Found in the Haining collection - a mid 19th century pamphlet An Address to the people of Suffolk on incendiary fires. No publisher, author, date or place of publication is given. WorldCat notes that there is a copy in the Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature, (no. 34328) and says the author was probably Lord Thurlow - a Suffolk peer (Edward Hovell-Thurlow) and estimates a publication date of 1845. Evidently Suffolk was plagued by arson at this time. An impassioned plea, unashamedly patrician in tone, to stop this outbreak. It appears to be addressed mainly to farm workers and may have been spoken to a gathering and/or published in local newspapers. The account of the violent and seditious behaviour of people at the fires is fascinating and alarming...
AN ADDRESS
TO THE PEOPLE OF SUFFOLK
ON
INCENDIARY FIRES.
---------------
For several months there has been a fire in this neighbourhood nearly every night. The quantity of property already destroyed is enormous; and if this destruction goes on, the county will be ruined. That these fires are not accidental, every body knows; and if any thing were wanted to prove it, the behaviour of the people at the fires puts it beyond a doubt.
It has often been mentioned as a characteristic of the English people, that when a fire happens, there is more difficulty in preventing them from crowding in too great numbers to help to put it out, than in getting a sufficient number. That is no longer true of the people of Suffolk. They have shown a spirit unknown even in times of open insurrection: the people then go boldly and do their work, such as it is; I say boldly, because every man runs his chance of being shot on the spot, or caught and sent to Botany Bay to work in chains (which does always happen to no small number of those who engage in such insurrections). But here some cowardly rascal sets fire to a stack or farm-house, and sneaks off with small chance of being found out, while others, not less cowardly, assemble and stand by while their neighbor's property is burning, sending up a fresh shout as every stack sends up a fresh flame and every roof falls in, putting forth no hand to save it, and, with unheard of malignity, obstructing those who do, and even proposing to throw them on to the fire.
