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The Revolt of the Housewives

By
Francesca Newton

In 1795, English women facing starvation organised to seize food supplies and distribute them for an honest price — making the case for a system that placed community need above individual profit.

Illustration from 1842 of bread being thrown by a crowd in an attack on a Union workhouse

Before the nineteenth century, the food riot was the predominant form of popular struggle. (Photo by HultonArchive / Illustrated London News / Getty Images)

In a July day in 1795, a crowd of women approached a bread cart on a road outside Delph, near Manchester. The cart was stopped and the loaves in it taken. Its driver, Richard Broome, probably thought he was being robbed, but then the bread was sold to onlookers for two pence a pound and […]

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