A (Brief) Beginner’s Guide To Maltese History Part 16: The Carnival Riots

Following the massive plague we talked about last week, today’s edition of Maltese history features the British yet again.

As y’all know by know if you’ve been following this series religiously, Malta was part of the British Empire. This all happened when we asked them to help us get rid of the tiny man (who wasn’t really all short) and his French buddies.

Today, we’ll be taking a look at the Carnival riots, duels, arguments and drama which went down in our country during the British rule.

Carnival has always been a big deal on this island, ever since it started out during the knights’ period. The British consented to our celebrations in order to keep us happy, and some of them even partook in these celebrations. Briefly.

In 1842, during the carnival celebrations, a bunch of British officers were on duty doing their thing. We presume that they were a bit bored of watching the celebrations, so they started flirting with a young girl.

This chick started throwing confetti in their faces and stuff. One of these guys, Septimus Adams (a dick’s name if we’ve ever heard one), decided to invade the girl’s personal space by grabbing her upper region private parts (oh no you didn’t).

This obviously infuriated her father, John Levick. The angry dad approached Adams along with his friend and asked him to apologise to the girl. Adams, who we’ve already established was a total prick, refused.

So the dad challenged the British officer to a duel, because that’s how things were solved back in the day. Not with swords or anything; it was a good old fashioned pistol duel. So Levick and Adams met that afternoon with their pistols in tow to solve what would now be seen as a petty argument at best.

We’re not exactly sure how this kerfuffle went down, but even though Adams was an officer and presumably had good command of his gun, he was totally shot dead by Adams. Tragic.

The police arrested Levick and his buddy, and they were put on trial for the murder of Adams. The trial took place in front of the Maltese court and it totally divided the island.

Most of the British felt like they were completely betrayed, whilst the Maltese felt like the Brits had crossed the line. This trial was also charged with political events since it was seen as a Maltese vs British thing.

Fortunately for Levick, he escaped the death penalty.

In 1846, there was another carnival “tragedy”, but this time it was a tad bit more surreal than usual.

The uptight carnival-hating Governor we had at the time, Sir Patrick Stuart, decided that people should not be allowed to put on masks for the feast. Yeah, whatever Patrick.

The Maltese would not have any of Patrick’s manure, so they decided to dress up their farm animals and parade them in Valletta… as British Protestant priests. So imagine the streets of Valletta overrun by swarms of dogs, mules, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats dressed as Protestant clergymen.

Obviously, this did not go down well with the Brits, but they decided to sit this one out and not assault anyone.

Carnival celebrations during the British rule were always heavily sprinkled with political undertones aimed towards making fun of the dark overlords. Political satire was one of the main themes during this time of year as people would base their floats and costumes on whoever was the least liked British guy at the time.

Maltese people were taking so much piss that the British decided to ban political satire during carnival. A law was passed in 1936 because they really couldn’t take a joke.

Political satire during carnival was banned because of these wet blankets, something which people still feared survived right up to 2012. Then, on Carnival’s 485th birthday, Culture Minister Mario de Marco had announced his interest to see the reintroduction of political satire.

Tag a history buff and stay tuned for next week’s history episode

READ NEXT: Things We Love And Hate About Carnival In Malta