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‘not wages but the cost of bread was the most sensitive indicator of popular discontent’*

In Uncategorized on May 31, 2025 by kmflett

*the quotation is from E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class (1963). He notes that until the 1840s protests and riots over bread prices were common.

The graphic above- which may or may not be accurate(!)- reflects I suspect even now those struggles over the price of bread.

The price of bread was an issue at Peterloo in August 1819 (as well as the vote of course) and the Liberal led Anti-Corn Law League made it a national campaign in the 1840s. But campaigns around bread prices were local and regional and the name given to the thing being argued about reflects that. A name determined not by a giant bread company with a London HQ but locally on the ground around the country

Update

Thanks to Emma Cole for alerting me to this well researched article in Pellicle by Katie Mather on how the name for bread rolls, baps etc etc is socially and culturally determined

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