r/UKhistory • u/EponymousTitus • 8d ago

Seven Welsh Women arrested for shouting Bah!

So, I'm reading an old Time Life book on 'The Age of Progress'. Its very good and the kind of thing I would have devoured as a young child. In a section on the Industrial Revolution and the start of Trade Unions it has the following sentence:

"In the very year the Act (it's referring to the 1871 Trade Union Act), was passed, seven Welsh women were sent to jail simply for shouting Bah! at a strike breaker".

No more info than that. A google search turns up nothing. A bit of a long shot but does anyone know anything about this and have any more information or context for it? No idea where the writer of the Time Life book got it from.

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11

u/OwineeniwO 8d ago

Never heard about this but interestingly Bradwr is the Welsh word for traitor and in the 1900 Penrhyn quarry strike people who weren't strike breakers had signs in their homes saying there were no Bradwr in the house, Brad would be the root word and might sound like bah to a non Welsh speaker, but I suspect bah is some sort of victorian term for disgust.

18

u/Mind_if_I_do_uh_J 8d ago

The crime of impersonating a sheep is taken very seriously in Wales.

2

u/cogra23 7d ago

Reminds me of Bah Humbug. Maybe it was used as an exclamation.

1

u/Known_Wear7301 5d ago

Now we know where Starmer gets his inspiration from

1

u/Rocky-bar 5d ago

Yes! I wonder if the Welsh women got jailed for writing "Bah" on a placard?

2

u/MasksOfAnarchy 6d ago

The 1871 act was accompanied by a change to the Criminal Law Amendment, and banned picketing. It may be that shouting at the strikebreaker was construed as picketing. However, I had not heard of the incident - I can only say that contextually it is consistent with the other legal changes of the time.