In the early months of 1811 the first threatening letters from General
Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers, were sent to employers in Nottingham.
Workers, upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed workmen,
began to break into factories at night to destroy the new machines
that the employers were using. In a three-week period over two hundred
stocking frames were destroyed. In March, 1811, several attacks were
taking place every night and the Nottingham
authorities had to enroll four hundred special constables to protect
the factories. To help catch the culprits, the Prince
Regent offered £50 to anyone "giving information on
any person or persons wickedly breaking the frames".
Luddism
gradually spread to Yorkshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire.
In Yorkshire, croppers, a small and highly skilled group of cloth
finishers, turned their anger on the new shearing frame that they
feared would put them out of work. In February and March, 1812, factories
were attacked by Luddites in Huddersfield, Halifax,
Wakefield and Leeds.
In February 1812 the government of Spencer
Perceval proposed that machine-breaking should become a capital
offence. Despite a passionate speech by Lord
Byron in the House of Lords, Parliament
passed the Frame Breaking Act that enabled people convicted of machine-breaking
to be sentenced to death. As a further precaution, the government
ordered 12,000 troops into the areas where the Luddites were active.
On of the most serious Luddite attacks took place at Rawfolds Mill
near Brighouse in Yorkshire. William Cartwright, the owner of Rawfolds
Mill, had been using cloth-finishing machinery since 1811. Local croppers
began losing their jobs and after a meeting at Saint Crispin public
house, they decided to try and destroy the cloth-finishing machinery
at Rawfolds Mill. Cartwright was suspecting trouble and arranged for
the mill to be protected by armed guards.
Led by George Mellor, a young cropper from Huddersfield, the attack
on Rawfolds Mill took place on 11th April, 1812. The Luddites failed
in gain entry and by the time they left, two of the croppers had been
mortally wounded. Seven days later the Luddites killed William Horsfall,
another large mill-owner in the area. The authorities rounded up over
a hundred suspects. Of these, sixty-four were indicted. Three men
were executed for the murder of Horsfall and another fourteen were
hung for the attack on Rawfolds Mill.
Throughout 1812 there were attacks on Lancashire cotton mills. Local
handloom weavers objected to the introduction of power looms. On 20th
March, 1812 the warehouse of William Radcliffe, one of the first manufacturers
to use the power-loom, was attacked in Stockport.
Wheat prices soared in 1812. Unable to feed their families, workers
became desperate. There were food riots in Manchester, Oldham, Ashton,
Rochdale, Stockport and Macclesfield. On 20th April several thousand
men attacked Burton's Mill at Middleton near Manchester.
Emanuel Burton, who knew that his policy of buying power-looms had
upset local handloom weavers, had recruited armed guards and three
members of the crowd were killed by musket-fire. The following day
the men returned and after failing to break-in to the mill, they burnt
down Emanuel Burton's house. The military arrived and another seven
men were killed.
Three days later, Wray & Duncroff's Mill at Westhoughton, near
Manchester, was set on fire. William
Hulton, the High Sheriff of Lancashire, arrested twelve men suspected
of taking part in the attack. Four of the accused, Abraham Charlston,
Job Fletcher, Thomas Kerfoot, and James Smith, were executed. The
Charlston's family claimed Abraham was only twelve years old but he
was not reprieved. It was reported that Abraham cried for his mother
on the scaffold. A local part-time journalist, John
Edward Taylor, investigated the case and claimed that the attack
had been the result of action taken by spies employed by Colonel Fletcher,
one of Manchester's magistrates.
In June
1812 John Knight organised a meeting for
weavers at a public house in Manchester.
As the meeting was coming to an end Joseph Nadin,
Deputy Constable of Manchester, arrived and arrested Knight and thirty-seven
other weavers. Knight was charged with "administering oaths to
weavers pledging them to destroy steam looms" and they were accused
of attending a seditious meeting. At their subsequent trial all thirty-eight
were acquitted.
In the summer of 1812 eight men in Lancashire were sentenced to death
and thirteen transported to Australia for attacks on cotton mills.
Another fifteen were executed at York. This
was followed by further sporadic outbreaks of violence but by 1817
the Luddite movement had ceased to be active in Britain.
Poster published
in 1811
(1)
The attack on Burton's Mill in Middleton was reported in the Leeds
Mercury in April, 1812.
A body of men, consisting of from one to two hundred, some of them
armed with muskets with fixed bayonets, and others with colliers'
picks, who marched into the village in procession, and joined the
rioters. At the head of the armed banditti a man of straw was carried,
representing the renowned General Ludd whose standard bearer waved
a sort of red flag.
(2)
Archibald Prentice, wrote about the Luddite
disturbances in April 1812, in his book Historical Sketches and
Personal Recollections of Manchester.
On Saturday, the 18th April, a numerous body of women, chiefly women,
assembled at the potato market, Shude Hill, where the sellers were
asking 14s. and 15s. per load (252 lbs.) for potatoes. Some of the
women began forcibly to take possession of the articles; but the civil
and military power interposing, to fix a sort of maximum, for eight
shillings per load, at which they were sold in small portions. On
Monday a cart carrying fourteen loads of meal was stopped, and the
meal carried away. On 27th April a riotous assembly took place at
Middleton. The weaving factory of Mr. Burton and Sons had been previously
threatened in consequence of their mode of weaving being done by the
operation of steam. The factory was protected by soldiers, so strongly
as to be impregnable to their assault; they then flew to the house
of Mr. Emanuel Burton, where they wreaked their vengeance by setting
it on fire. On Friday, the 24th April, a large body of weavers and
mechanics began to assemble about midday, with the avowed intention
of destroying the power-looms, together with the whole of the premises,
at Westhoughton. The military rode at full speed to Westhoughton;
and on their arrival were surprised to find that the premises were
entirely destroyed, while not an individual could be seen to whom
attached any suspicion of having acted a part in this truly dreadful
outrage.
(3)
Lord Byron, speech in the House of Lords
(27th February, 1812)
During the short time I recently passed in Nottingham, not
twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on that
day I left the the county I was informed that forty Frames had been
broken the preceding evening, as usual, without resistance and without
detection.
Such was the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe
it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be admitted
to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have
arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress: the perseverance
of these miserable men in their proceedings, tends to prove that nothing
but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious,
body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to
themselves, their families, and the community.
They were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them:
their own means of subsistence were cut off, all other employment
preoccupied; and their excesses, however to be deplored and condemned,
can hardly be subject to surprise.
As the sword is the worst argument than can be used, so should it
be the last. In this instance it has been the first; but providentially
as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will, indeed, pluck
it from the sheath; yet had proper meetings been held in the earlier
stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men and their masters
(for they also had their grievances) been fairly weighed and justly
examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore
these workmen to their avocations, and tranquillity to the country.
(4)
The Manchester Gazette (2nd May, 1812)
On Monday afternoon a large body, not less than 2,000, commenced an
attack, on the discharge of a pistol, which appeared to have been
the signal; vollies of stones were thrown, and the windows smashed
to atoms; the internal part of the building being guarded, a musket
was discharged in the hope of intimidating and dispersing the assailants.
In a very short time the effects were too shockingly seen in the death
of three, and it is said, about ten wounded.
(5)
John Edward Taylor wrote an article in
1819 about the Luddite Riots in Manchester during 1812.
The Middleton
riots originated in severe distress, exasperated by a short-sighted
prejudice against the introduction of newly-invented machinery. The
attack of the mob upon the factory, and the destruction of the house
of one of its owners, were crimes of the greatest enormity. But at
Westhoughton, where a steam-loom factory was set on fire and burnt
down, the case was widely different. This outrage was debated at a
meeting which took place on Dean Moor, near Bolton, the 9th of April,
1812, sixteen days before the scheme was put in practice. At this
meeting there were present, during the greater part of its duration,
and up to the time of its close, not more than about forty persons,
of whom no less than ten or eleven were spies, reputed to be employed
by Colonel Fletcher. The occurrence of circumstances like these, sixteen
days before the burning of the factory took place, renders it not
a matter of presumption, but of absolute certainty, that that alarming
outrage might have been prevented, if to prevent it had been the inclination
of either the spies or their employers.
(6)
Archibald Prentice, Historical Sketches
and Personal Recollections of Manchester (1851)
At
Accrington, on the evening of Tuesday, April the 18th, a mob of probably
two thousand persons assembled round the steam-loom factory of Messrs.
Sykes, and proceeded to break the windows. The manager, who went out
to address" the misguided multitude, was assaulted and treated
very roughly, and, fears being entertained that still greater violence
would be resorted to, the military were sent for. On the following
evening, w^en the market coach from Manchester arrived at Blackburn,
it was assailed by a crowd of people, who showered stones upon it,
and some of the manufacturers, who were in and upon it, received severe
bruises.
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