Tom Kelly asks, now that South Tyneside Council have decided to commemorate the gibbeting of William Jobling, was Jobling a murderer or martyr?

In Saint Mary’s churchyard at Heworth in Gateshead, lies the grave of Thomas Hepburn, who founded the Northern Union of Pitmen in 1831.  His gravestone reads, “This stone was erected by the miners of Northumberland and Durham and other friends.”  It’s the ‘other friends’ that has such power.

Conditions in collieries in the nineteenth century in the north-east of England were hard and a cursory glance at colliery records reveals a frightening death toll.  Jarrow’s Pit was no exception: January 25th.  1817, forty-two men and boys killed and in a near duplication of events in August 1830, a further forty-two lost their lives, leaving, on that occasion, twenty-one widows and sixty-six fatherless children.

It is into this picture that the story of William Jobling must be seen.  Mineworkers had to sign an annual contract known as a ‘bond’, which meant that they had to stay at a particular colliery for a year and a day.  As most pitmen were illiterate they would make their ‘X’ on the bond and the viewer or manager of the colliery would add the Pitman’s name.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, miners had voiced their dissatisfaction with the conditions of their bond and in 1810 they eventually went on strike.  No permanent union organisation existed, however, until the establishment of the Northern Union of Pitmen of Tyne and Wear, led by Thomas Hepburn.

Hepburn was a Wesleyan Methodist, as were many pitmen.  He was also a lay preacher and could read and write courtesy of the classes organised by the Methodist chapels.  In April 1831, he led the pitmen in another strike.  He wanted boys to work only a twelve-hour day as they had been working sixteen hours.  He also sought the abolition of the ‘Tommy Shops.’  This was a system whereby pitmen were paid in ‘Tommy checks,' vouchers that could only be used in company stores at prices greatly unfavourable to the pitmen.  Battles ensued between pitmen and the militia.  Hepburn, at his meetings pleaded with his men to keep a peaceful strike.  Meetings were held at Black Fell, Boldon Colliery and Friars Goose, Gateshead and on one occasion, twenty thousand pitmen met on Newcastle's Town Moor.  The strike lasted until September 1831.  Some concessions were gained: Hepburn was made a full-time official but there was still bitter opposition to the unions.

In April 1832 there was another strike among pitmen of Northumberland and Durham, when the pitmen refused to sign their annual bonds.  Once again there was violence.  Cuthbert Skipsey, a miners’ leader in North Shields, was shot and killed by a constable.  The judge recommended leniency and he was given a six-month sentence with hard labour.

On June 11th 1832 at 5.00 p.m. Jarrow pitmen, Ralph Armstrong and William Jobling were drinking in Turners pub in South Shields.  On the road near the toll-bar gate, near Jarrow slake Jobling begged from Nicholas Fairles, a seventy-one year old well-known local magistrate.  Fairles refused.  Armstrong, who had followed Jobling, attacked Fairles with a stick and a stone.  Both men ran away leaving Fairles seriously injured on the road.  Two hours later Jobling was arrested on South Shields beach where horse racing was taking place. Armstrong, an ex-seaman, apparently returned to sea.

After his arrest Jobling was taken to Fairles home and was identified as having been present but that he had not taken part in the assault.  Jobling was returned to Durham Jail and when Fairles died of his injuries on June 21st, was charged with murder.  Jobling was tried at Durham Assizes on Wednesday, August 1st.  The jury were a mere fifteen minutes in reaching their guilty verdict.

Judge Parke in his summing up attacked the unions, “Combinations which are alike injurious to the public interest and to the interests of those persons concerned in them.  I trust that death will deter them following your example”.  The sentence was that Jobling be publically executed and his body be hung from a gibbet erected in Jarrow Slake, near the scene of the attack.  The judge continued, “I trust that the sight of that will have some affect upon those, who are to a certain extent, your companions in guilt and your companions in these ‘illegal proceedings’, which have disgraced the county. May they take warning by your fate”.  Jobling was the last man gibbeted in the North.

Jobling was hung on August 3rd. Hepburn asked his men not to attend the hanging and held a meeting at Boldon Colliery.  After Jobling was taken from the scaffold his clothes were removed and his body covered in pitch.  He was then riveted into an iron cage, made of flat iron bars two and a half inches wide.  His feet were placed in stirrups from which bars of iron went each side of his head and ended in a ring, which suspended his cage.  Jobling’s hands hung by his sides, and his head was covered with a white cloth obscuring his face.

In a four-wheeled wagon, drawn by two horses, on Monday, August 6th, his body was taken to Jarrow Slake escorted by a troop of Hussars and two companies of Infantry.  The gibbet was fixed upon a stone weighing one and half tons that was sunk into the slake, and the heavy wooden uprights were reinforced with steel bars to prevent it being sawn through.  At high tide the water covered four to five feet of the gibbet leaving a further sixteen to seventeen feet visible.

Isabella, Jobling’s wife, had a cottage near the slake and would have been able to see her husband clearly for the three weeks he was displayed.  On August 31st when the guard was removed Jobling’s friends stole the body.  His whereabouts have never been discovered.

By September 1832, the strike had petered out and the union was almost non-existent and did revive but not for some years and the annual bonds were not abolished until 1872.

When the union died, Hepburn tried to sell tea from door-to-door, but anyone buying from him risked losing his job.  Eventually, starving, Hepburn went to Felling Colliery and asked for work.  He was offered employment provided he had no further dealings with the unions.

He conformed and devoted the remainder of his life to educating pitmen.  In April 1891 Isabella Jobling went into South Shields Work House, and died there, too senile to recall her husband.  Much of Jarrow’s slake has been reclaimed, Jarrow’s colliery closed in 1852 and now there is no indication of where it stood.

What effect did Jobling have?  His death and the gibbeting have drifted in folk memory.  What power did his cage swinging on Jarrow slake invoke?  It is a powerful image.  It displayed the ruthlessness and strength of authority.  Were the pitmen of Tyne and Wear bowed by its power?  I suggest they were.  Jobling was no murderer, at best an accessory and callous in leaving Fairles to suffer.  Did he and his family, the pitmen of Tyne and Wear, and other friends deserve to be treated in this way? Perhaps the Revolution in France was too near and it was felt that the working class should be treated harshly at any sign of insurrection.

Here was a poor illiterate man who was dehumanised.  We can now afford him respect and recognise that Judge Parke and company made him a symbol, a battering ram to butt the pitmen of 1832 back to work and it had the desired effect. William Jobling, Jarrow pitman, may you now, at long last, rest in peace.