O S T E S S E Y
He
was educated at Norwich School under Dr Forster where he was head boy
in
1792 and made the customary Latin oration to the Mayor on Guild
day.
From an early age he was engaged in the Norwich Mercury, one of two
local
papers acquired by his father. He was interested in the mechanics
of printing and with Donkin of Bermondsey patented a revolving cylinder
printing machine one of which was acquired by Cambridge University
Press
and one exported to Russia .
As leaseholder of
Taverham
Paper mills in the late 18th century he developed it into one of
the most modern and efficient in the country, producing newsprint for
The
Times, among other newspapers and the finest of writing paper. In
August 1812 he went into partnership with Simon Wilkin in the operation
of the Taverham mill.
In 1816 as a result of the slump in the economy both Bacon and Wilkin were declared bankrupt. Bacon however continued editing "The Mercury" for his father- in-law Mr Burks . When Burks died in 1826 Bacon once more became the proprietor of "The Mercury". Rex Stedman who studied Norfolk newspapers in some depth , considered that Bacon made the Mercury one of the leading provincial organs of liberal opinion and was one of the most cultivated editors of his time.
Bacon
espoused the Whig cause and following the Peterloo massacre in
Manchester
he reported Edward Taylor, Sheriff of Norwich, in "The Mercury" (14th
Sept.1826)
as saying,
"We
have seen the laws of our country violated not by what is usually and
contemptously
called the mob, but by the magistrates themselves, aiding and abetting
and instigating a wanton and unprovoked breach of peace. Men,
women
and children, unarmed and unprotected have been savagely
butchered.....
"
R.M. Bacon was also a musical enthuasiast and in 1824 he encouraged the Governors of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital to stage a Grand Musical Festival as a money-raiser. The Festival was succesfully staged in Sept. 1824. The King consented to be patron and the Royal Dukes - York. Sussex and Gloucester- vice-patrons. The Duke of Sussex actually came to Norwich and attended all six concerts. His Royal Highness was an idol of the Norwich whigs.... it is said that he was sent supperless to bed and locked in his nursery, by his father, King George III, for wearing the wrong colours at an election. Bacon is recognised as the the founder of the Norwich Musical Festival.
R.M.Bacon lived at
Wensum
Cottage (now known as St. Mary's Cottage) in Costessey
Street.
He died in 1843 and is
interred in the chancel of the parish church of St Edmund, King
and
Martyr.
He
was a staunch supporter of the Reform Bill, passed in 1832, and
opponent
of bribery and corruption in elections in Norwich. When the Tories won
the first election under the reformed franchise R.M. Bacon wrote an
open
letter to the victors in which he did not hesitate to assert, ' the
corrupt
means by which your majority was obtained are too notorious to be any
matter
of doubt. '
A Royal Commission in
1833 revealed corrupt electoral practices on a massive scale
and
Bacon in the Mercury reported the lurid details of the evidence and
concluded
that more had been proved than he, as editor, had ever advanced --- '
not
one solitary atom of respect was left to the Corporation, more than
belonged
to the Whifflers' (attendants on the Mayor) 'or to Snap' ( the canvass
dragon ).
In 1835 R.M.Bacon wrote to Lord John Russell (the Home Secretary) appealing that the Costessey poaching brothers James and John Paul, both married with children, should not be transported (for fourteen years) to the Australian colonies but allowed to serve their sentence in English gaols. Bacon's and other appeals were in vain . John Paul spent the rest of his life in Tasmania, obtaining a Conditional Pardon in 1844. James Paul, a ticket- of-leave holder died in Berrima N.S.W. in 1844, aged 38.
Bacon
was a friend and ally of Lord Suffield (1781-1835) of Gunton Park,
Norfolk
one of the leading game-preserves in one England's premier shooting
counties
. As a young man Suffield was very affected by seeing five poachers
hanged
. They had been sentenced for taking part in "an affray' at
Gunton
Park and both he and his father had pleaded that the poachers'
lives
be spared. Although then a Tory he had a complete conversion
following
the 'Peterloo Massacre' and became a champion of the poor,
by reform of the Game laws, the banning of spring guns and
man-traps
and prison reform .
In
1838 Bacon published Memoir of Lord Suffield which
included
details of a scheme which had been proposed by Suffield in 1831
to
restore land to the labourers. This scheme of 'home
colonisation'
was for the Government to purchase land then waste and compel parishes,
with the help of public loan, to set up labourers on it. This
Suffield
said was the only way to rescue labourers from their present plight by
placing them in a position that they were not absolutely dependent on
the
farmers. The Government under Lord Melbourne did not adopt the
proposed
measures ; Suffield's melancholy conclusion was :
'The
fact is, with the exception of a few individuals , the subject is
deemed
by the world a bore..........
" So perished the last hope of reform and reparation for the poor. The labourers revolt was ended ; and four hundred and fifty men spent their freedom in vain,....
"Amid the great distress that followed Waterloo and peace, it was a commonplace of statesmen like Castlereagh and Canning that England was the only happy country in the world, and that so long as the monopoly of their little class was left untouched , her happiness would survive. That class has left bright and ample records of its life in literature, in art, in political traditions, in the display of great orations and debates, in memories of brilliant conversationsand sparkling wit; it has left dim and meagre records of the disinherited peasants that are the shadow of its wealth; of the exiled labourers that are the shadows of its pleasures; of the villages sinking in poverty and crime and shame that are the shadow of its power and its pride. "
The Village Labourer 1760-1832. L.L.Hammond and Barbara Hammond
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Two. Costessey from 1555 to
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