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Posted by Derek Antrobus on 11th October 2009 at 04:15 PM
The sacking of Stephen Neal
By Derek Antrobus

In 1852 Salford sacked Chief Constable Stephen Neal – its third official holding that office since the borough was incorporated in 1844 and the second to be dismissed. This has been put down by some as an attempt to curb a zealous policing of beerhouses and pubs. The Council was shy about giving its reasons, referring only to Neal’s “numerous indiscretions”. Neal blamed his sacking on clique of councillors led by Peter Gendall, champion of the small ratepayers. But what was the truth? This article delves into the background behind this mystery.
On incorporation, Salford immediately established a police force as required by the 1835 Muncipal Corporations Act. In 1853 the Borough was extended to take in the neighbouring townships of Broughton and Pendleton. The period 1844-1853 is one when the policies and practices of the local authority were established. During this period, the Borough Council was dominated by a nonconformist Liberal élite in which members of the Bible Christian Church were influential. The Church made teetotalism a condition of communion. Furthermore there is evidence of tension between the police and councillors culminating in the dismissal Neal in 1852. The apparent powerful influence of teetotallers and the suggestion of conflict over policing make this a potentially fruitful case study for testing the hypothesis that nonconformist communities were able to impose their moral agenda on the wider community by using municipal power to influence policing.
The link between nonconformism and political ideology is almost axiomatic in the field of nineteenth century social history. This has given rise to what Nockles calls “the stereotypical myth” of mid-Victorian nonconformists using political influence to impose their own sectarian religious and moral agenda (Nockles, 2000). This thesis makes a number of generalisations which will be tested in this article. The principal claims in this thesis are (a) that nonconformists constituted a particular community, (b) that they shared a particular ideology, (c) that they had the power and the will to impose their agenda and (d) that they did so in the face of opposition from traditionalists or conservatives. It will be helpful to consider the literature on each of these claims and suggest how it might relate to this project.
The concept of community is contested (Dennis and Daniels, 1994) but it will be useful, given the nature of this study, to focus on the issue of affiliation with interest groups. As Tiller notes: “For some, religion was the primary factor in defining a sense of community, of belonging, and of shared values” (Tiller, 1997, p156). Glaser has argued that evidence for the existence of such communities was strongest in industrial cities of provincial England: “In those flourishing cities, the leading members of the Nonconformist chapels were the local captains of industry, the spearheads of municipal reform and the magnates of the local Liberal party. Nonconformist families…formed an urban governing class which, through intermarriage and business and political associations, had national ramifications” (Glaser, 1958, p354). The overlapping membership of cotton manufacturers, Liberals and non-conformists in early nineteenth century Manchester and Salford has been demonstrated in a number of studies (Gattrell, 1982; Greenall, 2000; Howe, 1984).
The second claim is that there is a distinctive ideology, in this case associated with temperance issues. The history of the nineteenth century temperance movement is often divided into phases, the earliest focusing on voluntary abstinence, the second, from 1853 demanding prohibition, and the third, from the early 1870s, incorporating Anglican opinion into the movement (Olsen, 1994; Smith, 1993). The focus of this study is on the earliest period. Harrison (1994) has shown, through statistical analysis of their leadership, that the earliest temperance movements were overwhelmingly Liberal and nonconformist. The link between Liberalism, nonconformism and temperance is one of the “typical alignments” noted by Tiller (2000, p180). Despite evidence of a concern for temperance and the personal teetotalism of leading Salford nonconformists, the ideological position is not as clear-cut as may appear. Harrison (1994) notes that until 1853 temperance was about voluntary abstinence with the political emphasis on counter-attractions – providing parks, museums and libraries to wean the working-classes away from drink. It is only after the creation of the prohibitionist United Kingdom Alliance in 1853 that Harrison perceived a division between “moral suasionists” and “legal compulsionists” (Harrison, 1994, p21). This raises the question that municipal temperance reformers may have focused their energies more on counter-attractions than on policing, undermining the issue raised by Emsley (1994) that control of policing was a key area of conflict between temperance Liberals and drink-interest Conservatives. We also need to be alert to the possibility that policing policy, even if consistent with temperance objectives, was in fact a shared response to problems of disorder rather than a partisan imposition of nonconformists’ moral agenda (Gutzke, 1989).
It does appear, however, to be clear that had the local nonconformist élite wished to impose its agenda, it might very well have done so. The 1835 Municipal Corporation Act had imposed a duty on borough councils to establish a police force. The Act gave borough watch committees both in theory and practice absolute power over the chief constable (Emsley, 1996; Reiner, 1992). Clearly, political dominance of the borough council which appointed the watch committee would allow a religious community to control policing. There were, of course, legislative constraints. The Beer Act of 1830 allowed the establishment of beerhouses with no licensing requirements. This was a deliberate attempt by the authorities to promote what was seen as a milder form of drink and reduce gin consumption. The logic of free market liberalism that underpinned this policy meant that it had the support of many Liberal nonconformist temperance advocates (Harrison, 1994; Hewitt, 1979). Concerns about beerhouses led to greater powers of supervision in the 1834 Beer Act. On the evidence from the literature, a council dominated by nonconformists did, indeed, have the power to impose to a large degree its moral agenda.
Finally, the issue of conflict needs to be addressed. The “typical alignments” identified by Tiller (1997, p180) oppose Anglican Conservatives in the drink interest to nonconformist Liberal temperance advocates. Emsley (1994, p34) suggests that “the domination of some watch committees over their police could lead to partiality in policing orders; this was especially the case in places where temperance was a vital local issue, and where temperance Liberals lined up against Tory brewers in the local elections.”
This brief review of the literature has suggested that there is some substance to the hypothesis that the nonconformist community could indeed impose their moral values on the wider community through political dominance of the watch committee. This may be challenged by the evidence that the study of a particular community may offer. And it is to that evidence we now turn.
The sources used to identify the evidence falls into two categories: the first, around the existence of a distinctive community; the second, around its impact. The evidence for the first lies in identifying a community of interest which dominated power structures. Although it has been asserted (Greenall 1974) that the Borough Council was run by Liberal nonconformists it was important not to take this for granted. Using minute books and year books of the Borough Council, it was possible to identify all the Members of the Council during the period and, for most, their home and business addresses. This level of detail made the using of the Poll Book for the 1841 election, trade directories and newspaper reports for nominal record linkage relatively straightforward. The real difficulty lay in ascribing party and religious affiliation. Apart from the obvious difficulty of weak party organisation, the possibility of imputing affiliation by examining the record of support for issues was quickly discarded: reform campaigners stand on the Tory ticket and two who voted Liberal, according to the Poll Book, sit as Tory councillors. Some individuals appear on both party lists. This clearly led to difficulties in interpretation which are discussed below.
The period encompassed the 1851 religious census. By examining the composition of the Council relative to church membership, it is possible to make a judgment about how politically active were individual sects. Unfortunately, records of religious affiliation are limited. Because of the need to rely on published data and announcements of births, marriages and deaths, a rather narrower proxy for religious composition – the Aldermanic bench – is used, an approach adopted elsewhere (Rose, 1997).
The second element of the evidence relates to how the nonconformist community exercised power in a particular direction. Clearly, the type of evidence needed to examine this would be qualitative, some expression of the meaning and intent that politicians gave to their actions. No memoirs having come to light, the main sources identified here were the original manuscript minute books of the Watch Committee and newspaper reports. The annual reports of the Chief Constable also comment on the policy direction he had been given. The official nature of these documents gives few clues as to motivation. These annual reports also contain some quantitative evidence of the number of police prosecutions allowing consideration of any correlation between prosecutions and policy. The key difficulty here is isolating local variations: the level of prosecutions might be part of a wider trend. Despite this, some conclusions can be drawn and it will now be useful to examine those.
That the composition of the Salford Borough Council was an expression of the politics of nonconformism is very clear. The point was not lost on contemporaries. The Tory Manchester Courier commented on the outcome of the first elections after incorporation: “There is a very nice mix of sects and parties: a handful of churchmen, half-a-dozen Tories, four Roman Catholics and a squad of dissenters, and ditto of Radicals.” There was an overwhelming dominance of the Liberals during the period of this study. In interpreting the evidence for affiliation, there are clear Tory/Liberal divisions. Three reformers had the support of both parties and so categorized as Independent Reformers. A difficulty arose with the growth of a Ratepayers’ Association, whose nominees were mainly, but not exclusively, Tory. Where there was no evidence of strong affiliation to other parties, their nominees have been designated Ratepayers’ Association.
One aspect of community is a common business background which not only implies shared interests but also a frequency of contact that characterises cohesion. The categories have been devised to identify common business interests rather than status, hence separating out the drink trade and textiles. Analysis shows the shared textile and engineering background of Liberals.
The extent to which nonconformists were politically active can be seen by comparing their strength on the council vis-à-vis other religious groups with their strength in the community as suggested by the 1851 religious census. The Bible Christians seemed to have a representation disproportionate to numbers in their sect. Not only was the sect’s influence numerically out of proportion, but qualitatively too. Its pastor, Joseph Brotherton, was MP for Salford. The church was teetotal from its foundation in 1809 and Brotherton’s supporters credit him with writing the first teetotal tract (Greenall, 2000, p32). His brother-in-law William Harvey, a Bible Christian and Mayor of Salford, was prominent in the United Kingdom Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Trade, the most powerful prohibitionist movement (Harrison, 1994, p208). A minister of the church, Joseph Thompson, was first secretary of one of the largest temperance organisations, the Independent Order of Rechabites, which had its roots in Salford in 1835 (Campbell, 1911).
It is possible to conclude that there existed a nonconformist community with shared dissenting grievances, a shared political outlook and a shared business background (Gattrell, 1982). Furthermore, there is evidence of an influential body of temperance opinion amongst them. The issue now is to determine whether or not they sought to impose their temperance agenda on the local community. An analysis of policing in the Borough provides some useful clues.
One quantitative indicator may be the extent of prosecutions for offences associated with drinking. One aspect of this is the action taken against premises. The 1830 Beer Act saw a rising trend in the number of beerhouses so any statistical analysis needs to take account of the increase in the number of potential offenders. The statistics are taken from the various annual reports of the Chief Constable to the Watch Committee. The statistical appendix to the 1849-50 report is not extant. The figures do not suggest any clampdown, indeed, they imply, if anything, an easing of enforcement during the first three years. An increase in 1848-49 is discussed in more detail below in relation to the appointment of Stephen Neal as Chief Constable. A difficulty with such quantitative data is the problem of isolating exogenous factors. The level of reported crime may be not simply a function of policing priorities but of more general trends, legislation or police resources.
Next, we need to examine the qualitative evidence. Minutes of the Watch Committee reveal a tight control of the administration of policing. A typical agenda of the weekly meeting of the committee would receive reports on budgets, cases brought before the magistrates, staffing matters, occasional grievances from the public and disciplinary matters. The latter two issues provide some evidence to suggest that the ability of the committee to direct policing was not as great as that suggested in the literature. Barely a meeting passes without constables being fined for drinking on duty and one complaint of a prosecuted publican led to the dismissal of two officers for not prosecuting a neighbouring establishment in which they were seen drinking (Watch Committee Minutes, September 29th, 1847).
The Minutes rarely have explicit directions on policing priorities. One instance is an appeal to the Excise Board for warrants to pursue illicit distillers. This initiative, however, arose from a deputation from the Society of Licensed Victuallers complaining that their trade was being taken away by illegal establishments making and serving liquor outside licensing hours (Watch Committee Minutes, April 12th, 1849). This suggests that concern about the policing of drink was not confined to the nonconformist community, a view supported by the attitude of the Tory élite. The Anglican Canon Hugh Stowell, one of the earliest Church of England clergy to become prominent in the temperance movement, dominated Conservative politics in Salford (Greenall, 2000). He joined with Brotherton and other temperance reformers to establish the Salford Temperance Society as early as 1830. There is also a claim that by 1850 temperance groups had 7,000 members in Salford with various societies holding 12 meetings a week (Blackford, 1997, p90).
One significant event in Salford policing during this which may shed light on these issues was the dismissal of the Chief Constable who, it is claimed, sought to appeal to the nonconformist élite with a campaign against beersellers but came up against a less ideological Watch Committee (Greenall, 2000, p 56). Stephen Neal had been appointed Chief Constable in August 1848. As figure 4 shows, his appointment coincided with a dramatic increase in the frequency of prosecutions against beerhouses and public houses. Furthermore, from February 1850, the Watch Committee considers at each meeting which cases should be summonsed and which should be cautioned by the Chief Constable. This could be interpreted as check on Neal’s zeal. The annual reports of the Chief Constable to the Watch Committee for 1849 and 1851 both make reference to the determination of the magistrates to inflict heavy penalties on those who transgressed the licensing laws. The magistrates formed part of the nonconformist élite, its membership coming mainly from the aldermanic bench and the borough’s teetotal MP.
There may, however, be a more prosaic interpretation of these events. The increase in cases before the magistrates in 1848-9 followed closely on the implementation an 1848 Act limiting public house and beer house Sunday opening hours. There were thus new offences to prosecute. There is no evidence that the Watch Committee was ideologically opposed to restrictions. Indeed, the Committee called on publicans and beersellers to voluntarily cease musical entertainment on Sundays since it was “considered very objectionable as being calculated to bring religion into contempt and to induce immorality among the working classes…” (Watch Committee Minutes, December 27th, 1849). The Watch Committee exhibit a constant concern for economy and it is possible to interpret the decision to vet all cases against publicans and beersellers as an attempt to limit the demand on police resources.
The circumstances surrounding Neal’s dismissal have also been interpreted as the Watch Committee protecting the drink trade from an overzealous officer more in tune with the Aldermen and magistrates. None of the available evidence seems to support this interpretation. In the minutes of the Watch Committee, press reports, and a pamphlet issued by Neal in his defence, we see evidence of tensions arising from petty jealousies and personal grudges.
Neal’s appointment on August 8th, 1848, was carried by eight votes to five at the Watch Committee and this may have led to some early resentment against him by those on the losing side. But his early career seems to have been successful. By 1851 his salary had been raised as he took on extra responsibility for running the fire brigade. He was given an excellent testimonial by the Watch Committee when he (unsuccessfully) applied for the post of warden of Birmingham gaol. Then things appear to be go wrong.
In October of 1851, Neal is in trouble for appearing ceremonially on horseback on the Queen’s visit to Salford when he had been instructed to supervise police constables in two particular areas of the city. In November he has his knuckles rapped for printing the annual crime report before it has been approved by the Watch Committee. Then in January 1852 he is ticked off by the magistrates for locking up a youth suspected of ‘furious driving’ – on the grounds that the the youth had been cheeky and was in need of ‘a little correction’. And in April 1852 he is in trouble for undertaking an exercise to identify unlicensed dogs at the behest of the magistrates without the knowledge of his employer, the Watch Committee.
This seems to have been the final straw, partly because the nature of the exercise created a nuisance: Neal ordered his constables to knock in the dead of night on the doors of those suspected of having unlicensed dogs. The consequent barking would reveal the culprits. But it also annoyed the peaceable citizenry trying to get some sleep! The Watch Committee resolved on April 8th, 1852: “That, in the opinion of this committee, Mr Neal has not the confidence of this committee in the discharge of his duties as Chief Constable of the Borough.” Neal was sacked.
Neal certainly took the opportunity in a pamphlet written in his defence to proclaim his success in suppressing drunkenness and ‘improving the character of low class beerhouses and public houses’ (Neal, 1852). But he does so in defending his record, not explaining the reason for his dismissal. He blames a clique of councillors led by Peter Gendall who, he claims, were resentful of his success. According to Neal, he was so efficient that other committees of the Council sought his advice. This alienated Watch Committee members and upset the Town Clerk, Charles Gibson, who saw his authority being usurped by someone who was not a ‘gentleman’. Gibson, who also practised privately as a solicitor, appeared for the defence against Neal in the ‘furious driving’ case alluded to above. This also set Gibson against him. Neal alleged that also the bitterness stemmed from an incident regarding where the churchwardens’ staves should be placed during a Sunday morning service in 1848. He used his authority to order members of the congregation not to touch them – unfortunately those worshippers were influential councillors: Peter Gendall, Robert Tinsley, John Pellett, Thomas Brownbill and William Lowndes.
Despite the allegations and counter-allegations, the reason for Neal’s dismissal will always remain a mystery. Indeed, the Watch Committee refused Neal any hearing at which charges would be laid against him, referring only to his numerous indiscretions. Only two members of the Watch Committee wanted to give Neal the chance of a hearing, one of whom was the Anglican Tory brewer Richard Mottram – a fact which also casts doubt on the view that Neal was a victim of the drink interest.
The evidence on the conduct of policing in Salford cannot sustain the hypothesis that municipal power was used by the nonconformist community to impose their own moral agenda. This study has demonstrated that the nonoconformist community disprortionately dominated municipal politics during the period under consideration. Policy initiatives on the issue of drink have either been imposed by legislation (whose impact was very likely softened by concerns for economy) or took the form of exhortation to voluntary action. The one attempt to increase powers to suppress illegal drink was at the instigation of the Society of Licensed Victuallers. There is evidence of local Tory and Anglican (and more widespread) support for temperance. Thus the view that nonconformists sought to impose their moral agenda is roundly rejected.
This does not imply there was not an active attempt to regulate the drink trade – merely that it is more likely to have been an expression of wider social concerns about disorder and leisure (Billinge, 1996; Kneale, 1999) rather than the narrow imposition of religious ideology. What has been insufficiently explored is the importance of counterattraction rather than compulsion in the nonconformists’ attitude to drink (Harrison, 1994), an attitude that was certainly held by Brotherton, perhaps the leading member of Salford’s nonconformist community. In 1850, when William Ewart introduced the Public Libraries Bill, Brotherton, described the library as providing “the cheapest police that could be established” (Kelly, 1973, p51).
The nonconformist aldermen of Salford devoted their energies to providing one of the earliest public parks, a museum, and the first municipal library (O’Brien, 1982). The study of this particular community, therefore, offers some support for Larsen’s rejection of the conventional view of nonconformist politics as a narrowly sectarian attempt to coerce the wider community into following it moral agenda.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books and Journals

Billinge, M., (1996) ‘A time and place for everything: An essay on recreation, re-creation and the Victorians’, in Journal of Historical Geography, 22 (4), pp251-268.
Blackford, G., (1997) ‘A man of great energy and small discretion: Hugh Stowell and the Temperance movement'’ in Ford, C., Powell, M., and Wyke, T., (eds) The Church in Cottonopolis: Essays to mark the 150th anniversary of the Manchester Diocese, Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society
Campbell, R., (1911) Rechabite History: A Record of the Origin, Rise and Progress of the Independent Order of Rechabites, Manchester, Independent Order of Rechabites.
Dennis, R., and Daniels, S., (1994) ‘ “Community” and the Social Geography of Victorian Cities’ in Drake, M. (ed.), Time, Family and Community: Perspectives on Family and Community History, Oxford, The Open University in Association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Emsley, C., (1994) ‘Police Constable 25’ in Golby, J., (ed.), Communities and Families, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press in association with the Open University, Chapter 2.
Emsley, C., (1996) The English Police: A Political and Social History, second edition, Harlow, Addison Wesley Longman Ltd.
Gattrell, V.A.C., (1982) ‘Incorporation and the pursuit of Liberal hegemony in Manchester, 1790-1839), in Fraser, D., (ed.) Municipal Reform and the Industrial City, Leicester, Leicester University Press.
Glaser, J.F., (1958) ‘English Nonconformity and the Decline of Liberalism’ in American Historical Review, 63 (2), January 1958, pp352-363.
Greenall, R.L., (1974) ‘The Making of the Borough of Salford, 1830-1853’ in Bell, S.P., (ed) Victorian Lancashire, Newton Abbot, David and Charles.
Greenall, R.L., (2000) The Making of Victorian Salford, Lancaster, Carnegie Publishing Ltd.
Gutzke, D.W., (1989), Protecting the Pub: Brewers and Publicans Against Temperance, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press and the Royal Historical Society.
Harrison, B., (1994) Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England 1815-1872, second edition, Keele, Keele University Press.
Hewitt, E.J., (1979) A History of Policing in Manchester, Didsbury (Manchester), E. J. Morten Publishers.
Howe, A., (1984), The Cotton Masters: 1830-60, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Kelly, T., (1973) A History of Public Libraries in Great Britain 1845-1965, London, The Library Association.
Kneale, J., (1999) ‘A problem of supervision: moral geographies of the nineteenth century British public house’, in Journal of Historical Geography, 25 (3), pp333-348
Larsen, T., (1999) Friends of Religious Equality: Non-conformist politics in mid-Victorian England, Woodbridge, The Boydell Press.
Nockles, P., (2000) ‘Friends of Religious Equality: Non-conformist politics in mid-Victorian England– Review’, English Historical Review, June 2000.
O’Brien, E., (1982), Eminent Salfordians: Volume I, Salford Local History Society.
Olsen, G.W., (1994) ‘Physician Heal Thyself – Drink, temperance and the medical question in the Victorian and Edwardian Church of England, 1830-1914’ in Addiction, 89 (9), pp1167-1176.
Read, J., (1999) ‘Joseph Livesey of Preston, business, temperance and moral reform’, in Northern History, 35, pp269-270.
Reiner, R, (1992) The Politics of the English Police, second edition, Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Rose, E. A., (1997) ‘Church and Chapel in Manchester, 1847-1914’ in Ford, C., Powell, M., and Wyke, T., (eds) The Church in Cottonopolis: Essays to mark the 150th anniversary of the Manchester Diocese, Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society
Smith, R., (1993) ‘The Temperance Movement and Class Struggle in Victorian England’ in Loyola University Student Historical Review, vol 24.
Tiller, K., (1997), ‘Religion in nineteenth-century Britain’, in Golby, J., (ed.), Communities and Families, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press in association with the Open University, Chapter 8.

Newspapers

Manchester Courier
Manchester Guardian
Salford Weekly News
Salford City Reporter

Documents

Brotherton Scrapbooks
Despotic Tyranny: Statement of the Circumstances Connected with the Arbitrary Dismissal of Stephen Neal, Chief Contsable, by the Watch Committee – pamphlet by Stephen Neal, Manchester, 1852..
Manchester Local Studies Unites Newspaper Cuttings Archive
Manchester Mercantile Directory 1854-5
Pigot’s Manchester and Salford Directory, 1841
Religious Census Returns for Salford, 1851
Salford Borough Watch Committee Minutes 1844-52
Salford Borough Council Annual Reports 1844-52
Salford Borough Council Year Books 1844-52
Salford Poll Book 1841

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