Aspects of the Decline of English Rough Music and Effigy-burning and the Transformation of the Fifth of November in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

ABSTRACT One of the most important practices associated with rough music, the effigy-burning of unpopular neighbours, was still practiced widely in mid-nineteenth century England, including on the Fifth of November, or Guy Fawkes Night. But once the Fifth became transformed by new patronage, the practice of effigy-burning became the object of criticism and policing and generally declined after 1900. It had undergone a steady stream of criticism in the press and in the magistrates’ courts and was by the twentieth century regarded as a cultural anachronism. Meanwhile the Fifth of November, which had always been a day of entertainment, was increasingly embraced by commercialism after 1918.