Issue 19, Autumn 2020 Detail from the Harrietsham parish plague instruc- tions [P173/7/1] Reopening the Searchroom Sheila Malloch, Customer Services Officer - Archives and Local History We have been welcoming readers back into our searchroom since 18 August. As we have had to make the searchroom and our back offices at the Kent History and Library Centre COVID- secure, we have made a number of changes to the ways that we operate. Our current opening hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 10.00am- 4.00pm, with bookable slots from 10.00am-12.45pm and 1.15- 4.00pm. You can book a morning or afternoon slot, or both slots to make a full day. If we have different people booked on one table for the morning and afternoon sessions, then we use the half hour gap in the middle of the day to prepare the table for the next user, including wiping down surfaces, and getting out their pre-ordered documents. We request that customers email us in advance to arrange their booking so that we can try to accommodate them. To enable social distancing, we have limited the number of visitors in the searchroom to two people at a time. This also means that our staff can undertake searchroom supervision and complete their other work duties safely. We have hand sanitiser stations at the entrances to the Library and the Archives; all staff wear gloves to handle documents, and a facemask or visor when meeting the public; and visitors are asked to wear facemasks unless they are exempt. All documents and finding aids must now be pre-ordered at least three days in advance to limit the traffic of staff between different work areas. We are also quarantining all documents that have been consulted for three days after use. As this means that requested documents are out of circulation for this period, it is essential to request documents in good time so that we can make sure they will be available for you. However, please be mindful of the number of documents you are requesting and gauge whether you will be able to get through all that you have ordered during your session. We are currently unable to lend or sell pencils, or provide pound coins for lockers, so don’t forget to bring supplies with you. We are also unable to accept payments in cash, so if you envisage that you will need a camera licence or to order copies, please remember to bring a debit or credit card for payment. As the cost of our camera licence has not changed since 2015, this will be increasing at the beginning of November to £6 for half a day and £12 for a full day. Use of our camera licences has proved especially popular at present, enabling readers to take multiple copies to study at home, which reduces the number of visits needed. Please remember these copies are for your own use and should not be shared. We have adjusted to our new ways of working and have received good feedback on the service we are offering. We hope to see you back at the Archives sooner rather than later. We have missed you all. Document in Detail: Instructions to Churchwardens to Combat the Plague [P173/7/1] Mark Ballard, Archive Service Officer Part of the instructions for preventing the spread of the plague issued to Harrietsham’s churchwardens [P173/7/1]. A document of 1578 from the parish archives of Harrietsham giving instructions for combatting the plague [P173/7/1] makes an interesting comparison with regulations in the year of Covid-19. It takes the form of a proclamation to churchwardens by commissioners acting for Queen Elizabeth I that must have been sent out to many parishes, though Harrietsham is the only parish in Kent that we know to have preserved its copy (and indeed we have not traced a copy beyond the county). It refers to a book of orders and medicinal reme- dies, printed on the Queen’s instruction, which the churchwardens must acquire and keep for reference in the parish church, and of which they must enforce observance. The British Library holds copies of a pam- phlet corresponding to this description, but apparently in no edition earlier than 1592. The unenviable task of inspecting the bodies of the dead and determining the cause of death would fall to ‘two honest women of good yeeres’ chosen by the churchwardens and wisest parishioners. Though without medical qualifications for this duty, they would receive between them (from the deceased’s assets if possi- ble) a shilling each time they identified a victim of plague, and fourpence for fatalities otherwise diagnosed. The plague victims should be buried as far as possible from inhabited homes, in graves at least 6 feet deep. Justices of the peace should be immediately informed of a house harbouring the plague or suspected of it. A white withy should be fastened to the exterior of houses and displayed for 40 days after a plague death. Every person venturing outside from such houses must display for the same period some black lace if wear- ing a white hat, cap or kerchief, or white lace on black headgear. Those who refused to comply with these orders should be referred to the commissioners for punishment. The year 1578 is not noted for a widespread outbreak of plague, such as ‘the sweat’ of summer 1551, or the influenza in 1558 that had devastated the ranks of Queen Mary’s elderly Catholic clergy. The date these in- structions were issued, 29 December, suggests the 1578 outbreak was a pneumonic or airborne virus rather than a bubonic plague which spread in humid weather. Sporadic epidemics could hit rural areas at almost any time: probably local recurrences of earlier, more widespread, viruses – and, if so, in a pattern we might now heed. Contemporaries might have attributed them to the wrath of God, but the fact that some parishes might be decimated by them, while neighbouring parishes might escape entirely, suggests that strategies of ‘self-isolating’ and ‘local lockdowns’ were well understood and deployed. Our present measures for ‘self-isolating’, ‘social distancing’, and ‘testing and tracing’ may differ in detail, but in so far as the Harrietsham churchwardens were required to implement strategies for combatting a virus when no vaccine was available, their situation was the same. Evidence of Insurrection in the East Kent Quarter Session Calendars 1801- 1860 Alison Linklater, Archive Collections Assistant (Digitisation) I have recently completed the task of listing the East Kent Quarter Session Calendars [Q/SBe/1-256], which record criminal trials held in Canterbury between 1801 and 1860. From these I have extracted the names of the accused, and where possible their occupations, ages, and the location of their misdemeanours; the names of the plaintiffs and witnesses in the case; and the name of the magistrate who committed them. This information will eventually be made available for Kent Archives’ users to search and will enable these un- derused records to become a more searchable resource. It is impossible to view such a large quantity of data – I have listed just over 6600 cases – and not be moved by the stories that are revealed. The majority of the crimes committed were motivated by poverty. Desperate people sought to alleviate their cold and hunger by stealing sundry items such as faggots of wood, a cheese, a piece of cake, some pickled pork, a loaf of bread, eight turnips, a plank of wood, a shirt which had been lain out to dry on a hedge, and even a quantity of grass growing in a field. Their punishment was generally a short term of hard labour in the house of correction, St. Augustine’s Gaol. The Quarter Sessions magistrates were mainly drawn from the landed gentry. It is not hard to see how re- sentment might grow between the poor – who were by far the most likely to be accused of crime – and the wealthy. Sometimes discontent might escalate to the point of insurrection, when groups of people assem- bled together to protest against their perceived injustices. Below are some of the incidences of insurrection that I have uncovered in the Quarter Sessions Calendars: 1801 Wage Protest in Chislet The beginning of the nineteenth century saw high grain prices and food shortages due to poor harvests and the war with France. In March 1801, William Dennet was charged with having ‘assembled together in an un- lawful manner’ with other labourers in Chislet in protest about their wages. It was alleged that they intercept- ed Henry Collard, one of the parish overseers, on the highway, ‘making use of words and language, in order to intimidate or prevail on him…to raise or advance the wages of labours in husbandry’ [Q/SBe/2]. It seems that William Dennett was the only person to be tried for this offence. He was ‘imprisoned and kept to hard labour for the space of two calendar months’. Sheerness Dockyard Workers, 1801 and 1830 Part of the Quarter Sessions calendar entry relating to Thomas Price, who ’riotously and tumultuously assembled with divers other persons’ at Sheerness ’to the great disturbance of the public peace’ [Q/SBe/2]. On 13 April 1801 there was an uprising at Sheerness dockyard when a group of workers gathered to de- mand a colleague’s release from impressment. Having tried to throw Commissioner Isaac Coffin (who later became Admiral of the Blue) over the ramparts, the protestors obstructed the magistrate’s (Aaron Graham) reading of the Riot Act and threatened to throw him into the dock.