Reports

JOHN LITTLE - ‘’Riotous Whitehaven’’ 24th June

One of our favourite & regular speakers joined us this week. John Little has been fascinated by Whitehaven history for a long time and has written a few books on different events and people - many of which have been bought by members after his previous talks. This week he was telling us how Whitehaven got a reputation as ‘Riotous Whitehaven’ having had more riots (over 20) than any other small town in England.
The first riot to make its’ way into a national newspaper was in 1749 when John Wesley came here to preach causing a riot between the local sailors who disliked priests and the miners who had welcomed him.
John’s description of Whitehaven at the time was very vivid and together with his slides kept the members enthralled as he followed the Wesleyan riot with a catalogue of others.
There was the Informer’s Riot of 1779 when the locals discovered information about 3 women informing on locals to H.M.Customs - this resulted in the reading of the ‘Riot Act’.
In 1791 there was the Wicked Jimmy’s Riot when James Lowther shut the mines and called out the Carlisle Regiment to suppress the angry miners.
In 1793 there was the Press Gang riot, in 1814 there was the Foreign Sailors riot, in 1818 there was the Potato riot, in 1831 the Political riot and in 1843 the Miner’s riot.
Some were more serious than others of course and the list included less serious events such as the Bloomerism riot caused when Mrs Amanda Bloomer hired a hall to show off ladies wearing trousers, the audience were all men who demanded their money back when the show was cancelled.
John had information and anecdotes on them all. He had to miss some out of course but assured us that any missing were detailed in his book. He did mention the Murphy Riot of 1871, the Orange riot of 1884, the Pacifist riot of 1917 and the Miner’s Pay Cut riot of 1923.
All of the riots he talked about conformed to his criteria of making national headlines and therefore he felt justified in ending his presentation with the Pizza Riot of 2017 when the first 100 customers at the new Domino’s pizzeria were given a free pizza, leaving many disgruntled pizza lovers hungry …..and riotous - it made headlines in the Daily Star.
Our members really enjoyed this trip through Whitehaven’s past and are looking forward to John’s next visit when we will learn something else about Whitehaven that we didn’t know.