Ellis stood trial in Stafford, charged with wilful murder, rape, common assault and theft. The judge ruled there was no proof of any violence and directed the jury to acquit them of the rape charge. But the case made headlines when a second trial was ordered, specifically to include the evidence of a bigamist butcher who claimed that Owen had confessed his guilt while they were in prison together.<\/p>\n
Conveniently side-stepping the legal principle of double jeopardy, which would have ensured that the defendants could not be tried on the same facts twice, this second hearing ended with all three men being found guilty and sentenced to death. It had effectively been a show trial, designed to secure convictions at all costs, but the verdict was seized upon by religious campaigners as proof they were right to demand far-reaching moral reforms, including the banning of all working and drinking on the Sabbath.<\/p>\n
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- Read more | The strange history of drinking<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Yet, despite the introduction of new measures, such as Sunday morning closing, pub numbers continued to grow \u2013 particularly in expanding urban areas such as Bolton, which had one alehouse to every 170 people by 1849. Residents were forced to put up with unruly behaviour in the streets, with one Boltonian complaining that the public house was a \u201cfull-grown monster\u201d.<\/p>\n
A radical solution was teetotalism. The temperance movement, which had both religious and political aims, was flourishing, and by the mid-19th century, most towns had a temperance group urging workers to \u2018take the pledge\u2019 and quit drinking altogether. And yet these were mere drops in the ocean of liquor still swilling about the country.<\/p>\n
- Read more | The strange history of drinking<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Listen | The history of alcohol: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Read more | Where and when was wine first made?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Read more | The 18th-century craze for gin<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Gin](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2024\/02\/2K64KH4-cmyk-bf9d4a3-e1707989746265.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"Gin")
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