Few of us find ourselves with a riot on our doorstep but that is what happened to Elizabeth Benbow in April 1839. In just five days, the local Chartists placed her home town of Llanidloes firmly in the history books.

Llanidloes was – and still is – a quiet little market town in Mid Wales. It was one of the centres of the flannel trade with many of its inhabitants involved in the industry in some way. But in 1839 times were hard; competition came from the mill towns in the North and the introduction of water-powered looms threatened the existence of the handloom weavers.

It was against this background that the Chartist movement took hold in the area. Chartism was a nationwide workers’ movement that stemmed from harsh working conditions and the effects of the economic depression of 1837/8. Adding to the general discontent of The Times was the 1834 Poor Law Act which replaced poor relief provided by the parish with workhouses – grim institutions, hated and feared with equal passion. On top of that, mass resentment was caused by the Corn Laws that enabled landowners to keep grain prices artificially high.

The working classes were the ones to suffer the effects of these changes, but they had neither a strong political voice nor the right to vote. Frustration led to violence in many parts of the country; ricks were burned in the countryside in the early 1830s, the Tolpuddle Martyrs were prosecuted and transported in 1834 and there were outbreaks of unrest in some industrial towns.

Small wonder then that the Chartist movement flourished. It took its name from the ‘People’s Charter’ of 1838 drawn up by the London Working Men’s Association. The Charter demanded votes for all men, payment of MPs, abolition of the property qualifications for MPs, equal constituencies and annual elections with secret ballots. Parliament rejected these demands, giving rise to calls from some of the movement’s supporters for the use of force to achieve their aims. Although there were many others who wanted to seek change through peaceful reform, in the eyes of the government and the ruling classes all Chartists were dangerous revolutionaries.

This was the environment in which Elizabeth Benbow lived. She was a widow of 66 and knew the struggles of the spinners and weavers. Her late husband had once been a weaver, as was their eldest son and many of Elizabeth’s neighbours. She lived in the centre of the town with her three younger sons aged between 18 and 27 who ran a drapery business, her daughter-in-law and a young servant girl.

The local Chartists’ activities were fuelled by the crisis in the flannel industry and the lack of democratic rights for the ordinary working men. In Llanidloes only 86 men, just over 2% of the constituents, were allowed to vote. The Benbows were not among them but while Elizabeth and her sons may have been sympathetic to the Chartists’ cause, it is hard to imagine them as radicals given that violent protests would not have been good for businesses in the town. Nonetheless, for five days they found themselves in the midst of violence and unrest.

Events of that April had been preceded by regular Chartist meetings in the town, held in inns such as the Red Lion across the street from Elizabeth’s house in Longbridge Street, as well as in the open air. She probably knew the organisers – Richard Jerman, a master carpenter and Thomas Powell an ironmonger. Both men, along with most of the Mid Wales leaders, were responsible reformers who advocated peaceful methods to achieve their aims. That said, there were representatives of the two sides of Chartism within those local meetings – the peaceful moral force and the ‘hotheads’ advocating change through physical force.

The Market Hall in the centre of the town was the scene for some of the open air meetings and as it was only yards from Elizabeth’s home – in one of a row of small houses long since demolished – she could have heard all that was being said simply by opening a window.

It was following one of these meetings that trouble began. The meeting itself was large but peaceful and orderly. It was addressed by Henry Hetherington, a visitor to Llanidloes and a leading light in the Chartist Movement. He was known to advocate using firearms for ‘self-defence’. Unfortunately, Hetherington’s views appealed to the younger fanatics amongst the Mid Wales Chartists who proceeded to arm themselves with muskets acquired from local farmers – probably by dubious means – drilling under an ex-militiaman and making pikes and grenades.

Their actions probably fed local rumours that an armed uprising was being planned. These fears turned out to be greatly exaggerated but the damage was done. The local and county magistrates became alarmed and called on the Home Secretary to send military and police reinforcements to supplement the town’s elderly night watchman and some part-time unpaid constables.

In response, three constables were despatched from London and the local magistrates were asked to recruit special constables locally. One of those magistrates was Thomas Edmund Marsh, a wealthy landowner, solicitor and former mayor. He promptly recruited between 100 and 300 men – accounts vary – mostly believed to be his own tenants. As tenants they would not have been in a position to refuse for fear of losing their jobs and homes, despite any personal sympathies they might have had for the Chartists.

Unsurprisingly, the appearance of such a large body of men armed with whatever weapons they had to hand, mostly wooden staves, did little to calm the situation. Later that evening the three London Metropolitan policemen arrived in town. The scene was set for trouble.

The following morning, 29 April, another Chartist meeting was held during which came news that the London policemen had arrested three men and were holding them in the Trewydden Arms Hotel. They were Abraham Owen, 48, a weaver, Lewis Humphries, 29, shoemaker and Thomas Jerman, 27, carpenter. Immediately the crowd left the meeting place and rushed along Longbridge Street, past Elizabeth’s house, and into Great Oak Street where the

Trewydden Arms stood. They found it guarded by 50 of Thomas Marsh’s ‘special constables’ armed with their wooden staves.

How much of a fight the special constables put up is not known but the crowd stormed the hotel and released their fellow Chartists. In doing so, they caused considerable damage to the interior of the hotel and severely beat one of the London policemen – the other two managed to escape. It was said that many of the crowd were teenagers and known troublemakers rather than the less volatile Chartist sympathisers.

Thomas Powell, the Chartist leader, was in Newtown at the time and on hearing the news he hurried back to Llanidloes. He attempted to calm the crowd and later took charge of the town to maintain the peace. He appointed watchmen to patrol the town and keep order. This they did and for the next five days the town was under the control of the Chartists. It became known as the ‘Five Days of Freedom’.

Clearly as far as the authorities were concerned, matters could not be left there – the magistrates needed to take action. In their fear of further violence, even though the riot was over, they over-reacted. They called upon the Lord Lieutenant at Powys Castle for immediate assistance to control the situation. In response a contingent of the 14th Light Infantry from Brecon arrived on Saturday 4 May together with a troop of around 200 Yeomen Cavalry riding with sabres drawn. They found a quiet town. Unsurprisingly, the Chartists were not prepared to take on the army and the agitators quickly left the town to avoid arrest.

Having met with little or no resistance, the troops sealed off the town and over the next few days began the hunt for those who had taken part in the riot. This was the authorities’ chance to arrest local Chartists; they were determined to stamp out any insurrection. Arrests were made swiftly and posters were put up outside the town offering rewards for the recapture of two of the three men released by the crowd from the Trewydden Arms – Thomas Jerman and Lewis Humphries. The third man, Abraham Owen, had already been rearrested.

In all, 32 local Chartists including three women and the leader, Thomas Powell, were arrested. They were tried at Montgomery Assizes on 15 July 1839 and all were found guilty. Abraham Owen and Lewis Humphries were sentenced to seven years’ transportation; James

Morris, a young weaver of 19, was sentenced to transportation for 15 years for stabbing a special constable; Thomas Powell was sent to prison for 12 months and was charged to find sureties of £400 after his release to keep the peace for a further five years. The others were given varying sentences of up to 12 months, some with hard labour, and they served their time in Montgomery prison.

Thomas Jerman was never caught. He escaped to America via Liverpool. There he married and raised a family. At some point he returned to Llanidloes – the 1851 census records him living in China Street – but went back to America where he remained until his death.

As for Thomas Marsh, the magistrate, he did not come out of it with any great credit. He was considered to have exacerbated the situation by involving the military. Some accounts suggest that he himself started the outbreak of violence in order to discredit Chartism and its responsible leaders or even to facilitate his own escape from the angry crowd, allowing him to head for Shrewsbury and raise the alarm. Some of the local people continued to hold him accountable for the rest of his life.

A military presence remained in the town until the summer of 1840 but there was no further violence. Quite apart from not wanting to take on the soldiers, even the most rebellious Chartists felt that the protest had already made its point.

Llanidloes returned to its normal life – well almost. Peace had been restored but having troops in the town was hardly normal. The army did not have a barracks in Llanidloes so the soldiers were billeted in local inns. This gave the army chiefs cause for concern as it was thought private billeting was bad for discipline; senior ranks feared that the troops might associate with the wrong company and be corrupted. Perhaps they were right to be concerned as a subsequent report to the Home Office complained that in the five companies quartered in private billets in Newtown and Llanidloes crime had increased compared with the companies stationed in Montgomery where temporary barracks had been built. Added to that, 15 soldiers had deserted from Newtown and Llanidloes.

When the troops finally withdrew in June 1840 it was likely to have been to the relief of both army commanders and the townspeople – with the possible exception of the innkeepers.

Chartism in Mid Wales did not end but there was no further violence. Not so in South Wales where the Newport Rising later in the year saw crowds of Chartists march on the town to liberate fellow Chartists reported to have been taken prisoner in the Westgate Hotel. At least 22 demonstrators were killed when troops opened fire, or died later of their wounds.

Although the Chartist movement ended without achieving its aims, it had many supporters and the fear of civil unrest continued. But in 1848, after another failed attempt to petition the government, the movement faded and its demands seemed less threatening. They were gradually taken up by other reformers and many of the original Chartist ideas were included in the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884.

Elizabeth Benbow did not live to see those reforms. She died of apoplexy in 1842 in her little house in Longbridge Street.