Honley Feast (1853)
The 1853 Honley Feast took place between Sunday 25 September and Wednesday 28 September.
According to the Huddersfield and Holmfirth Examiner, the Sunday was filled with "beef and cabbage in abundance". Monday and Tuesday featured "shooting galleries, smallware stalls, bazaars, swinging boats, and penny shows", whilst Wednesday "came in boisterously, and went out unfavourably" as wind and rain "put an end of to all out-door manifestations." The Examiner, which tended not to approve of the feasts, noted that pickpocketing was rife but that public drunkenness was on the decline.[1]
The Leeds Times (01/Oct/1853) reported that "upwards of sixty head of cattle were slaughtered" for the feast and that "the tables of the inhabitants groaned beneath the weight of roast beef and picked cabbage."
John Bollan and his son William were later charged with picking pockets at the feast and both were "committed to the Wakefield House of Correction for three months."[2] Both Thomas Walton of Jackson Bridge and James Haigh were charged with using defective weights so that they were overcharging customers at the feast.[3] George "Pitch" Turner, described as a "dangerous fellow", was fined was assaulting two people at the feast.[4]