THE PUBLICAN REVOLUTION

The Village had now expanded its industrial sector. At the start of the 18th century, you would see the Coachman’s house, now a tea rooms, that we find at the Baddow Antiques area, and we would find like today, a gun shop and hunting and fishing services somewhere around here though this collection of buildings are on an old farm yard.

Now with the Brewery, this area really expanded. The stables needed to house dray horses and beer wagons. And there needed to be bottling plants, vehicle garages, water supplies, drainage, and so on. The local economy thus generated work and a working class. Also, with Chelmsford growing even faster, Great Baddow began supplying labour for Chelmsford’s industry and the point where Great Baddow left off and Chelmsford began was becoming harder to tell.

The school however was definitely named after John Braynwode who is mentioned as the landowner in 1345.  There is a coat of arms on the wall at the entrance to today’s Branwood’s estate... Or it might be the School's Motto!  ‘Finis coronat opus’ The End Crowns The Work! I'm sure many a young lady pondered the meaning of that... and was no doubt, duly inspired!  Or not...

However, there was plenty of scope for soldiery. From the Seven Years War to the Napoleonic Wars, there was always demand for able bodied men. The burgeoning Empire also could absorb those too restless not to create trouble if they remained back in Blighty. Mind, plenty did remain to cause trouble. Riots and protests had taken the place of outright Civil War which might have erupted if the English and Scots had not developed a sense of humour. The era of the political cartoon and the satirical cartoon had begun.

This rumbumptious class was ready to exert its political possibilities. In 1780 alone, more London property was destroyed through riots than the Paris mob destroyed in Paris during the entire French Revolution. Liberty might have been the cry of the mob on the London streets, but unlike the French cry, it was more the liberty to oppose Scotsmen in the government, and to burn out Catholics.

Which probably annoyed James Jones of Great Baddow who owned an estate in Jamaica and had been clerk of the commissioners of forts in Jamaica. He died in Great Baddow in 1837 leaving his estates and his slaves to his wife and daughter. Perhaps most alarming to our modern-day sensitivities was Thomas Dehany Bernard, the vicar at St Mary’s from 1841-1846, whose father left him part of the Eden Estate in St James, Jamaica, along with the attached slaves.
 
He was of an evangelical mind set and had a distinguished church career, ending up as the Chancellor of Wells Cathedral. And perhaps he was somewhat concerned about the situation in Jamaica, and strictly speaking the estate now was staffed by “indentured” labour. Slavery itself had been abolished in 1833 with a five-year period where the slaves were to be transitioned into free men. After that indentured servants from India, China and other places began filling the roles the Africans had previously filled. Needless to say, being a freed man was not an easy position to be in as the old masters now had no need to offer housing or even work and if you did return to work for your old master, wages were kept low with the advent of the Chinese and Indians. At least you could complain to the magistrates if you were bullied, abused, whipped, etc. though I suspect that you would not get much help from them as they tended to be the ex-slave holders who maintained a somewhat low opinion of their ex-slaves.  
 
We can of course point out the hypocrisy of the Victorians but we rarely look too closely at the investments of present-day pension funds or even consider how prices of clothes and computer hardware are kept low. It is claimed that fifty million people are enslaved today in the form of forced labour, forced marriage, sex slavery, children in bondage and probably swathes of people in positions where they have little choice but to put up with exploitative practices. It should also be remembered that Saudi Arabia did not abolish slavery until 1962 and in China it was not until the 1950’s when they finally eradicate bonded labour under Mao’s campaign against feudal practices. In short, there is no shortage of guilt to spread about where slavery is concerned. The poor have always had to work hard to keep up the standards of the rich.

Despite the Workhouse institutions’ bad reputation, it was not necessarily corrupt and unpleasant. In the hands of trustworthy and compassionate people, if somewhat patronising, much good could be achieved sometimes as a source of medical care for pregnant mothers and the disabled. Not everywhere was as dismal as Charles Dickens made out and Great Baddow seems to have had a reasonable regime. A workhouse birth actually allowed for a month of lying in for mother and child, assuming they lived! So at least nobody complained in the local newspapers about Great Baddow’s Poor Houses. But then, who would have shown such ingratitude and what right thinking respectable member of the community could think of a better alternative that the Parish, who’s responsibility it was, could afford?

Church attendance, charitable activities, and being a good tipper were now a good way of establishing your status. And a good way for working people to get an extra sixpenny tip was to doff your cap uttering a cheery, “God Bless you Sir!” Religion of sorts, was back in vogue and whatever the ruffians were doing on the streets of London, they never ventured such nonsense in Great Baddow. Maldon, maybe, but not Great Baddow. In Maldon, throughout the 18th Century, the elections were notoriously corrupt and totally dependent upon who gave the biggest bribe to the very small electorate. As late as 1852 such practice lost them their right to have any MPs for two years. The bar of propriety was set pretty low, but Maldon, I am sure much to the amusement of Great Baddow’s staid community, managed to not even reach those dismal heights. A royal commission decided, miraculously, that the 1852 election was actually valid! But in 1885 they reorganised constituencies and the borough was abolished altogether and replaced with a larger one, thus in theory less susceptible to bribery.
 
The eighteenth-century then was a rough energetic era full of Scots and Englishmen aggressively going for gold, but by the time of the Regency Period, the British gentry had decided to become genteel and worry, if not actually do much, about the poor and sick. After Napoleon’s defeat, there was a dawning awareness that Britain Ruled The Waves and that nobody had to try that hard anymore. A Brit seemed naturally to command authority wherever he went, which was proof of his moral superiority. The ladies also played their part, if they knew their place, and were supposedly the upholders of moral rectitude and movers and shakers along the charitable front.

On the other hand, the Regency period was when Byron was mad bad and dangerous, and near nudity was all the rage among the party girls of the lesser aristocracy. Outside of London though, Great Baddow’s middling classes, as they began to be known, struck a disapproving note. It was hard to imagine who was worse, the atheistic aristocracy, or the Catholics! There was something foreign about these society people. They must have been tainted with mucky foreign ways! But sensible righteous upstanding women would lead the way on the home front while the men toiled in the fields and factories or fought for king and country spreading British decency throughout the world. The British were on a mission. Hurrah!