Land of White Gloves? by Richard Ireland

Author:Richard Ireland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Figure 4.1 A photograph of the Constabulary and Lancers at Llanfair Talhaearn during the Tithe War, 1888.

Courtesy Denbighshire Archive Service.

In a case of wounding in the midst of the 1893 disturbances, the defendant’s acquittal was greeted by “round upon round of cheering”, followed by an assurance from the defendant’s representative that the victim would receive “ample recompense”.43 This detail, only incidentally recorded, opens a window onto many of the subterranean complexities of the nineteenth-century Welsh legal system. To the role of the jury we must return later, but for now it is necessary to recall the tradition of extra-curial dispute resolution which we have charted consistently in previous chapters. The termination of a criminal case in favour of compensation is by no means unique and indeed we find it explicitly enjoined by Justices of the Peace in a number of cases.44 I do not know how often it is to be found in England at this time, though I do know that it has not been sufficiently examined there. In Wales, I have no doubt, it reveals more than a certain flexibility on the boundary between “civil” and “criminal” jurisdiction and taps into the tradition of compensation well established in custom. At the outset of this chapter we noted its use in a homicide case (“a family of considerable means was alleged to have become poor, a few cottagers were alleged to have found it not altogether an ill wind”45). Compensation still afforded a means of dealing with wrongdoing in a way unimagined by the movers of the “penal revolution” which dominated nineteenth-century punishment practice.

But so did other things. Arbitration on an issue of interpersonal violence could be conducted within the chapel, keeping “clear of the court of law …to make it a matter of church discipline”.46 Most dramatic of all, particularly in West Wales, was the ceffyl pren, the “wooden horse” which we have noted as a model for Rebecca’s performances. This nocturnal display of mass disapproval, often including the “carrying” of the “offender” either in person or in effigy, belongs to a wider tradition of “ridings” or “rough music” but, in its precise morphology, its presumed (by some contemporaries at least) connection with the laws of Hywel Dda, and in its longevity as a social custom it deserves comment as a specifically Welsh institution.47 It was, of course, thoroughly disapproved of by those who subscribed to a notion of “respectability” within the nineteenth century which sought to suppress all manner of rowdy public performances, but carried a particular threat to an increasingly rule-defined criminal justice system. Serious enough when used as an alternative to the criminal process, it became more so when used as an adverse comment upon that system (as when invoked against Elizabeth Gibbs, acquitted by a Carmarthen jury on charges of poisoning in 185148) or in direct opposition to it (as when it was used against informers). We have records of attempts by the police and a local landowner to prevent the staging of a

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