Oh What A Time... - #142 Technophobia (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!It’s a new series of Oh What A Time and this week we have for you: Luddites! Swing riots! Rebecca riots! Yes, this week we’re talking: Technophobia.Plus: how on earth did anyone get about internationally before the dawn of the internet? It’s absolutely bewildering. If you’ve got something to share, you can do that right here: [e-mail] can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).And thank you for subscribing, we couldn’t make the show without you!Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

O Watertime is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Water Time. Hello and welcome to part two of technophobia. Let's get on with the show. Right, now then, Ned and Lady Lud were joined in their rebellion against capitalism and exploitative modern technology by another figure. This time, though, not from Nottinghamshire, but from the rural counties of southern England, who took the fight to the threshing machines.

That's a fight I wouldn't want to have. Yeah. So what is a threshing machine? It basically mushes up grain and actually I need to look this up. Let me guess, Elle, as you look it up, I think it is a thing that they pushed along, and then it whirled and cut up the crop. A thresher machine or a thresher, it sounds terrifying, isn't it? There's a piece of farm equipment that separate grain seed from the stalks and husks.

It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with flails. Such hand threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taken about one quarter of agricultural labour by the 18th century. So mechanisation of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery from farm labour, but they were very, very sharp, and like those combine harvesters, you don't want to have a fight with one. Yeah.

But that is where Captain Swing comes into play. I'd yell abuse at a threshing machine I'd talk to heckle it but I don't want to get too close to it because of the whole threshing aspect A couple of rude hand gestures Yeah exactly yeah So basically the threshing machines

They were transforming the possibilities of agriculture And crucially throwing countless people off the land As surplus labour So there was one person who was angry about this And his name was Captain Swing Now he first raised his head as it were when the first Thresher Machine was attacked and destroyed near Canterbury in the evening of the 28th of August 1830. So from there, the programme of violence targeting Threshing machines setting fire to Barnes and Hayricks and sending threatening letters spread out from Kent into Muncher of Southern England over the next few months.

At its height of the campaign, although it's mainly concentrated in the south of England, it got even as far as Yorkshire and Cumberland. So it reached the Scottish borders. Wow. Captain Swing is an incredible name, by the way. It's something from Austin Powers or something. He's constantly breaking into musical numbers. Yeah, like the Mersey Beat scene at a Captain Swing kind of thing. It's like Elvis's nickname. Yeah, Captain Swing.

Anyway, he merges the figure out of this rural movement in letters into farmers and landowners warning them that action would be taken against the machines as well as the barns which contained their ill-gotten gains. So there was graffiti daubed on walls as more visible warnings. A classic swing letter read a bit like this, sir, this is to acquaint you that if your thrashing machines are not destroyed by you directly, we shall commence our labours, signed on behalf of the whole swing. Wow, wow. So Captain Swing was giving farmers and landowners the opportunity to destroy their own thrash machines.

But the letter was saying, if you don't do it, mate, I will. Wow. So they were threats rising from there. The second letter illustrates, sir, your name is down a moment. amongst the black hearts in the black book and this is to advise you and the likes of you who are parish justices to make your wills. You have been the blackguard enemies of the people

on all occasions ye have not yet done as ye wrote, swing. Can I say in terms of giving them the opportunity to destroy their own threshing machines or they will? I think at that point I go, well, I'll just let them do it then because I can't be bothered. Like, why are you at that point going, Okay, I'm going to go out and destroy, spend a day destroying some farm machinery

when they said they're going to do it for me. That's the division of labour. You are always thinking a capitalist, Tom. Use that time for something else. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that's so true. To create another business that will exploit. I can't be bothered to smash this threshing machine.

They've offered. Also, as far as death threats go, very polite. Yes. You know, I've seen some awful stuff on social media. It tends not to refer to the person as sir. One of those arrested early on and identified by the authorities and the press as the real captain's swing was Joseph Saville, a former corn wholesaler, turned according to various descriptions, Methodist preacher and pamphleteer. So he was arrested, travelling around in a cart, apparently filled with hundreds of inflammatory letters all signed swing. And he was taken to bury for trial.

I mean, feels incriminating that he signed them all. Surely you do that at the end just before posting it. Just in case you do get caught. Absolutely. But for Savilt would have been the real captain, he'd have had to travel the length and breadth of England in his cart and be able to be in multiple places all at once, as far distant as East Anglia and the Hampshire coast

and the Welsh marches. So things didn't add up. He couldn't get to all those places in that time. So it took a while before the authorities realised that swing. And this is interesting, because this crops have been lots of these examples of rural revolt and rural descent, working class dissent. It was merely a legend, not a real person.

And so official responses were redirected away from trying to find a single individual and towards the whole movement. Because there was no Captain Swing. There was lots of Captain Swing. So the press, of course, made much of this singular rebel. The Morning Chronicle put it in November 1830. The peasantry of mustered in great numbers. And as some of the inhabitants have received epistles from Captain Swing,

serious disturbances are apprehended. So he was infamous, he was notorious, he was actually famous, depending on the allegiance of the paper and his political outlook. So through press interest, Swing would gain additional aspects including a first name, Jack, Jack Swing. Like it. And the thing with Swing, it was also a protective guise.

So it was adopted by those involved in this campaign against the new agricultural technology to avoid the fate that had befallen the Luddites nearly 20 years before. So they learnt from the Luddites. They were like, yeah, we need to protect our identities. So sadly it was a fall on hope. Before the swing riots were finally quelled, government reaction was especially harsh, as you can imagine,

because it's the 1800s. 19 people were executed. Hundreds were imprisoned. Several hundred were transported to Australia where eventually they settled, whether in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, or Tasmania, which was known as Van Diemen. land at the time. So a few returned to Britain. That I would not bother.

Yeah. If I'd been transported to Australia as a criminal, I would just think to myself, fuck that, I'm here now. I'm just going to embrace the weather. Yeah. I wish they'd invent sun cream. But other than that, I'm just going to get on with it. It would take absolutely ages to go home. And Britain in the 1800s is shit, so sod it. Do you know what I'm really guilty of? When I first heard that growing up, people that, you know, if you committed a crime, you'd be sent to Australia. I remember thinking, fine.

Oh, yeah, me too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's nice. What, what? Living where they make neighbours and on your way. Yeah, sure. It doesn't feel like a crime. Feels like a step up. Harold Bishop seems to have a great life. Yeah, they all do. So a few return to Britain where they found a country which still little valued its rural workforce.

Imagine that. You actually make the effort to come all the way back. And nothing's changed. Yeah. Anyway, within a few years of the swing riots, an attempt to form a rural trade union to bring agricultural labourers together to campaign for better paying conditions,

led to yet more oppression and transportation, this time from Toll Puddle in Dorset. So their crime was to form a friendly society in accordance with the rules set up by Parliament, namely the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers, and the leading figures were local Methodists, George Lovelace and his brother-in-law, Thomas Stanfield. Now, of course, the combination raised

the ire of local landowners who envisaged a repeat of the swing unrest of a few years earlier. And so they sought the advice of the Home Office as to how to stop the society in his tracks. The solution was to invoke the unlawful Oaths Act of 1797, which prevented the swearing of secret oaths and the formation of candestine societies. So presumably, I mean, I had a secret society, you know about eight. I'd have been so sent to the gallows. Our secret society just involved jumping off my garage roof into the rhubarb. Watch if I'd be transported to Australia for that.

So how clandestine was it if they've named themselves and they're out in the open recruiting? Or were they really behind? What was the... Well, since the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers did utilise the secret oath, they could be prosecuted. So at this point it's London and there's one activist nil. So they thought hundreds of thousands successfully organised for the party. harden of the six men transported for their role in organising workers at Toll Puddle.

So unlike the weaving machines in the factories, the Thresher machine was an imperfect technology and its deployment in rural area, especially in England, had other consequences. So by reducing labour, machines increased unemployment rates, which meant landowners having to pay more in taxes to meet the welfare bill. So it was better all round to pay once for cheap labour and not twice for the machine and the parish rate. So ironically, Captain Swinger allies Not only among the agricultural labourers

But also among those who face the dilemma Of mechanisation versus the welfare bill So since only the very largest the states Could afford to cushion themselves Everyone else acquiesced And sometimes they encourage the rioters That's incredible Because if a bigger state lost its machine

Everyone gained by the loss of competition So yeah, go ahead, I'm going to smash that one I mean, word to the wise, that palm owner there with a big car, he's got a fresh machine, so do us, do what you want, do as you will. There was an, I mean, we're going to discuss this now with Chris's section, but there was so much ideological foment and descent in rural areas in this time, in the sort of 1830s. It's fascinating as well about the repeated use of these fictitious figureheads

as well as a way of galvanising support and galvanising focus and a and crystallising what an idea is via a person essentially look at lud and you know what he represented and the same as you're saying that it's got it's kind of it's really interesting that that Robin hood there's obviously this long history here of these people being created and reflecting a call yeah yeah there's even more of that to come in the rebecca riots you know oh because the big question is who is Rebecca Shall we find out? All right, let's go back to the 19th century and let's mention the fact that today we take roads for granted.

You drive on a motorway. Sometimes in France or Spain, there are motorways, and there are perplexing tolls. They sometimes charge 10p, p, sometimes you're going to toll. You can't really see where it ends. You know the tolls we're talking about. The toll system in Europe is insane. Just been on it and I've just had a fine for something and it's reminded me I need to pay X.

Otherwise, I'm effectively on the run. Well, Claire and I went to Whitstable about a month ago from London and we drove through the Blackwall Tunnel and we paid the fee, the toll for the Blackwall Tunnel. Unfortunately, we clicked on the wrong one We actually paid the toll for the Dartmouth tunnel And then got it fine for 100 quid Because we And so what more gawley is we have paid To go through a tunnel

It was just the wrong one And it's now cost us 100 quid What's incredible about that anecdote Is that you've described And you paid for the toll of the Dartmouth Tunnel There is no Dartmouth Tunnel There's the Darkfoot Tunnel I suspect you may have gone through

the new Silver Town Tunnel? Why not? Let's go with that. All I know is in two tunnels. A third unmentioned tunnel seems the most likely tunnel. No, the point is, we pay for the wrong tunnel. That's the main point, and the point is it costs us 100 quid. It was long and dark, I know that much, yeah. You do reassure me, though.

In what way? Well, I'm the worst person I know, and then I stop and think. Yeah, okay. But that's a worry. If I'm your touchstone for it could be worse. Yeah. Is he? You haven't married the wrong.

You could have married. Yes, yeah. Yet another fantastic advert for Crane's travels. So in this country, there's not that many tolls. As Tom has described, that you've got the Dartford Bridge or the Dartford Tunnel. You've also got the M6 toll. Apart from that, it's fairly easy to navigate. But continental Europe is just packed full of tolls.

And it was a bit like what the UK was like in the early 1800s. Using a road wasn't free. Travel, especially for working class people or farmers, came with a price. Roads were maintained by private companies called Turnpike Truss, who were allowed to build toll gates and charge travellers to pass through. This is an aspect of British history I knew nothing about. No idea. On the plus side in Britain, there wasn't much to go and see, was there back then?

You weren't going, let's go to Lego Land. Let's go to Thorpe. Yeah. Do you want to see another muddy field? Yeah, sure. The issue was, and we'll come up to this, especially if you're a farmer, and you were to drive cattle from one place to another,

it was tremendously expensive. Prohibitably so. Ellis using fat to completely scupper my gag. I'm just trying to add a bit of levity, mate. But you're right, you're right, yeah. Sorry, we're discussing the Rebecca riots, okay? It's a series of riots that means an awful lot to me. There will be no humour,

in the next 10 minutes, okay? So these Turnpike Trusts, they could basically set prices on the tolls however they liked. Don't make a joke, Tom! As Ellis has said, it's very serious. These tolls were, in effect, a private tax on movement,

and it hit hardest, and this is why it's so dear to Ellis's heart, it hit hardest in rural, poorer areas like West Wales, where long distances often meant multiple tolls. So in 1839, ordinary people in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire had had enough. They began smashing up toll gates in protest.

It wasn't just vandalism. It was a rebellion. And this rebellion had its figurehead, like so many of the rebellions on this episode. The figurehead in this rebellion was Rebecca. Now, Rebecca wasn't a real woman, not exactly. She was a symbol borrowed from the Bible, specifically Genesis verse 2460, where it says, and they blessed Rebecca and said on to her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions,

and let thy seed possess the gates of those which hate them. And it's that last line, possess the gate of those which hate them, became a rallying cry for the rebels. So they called themselves Rebecca and her daughters. And under cover of night, this is my favourite fact in the Rebecca riots, under cover of night, they would dress in women's clothing to disguise their identities and tear down the toll gates. For me, it's impossible not to imagine lots of Les Dawson-style Welsh farmers

in big pantomime dresses smashing down toll gates. Yeah, and it's not that good a disguise. So it was most... I was a farmer in 1839, but I put a dress on. It would still so obviously be made. So they were mostly men smashing down these toll gates. They would throw on petticoats, bonnets, shawls, and take on female alter egos. and it was part disguise, part street theatre and part sacred symbolism.

The tactic of cross-dressing protest wasn't unique to Wales. Similar groups emerged in Ireland like the Molly Maguire around the same time. But the Rebecca riots were distinctly Welsh and steeped in religion. The early 1800s saw a surge of religious revival and non-conformist preaching across Wales, which meant the Bible was widely read and quoted, and the image of Rebecca fierce, maternal and divinely justified. was absolutely perfect. The first known Rebecca was a 33-year-old

red-haired man called Thomas Rees. L, you've got a smile lighting up your face. Was that in Irvine WEN? Yeah, so on the 13th of May, 1839, Thomas Rees led the very first organised attack on the F.L. Wen Tollgate, dressed head to toe in borrowed women's clothes. After that first strike,

things went quiet for a few years, apart from one strange blip, a minor confrontation in 1841, involving students from University College London. But then nothing major happened until 1843. And that year, the rioting came back with a vengeance. Toll gates across West Wales were smashed night after night, and the attacks were carefully planned and carried out under cover of darkness. And this is one vivid account from Cardigan in 1843.

Rebecca appeared on foot, dressed in white, with a large feather in her cap, another of the daughters, calling herself Phoebe had command responsibilities. At midnight, they arrived at the toll gate and smashed it to pieces as hundreds of supporters shouted,

Rebecca Forever, Becca Ambith! That's my Welsh, there? Yeah, Rebecca Ambith. What are these tolls? Is it like a gate across a road? What are we looking at? Yeah, and there was a toll booth and you couldn't get across the road

without paying the person in the tall booth the fee, whatever that was. And if you try to run around it, they would presumably beat you up. Yeah, and also you'd have all your livestock and stuff here. So you couldn't. It was very hard to travel. What I love about Rebecca Rice

is absolutely where I grew up. So I had friends in there, and I know all of these places. My dad, my dad's cousins are farmers. And they used to have a bloke. One of his earliest memories is one of the people used to work on the farm with them and he was a very old man in the 1950s

and he knew people who knew Rebecca Riotus. Wow! In the sort of 1830s and 1840s. What? Yeah, yeah. Because by dad, you know, this guy was probably probably 75 or 80 but I'm dad knew him and dad was very little. That's incredible.

When he was little kid. But he knew people who'd been involved in it when he was little. Staggering, isn't it? It shows you how recent these things really are if, you know, it's not a million years ago, is it? And there was an awful lot of industrial unrest in Wales

in the 1830s. So you're the mirth rising in 1831, you were Charterism in Nippo in 1839. I mean, a bit later in North Wales, you had the Tithe Wars. But the Rebecca riots was sort of the West Whalian, more agricultural

one. And they marched on Carmarthen in 1843. I think it was 1843 and they were just trying to smash up the workhouse, which was in town which is still there. The building is still there. And the other day I passed the pub that they left from. It's still there. So it's sort of, it's, yeah, it's a very, I find the Rebecca I. It's absolutely fascinating. Is there still like the ruins of the toll booths? There is a toll

booth at St Fagans, the Welsh Folk Museum, so you can see what they looked like. Right. Can you describe it? I don't think. It's, it's just like a little sort of stone, whitewashed hut with the prices on it. Like a tea. And yeah, it's like a sort of model boother, you know, if you're like on the N6 or something. But in the 1840s.

But it was, it absolutely crippled the farmers. And farmers in West Wales were so poised. There was a journalist called Thomas Campbell Foster worked for the Times. And he was sent to cover the, who was sent to report on it, he was sent to cover the story. And he'd covered poverty in the East End.

And he was like, it's worse than the poverty in the East End. It's unbelievable how poor these farmers are, and how little they've got. So they just can't afford these tools. There's an awful lot of anger in the area. Incredible. And his writing, his coverage of the Rebecca Wrights was very favourable. So saying, listen, they've got a point. I mean, you're preventing these farmers from working. So yeah, it's a really interesting topic. And fast forward all these hundreds of years. And now, obviously, farmers have it much better when it comes to the authorities and taxation. Right, at the same time as this is,

Incident in Cardigan in 1843, another group of 250 people attacked a tollgate near Newcastle Emlyn. And these were not random acts. They were coordinated uprisings with local support. I was in Newcastle Emlin last week. Are you still following in the footsteps of the Rebecca riots? Yeah, yeah. You're just 150 years late. Some English observers refuse to believe that such large scale, disciplined resistance could be Welsh.

They just refused to believe that the Welsh were capable of such organisation. One report claimed that the attackers took orders in English, so they must be outsiders. That idea didn't hold up, but it shows how baffled and unsettled the establishment was. And while it might have looked chaotic, the Rebecca Wrights fit into a long tradition of what historians call rough justice, a kind of ritualised rebellion. A century earlier in 1749, there had been similar turnpike gate riots in Bristol, where men dressed up with blackened faces and called themselves Jack Alent's.

Jack Alent was a kind of folk puppet made of rags and herring skins that people in Tudor England used to beat up and burn during Lent, like a very primitive guy Fawkes, essentially. It was street theatre with a message, symbolic destruction standing in for real justice. That's a shame Jackalent's gone away. A man, a folk puppet made of rags and heron skings that people take all their frustration out.

We might end up with a happier populace If once a year people are out just beat up Like the purge Once a year Also, you know They would have to be better for a kid's party Than going to a trampolining zone in Croydon Eat the hell out of this guy who's made of herring skins

Rebecca Wright's were part of that same tradition What historians call a counter theatre of opposition They were part protest, part performance Later echoes of this can be seen in things like Punch and Judy But those lost the original bite, Rebecca was an entertainment, she was a warning. In fact, the theatre world took notice almost immediately. By the end of 1843, the Rebecca Wrights had inspired not one but two stage plays. In Liverpool, the Royal Amphitheatre stage Rebecca and her daughters, in London

the Adelphi Theatre put on a farce called Taffy and the Turnpike set in the fictional town of Ponte Puddle where the bumbling local constable named Taffy Tibbs. That's not all right, Is it? It's not ideal, but... Is that OK, Elle? If they're bringing it back, I will play Taffy Tips. Despite the titles, neither production took the movement seriously. They turned Rebellion into comedy.

But for the people of West Wales and for Ellis James, Rebecca was no joke. She was vengeance in a bonnet. Wow. I love it. Absolutely amazing. I've got so many Rebecca Riot's books. Have you? Yeah, yeah.

It's not I've never really engaged with it. But it is fascinating. When I did history, GSEE, there was a little bit of leeway in terms of the curriculum. So you had to study, there were some topics you couldn't avoid. But there was a little bit of leeway. And obviously, because we were in West Wales, my teacher decided to teach us that Rebecca Rice. I just found it absolutely fascinating. Yeah.

The main thing I think about with these things is I think I'd be really bad at smashing something up. I don't think I'd, I had to tear down an old shed in our garden a couple of years ago, and that was hard work. Absolutely. I nearly got about 10 splinters. I'm constantly worried about getting things like splinters is the big one. That is exactly it. Or getting hit by rock or something.

I could just see myself doing it really lightly in the corner and sort of letting everything else do it properly. And then when they look across, I make it look like I'm really smashing it up. But I'm not really. I'm just sort of slapping it a bit. Yeah. It's a bit like, I can't remember which comedy film it is.

It's where a cop is got to break in. And he just kicks like a small bit of the door through but then his foot gets stuck in the door. That would be my kind of, that's my concern. Your head through a toll booth. So you turn up, I'm at the toll booth, I'm dressed as a woman, I've read out the passage from the Bible,

everyone's really ramped up, and I'm like, right, let the smashing begin. And then he sort of goes, donk. And you're like, okay, is everyone going to bigger hammer? Exactly. I think to start off with, you go for the glass. Yes. That's going to break fairly easily.

Yeah, yeah. I'd rip up the sheet, which has the prices on, at the toll booth? Yeah. That's going. Guys, let me deal with the sheet of prices.

I've got that. I reckon if I had a sledgehammer, I reckon I could take the guttering off. Yeah, yeah. But at the moment, it's cosmetic. It's just annoying. Well, there's only one way to find out, Elle, which is we go to,

what's it, St Faggans, is that what it's called? St, Faggans, Folk Museum. And we smash up the toll booth there and see if we can do it. Okay. Not only would I go to prison, I would have become the most hated.

money in Wales, I think. Public enemy number one. What an about turn. Yeah. So there we have it. That is the history of technophobia. I love that. What a fascinating thing to learn about. It was. And the one thing I've learned from this episode is that everyone had a point and saw him now about to throw my phones in the bin.

No more, no more. Thank you so much for listening, guys. If you've enjoyed the show, of course, please do leave. us a lovely five-star review. It helps spread the word and helps grow the audience. The community. That's the word community. And it is a community. And also, if you want to back the show, four-night-nine a month, you become an oh-wattime, full-timer. You get all our extra subscriber-only episodes, two of those a month, back catalogue, all those things, add-free, all these wonderful things. Please do that. But whatever you do, do you return next week for yet more history

fun. So we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. Bye. Goodbye. I'm going to be the I'm going to be. I'm going to I'm going to I'm a bit of I'm going to

be a I'm so I'm I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be able to be.

Oh, Watertime is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime group chat. Plus if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh what a time.