THE
MAYOR OF GARRATT
Mock Elections In 18th Century South London
In the eighteenth century, Garratt was a tiny village in the fields between
Wandsworth and Tooting, now part of South West London. It had little political
significance whatsoever and certainly no parliamentary representative. But from
the 1740s to the 1800s mock elections for the fictional office of “Mayor
of Garratt” attracted huge crowds to this tiny (now vanished) South London
hamlet.
Garratt Green and its Leather Bottle Inn were the centre of a huge
rowdy satirical pisstake of the election process of the times. Elections normally
coincided with actual parliamentary elections and, at first, two Mayors were
elected each time.
Eighteenth-century elections were noisy, chaotic and often violent. Only a tiny
percentage of the population, the property-owning upper class and small numbers
of the middle classes were eligible to vote. Many areas had no representation
in Parliament, while many rotten boroughs with little or no residents elected
MPs. There was huge pressure for reform of this farcical system, especially
from the rising middle class, who were pushing for political clout to go with
their increasing economic power.
Despite lacking the vote, huge crowds would often gather at election platforms,
to cheer or jeer, fight, drink and generally take the piss...
The element of farce, which all classes appreciated and which found its most
extreme expression in the bizarre annual ritual of the election of the Mayor
of Garratt, where the world turned upside down for a day to allow comic speeches,
vulgar banter and political impersonation.
The first recorded election was in 1747. There are disputed views as to how
the event originated... According to a 1754 account by a leading local Quaker,
the first Mayor had been elected in about 1690 by some watermen who were “spending
a merry day at the Leather Bottle”. A 1781 description of the election,
however, claimed the elections had begun about 30 years earlier as a result
of successful local opposition to the illegal enclosures on Wandsworth Common,
the leader of this opposition becoming known as the Mayor of Garratt. This fits
with the date of the first recorded election, though there doesn’t seem
to be any evidence of a 1740s campaign against enclosures.
The fame of the Garratt elections was spread by Samuel Foote's farce, The
Mayor of Garret (1764), and from 1768 candidates often came from London
and its surroundings rather than just the Wandsworth area.
The candidates were always poor tradesmen, usually with a drink problem and
sometimes with a physical deformity. The main qualification was a quick wit.
They assumed such titles as Lord Twankum (a cobbler and gravedigger), Squire
Blowmedown (a Wandsworth waterman) and Sir Trincalo Boreas (a fishmonger).
The candidates first walked or rode in procession from Southwark, and then paraded
in Wandsworth, sometimes in carts shaped like boats. In 1781 there were “scaffoldings
and booths erected in Wandsworth at every open space; these were filled with
spectators to the topmost rows, and boys climbed to the topmost poles, flags
and colours were hung across the road, and the place was crowded by a dense
population full of activity and noise”. The candidates then rode
in procession along Garratt Lane, accompanied by the Clerk, the Recorder and
the Master of Horse, who in 1781 rode at the head of the 'Garratt Cavalry',
a troop of 40 boys mounted on ponies. At the hustings, on Garratt Green, each
candidate had to swear an oath (their right hand resting on the sign of the
mob - a brickbat!), “handed down to us by the grand Volgee, by order
of the great Chin Kaw Chipo, first Emperor of the Moon”.
This oath was too rude to be repeated by Victorian folk historians; it scrutinised
voters' property qualifications (the test to see if you had enough property
to be eligible to vote) in the language of sexual innuendo:
That you have admitted peaceably and quietly, into possession of a freehold
thatched tenement, either black, brown or coral, in hedge or ditch, against
gate or stile, under furze or fen, on any common or common field, or enclosure,
in the high road, or any of the lanes, in barn, stable, hovel, or any other
place within the manor of Garratt; and, that you did (Bona fide) keep (ad rem)
possession of that said thatched tenement (durante bene placito) without any
let, hindrance, or molestation whatever; or without any ejectment or forcibly
turning out of the same; and that you did then and there and in the said tenement,
discharge and duty pay and amply satisfy all legal demands of the tax that was
at that time due on the said premises; and lastly, did quit and leave the said
premises in sound, wholesome and good tenable repair as when you took possession
and did enter therein. So help you…
The huge crowds, said in 1781 to be 20,000, but at other times to have been
as many as 100,000, blocked the streets for hours. Pub landlords donated funds
to provide the candidates' lavish costumes, and were well-rewarded: on one occasion
the pubs ran dry and only water was left, selling at 2d per glass. Some historians
reckon the whole event was solely staged to boost pub profits...
From the 1760s the elections were associated with radical politics, and the
hero of the bourgeois reform party and darling of the “London mob”,
John Wilkes, and his supporters wrote some of the candidates' addresses. The
candidates usually stressed their
patriotism and loyalty to the King, while protesting economic
hardships and the lack of liberty for the labouring classes.
Gradually the Mayoral election became more and more seditious, especially in
the 1790s.
In 1781 there were six candidates:
“About three o'clock the candidates proceeded with their several equipages
towards the hustings; his Lordship [Lord Viscount Swallowtail, a basketmaker]
was elegantly seated in a wicker cage, which was mounted on a cart and driven
by a servant in a laced livery. The next in order was Sir John Harper [in reality
James Anderson, a breeches-maker & inkle-weaver] who rode uncovered in a
phaeton drawn by six horses, and was dressed in white and silver, with a blue
ribband round his shoulder; this worthy knight recruited his spirits every furlong
by a glass of Geneva [gin] ... After him came Sir T. Blaize [a blacksmith] mounted
on a cart-horse, with a pack-saddle and halter, and paper ears reaching to the
ground. Sir Christopher [a waterman] rode triumphantly in a boat drawn by four
horses and filled with many emblematical devices.”
The press of carriages, wagons and horses prevented these candidates reaching
the hustings, but Jeffrey Dunstan, “proceeding without noise or ostentation',
arrived at the Green on his own and proceeded to address the electors until
interrupted by the hustings platform collapsing. 'The other candidates then
not appearing, and a message being received from Sir John [Harper] that he was
too drunk to attend, [Dunstan] was declared duly elected”.
Dunstan, the most celebrated of the Mayors, was a second-hand wig seller in
the West End. He was a foundling who took his name from the parish of St Dunstans-in-the-East
in the City of London, where, in 1759, he was discovered on the step of the
churchwarden's house. He was brought up in the workhouse, had knock-knees and
a disproportionately large head, and only grew to a height of 4 feet ... He
had “a countenance and manner marked by irresistible humour, and he
never appeared without a train of boys and curious persons whom he entertained
by his sallies of wit, shrewd sayings and smart repartees”. Dunstan’s
lively sallies made him popular with the crowd, who twice more returned him
to office. He became a close friend of controversial populist MP John Wilkes.
A man fond of his drink, Dunstan became too outspoken against the establishment
and in 1793, at the height of the French Revolution, he was tried, convicted
and imprisoned for seditious expressions. Dunstan remained Mayor until 1796
and was died the following year, apparently as the result of a drinking spree.
Dunstan's successor was Henry Dinsdale (Sir Harry Dimsdale), described as “a
deformed dwarf, little better than an idiot, who used to sell muffins in the
streets about St Anne's Soho”. He lived in a small attic near Seven
Dials (a notoriously poor and rowdy area north of Covent Garden). In 1804, he
stood as the Emperor Anti-Napoleon, addressing his subjects as the 'Emperor
of Garratt'. Dinsdale died in about 1810.
The Garratt election seems to have declined in popularity from the 1790s, losing
both its patronage by the aristos and its support from political radicals. There
were several reasons for this. In its heyday, the whole grand show had been
a spectacle for people of all backgrounds: many of the better-off to come and
enjoy the rough and tumble of lower-class rowdiness: and even sponsored the
candidates. Like many carnivals, festivals, fairs it had become a release for
social and political tensions in a relatively harmless satirical free for all.
This wasn’t unusual for the times, even a certain level of violence and
direct action could be acceptable, as in bread riots, when crowds forcibly redistributed
bread at times of high prices. The prevailing paternalistic social system allowed
for a certain amount of ritualistic rebelliousness, as long as it stayed within
traditional and expected boundaries. Exceed these limits and the powers that
be would crush you: as striking and rioting silkweavers and coalheavers found
out in the 1760s.
As the 18th Century went on however, not only did pressure for reform from below
grow, but the authorities fear of “the Mob” and plebeian rebelliousness
increased. The riots of the 1760s in
support of Wilkes’ campaign against corruption in Parliament, increasing
economic violence, and above all, the terrible and shattering events of the
Gordon Riots in 1780, when rioting crowds virtually took over the city and drove
the rich into flight, scared the shit out of the upper class. Any occasion for
crowds to come together became a potential riot situation. The outbreak of the
French Revolution in 1789, and the violent social upheaval it created, inspired
many radicals in England - and further terrified those in power. Certainly from
1793, the height of the radical
violence of the Revolution, the Garrat elections were frowned upon (Dunstan
was jailed for sedition this year).
Hand in hand with this of course, the moral trend was away from rowdiness and
pissed troublemaking, and towards hard work, sobriety, respectability. Not only
were the authorities keen to get rid of fairs, mass gatherings etc where the
plebs’ baser passions could break out, but reformers and radicals themselves
also more and more internalised the drive for a respectable, sober, orderly
and educated movement for change. Artisan radicals increasingly saw such unruly
traditions as embarrassments to their properly directed political efforts to
improve their lot.
This movement developed into the powerful London artisan radical scene, which
produced the London Corresponding Society, Owenism, the Cooperative Movement
and the Chartism. Although these were strong and important manifestations of
the self-organised working class, you can’t help feeling that leaving
behind wild outbreaks of carnival and satire like the Garratt Elections, something
was lost...
What with repression and changes in working class culture, there were no more
Mayor of Garratt elections after 1804, apart from an unsuccessful attempt to
revive the custom in 1826.
Appendix:
THE MOCK-ELECTION IN THE KING'S BENCH PRISON, 1827
“Nothing
during the last year excited more curiosity than the Mock Election, which took
place in the King's Bench Prison; as much from the circumstances attending its
conclusion, as from the astonishment expressed that men, unfortunate and confined,
could invent any amusement at which they had a right to be happy.”
In July 1827, the inmates of the King's Bench Prison, in Borough, South London,
organised a fantastical mock hustings, to elect an MP to represent 'Tenterden'
(a slang name for the prison) in Parliament. Three candidates were put up, one
of whom was Lieutenant Meredith, an eccentric naval officer. “...As
I approached the unfortunate, but merry, crowd, to the last day of my life I
shall ever remember the impression... baronets and bankers, authors and merchants,
painters and poets... dandies of no rank in rap and tatters... all mingled in
indiscriminate merriment, with a spiked wall, twenty feet high, above their
heads...”
All the characteristics of a regular election were parodied. Addresses from
the candidates to the 'worthy and independent electors' were printed and posted
up around the prison; contending parties wrote broadsheets & sang songs
attacking their opponents; there were processions with flags and music, to take
the several candidates to visit the several 'Collegians' (i. e., prisoners)
in their rooms; speeches were made in the courtyards, full of grotesque humour;
a pseudo-“high-sheriff” and other “election officers”
were chosen to oversee the proceedings “properly”; and the electors
were invited to 'rush to the poll' early on Monday morning, the 16th of July.
“Hitherto it had been a mere revel; but on the latter day the frolic
assumed a serious aspect, from the interference of the marshal of the prison.”
Worried about the disorder that might arise (and that the inmates might be enjoying
life in a manner non-profitable to him and other warders?!), Mr. Jones, marshal
of the prison, put a stop to the whole proceedings on the morning of the 16th.
Apparently the proceedings were halted violently, exasperating the prisoners.
They resented the language used towards them, and opposed the treatment to which
they were subjected; until a squad of Foot-guards, with fixed bayonets, forcibly
drove some of the leaders into a filthy 'black-hole' or place of confinement.
“The three candidates, and other persons who were active in the election,
were for some time kept in close confinement, and a sergeant's guard was introduced,
and remained in the prison all night. The result was pacific; but the conduct
of the marshal has been much censured and threatened with a parliamentary investigation.”
Quotes
from an account of the Mock Election
by Benjamin Haydon, imprisoned in the Kings Bench for debt, July 1827.
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