The Risings of the Luddites

Chartists and Plug-Drawers

Frank Peel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367146764
• eBook ISBN: 9780429627132
• Edition: 4
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Published in 1968. Interest in the Luddite machine-breaking and food riots of 1812 which took place in the North and Midlands continues unabated. Peel was a pioneer local historian, collecting oral accounts from participants and old inhabitants, as well as studying the printed evidence carefully. In the introduction to the new edition, E. P. Thompson clams that Peel's general account of Luddism in that part of Yorkshire in which he was interested (around Huddersfield) has proved to be more accurate than the analysis of Luddism as a purely industrial phenomenon given by twentieth-century historians, including the Hammonds. This book will be useful to historians of working-class movements.

THE RISINGS OF THE LUDDITES

CHARTISTS AND PLUG-DRAWERS

Chapter I John Wood’s Workshop.

The head-quarters of the Yorkshire Luddites.

Yond Cassias has a lean and hungry look,

He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Shakespeare.

The year 1811 came to an end like too many of its predecessors, amid awful scenes of carnage and confusion. The demon of war which had ravaged for half a generation some of the fairest countries in the world, still stalked on unchecked, claiming its hecatomb of human victims, and blasting and destroying every fair thing in his path. A lurid comet, which had blazed nightly in the heavens in shape like a flaming sword was truly a fitting symbol of the ruthless weapon which throughout the course of that gloomy twelve months had cut down its ghastly harvest. Not that the record of that year was much blacker than that of many which preceded it, but the misery and wretchedness which inevitably follow in the footsteps of a long war had begun to culminate, and the hard pinch of poverty was now felt in many a dwelling where it had hitherto been a stranger. In addition to the bloody struggles abroad in which we had so long been engaged, riots and uprisings were threatened in several important commercial centres in the north, and the soldiers who were wanted to tight our battles abroad had to be retained at home to keep down sedition and rebellion in our midst.

About three years before the date we have named, sin energetic manufacturer, named William Cartwright, had commenced to finish cloth by machinery at a mill driven by water power at Rawfolds, near Cleckheaton, and had excited by that course great resentment amongst the workmen engaged in that branch of business, who had testified their animosity by refusing to work at the new machines, and by covertly injuring them when they had the opportunity. Cart-wright was, however, a man of iron resolution, and threats and opposition seemed only to strengthen his determi l.itbn. TTis was the only place in this locality at which the hated machines had been introduced, the old method of finishing by hand, or cropping as it was called, being carried on at all the other shops in the locality. These cropping shops were chiefly places of small pretensions, at which three or four men were employed, but there was a much larger one at the top of Aquilla or Quilley Lane, at Hightown, Liversedge, opposite where the Board School now stands, carried on by Mr. John Jackson, a brother of Air. Abraham Jackson, the currier, where the old system was still adhered to. Air. Jackson’s foreman was an old, trnstv servant, of the name of William “Fearnsides, a thoroughly reliable man, whose whole energies were devoted to business. Before the advent of Mr. Oartwright’s new frames, work was plentiful at Mr. Jackson’s shop, and the men received good wages, but, as the machinery began to be used, the little masters who adhered to hand cropping found it more and more difficult to carry on business at a profit, the result being that the men gradually lost their employment, and many of the workshops were, after a struggle, closed altogether. The men watched the gradual decay of their industry in sullen despair at first, but the news of the turbulent demonstrations at Nottingham, where the lace makers had risen against a frame o? another character which threatened to destroy their trade, had stirred them strongly, and the more violent spirits among the local cloth finishers began to urge that similar measures should be taken against the cropping frames introduced by the Yorkshire manufacturers. The wild idea seems to have first broached at Huddersfield, but those who were out of work spread the seeds of disatlection all round the district, and the men at Jackson’s shop were soon following the lead of their fellow workmen at Longroyd Bridge. The finishing shop of Mr. John Wood, situate at Longroyd Bridge, near Huddersfield, may be regarded as the head-quarters of the ringleaders of the Luddite disturbances in this part of the West Riding. The building still stands cm the water side, not far from the highway, and is now used as a place for depositing lumber. Here worked several of the daring and turbulent spirits who directed and participated in most of the midnight expeditions undertaken for the purpose of destroying the hated machines, and many a wild scheme has been planned beneath its old weather-beaten roof. Mr. Wood, the master of the cropping shop, declared afterwards, when it was proved that some of these nefarious plots had originated at his place, that he was “unaware of any conspiring amongst his men,” but it is ditlicult to believe that he did not know that this was the general rendezvous of the disaffected, as some men from other shops and delegates from the surrounding towns were continually in consultation with his workmen, especially with his stepson, George Mellor. It is impossible, in fact, to believe that Wood did not know or suspect something, for the simple reason that there seems to have been no particular care taken to conceal the aims and objects of the reckless band. But the most marvellous thing about the Luddite movement is the manner in which the secrets of the body were kept, especially when we take into consideration the fact that schemes for the destruction of the machinery and also for the destruction of some of the masters who had rendered themselves obnoxious by their outspoken condemnation of the lawless conduct of the men, were discussed in the presence of those who were not even members of the secret society whose doings spread such fear throughout the whole district. It would almost seem sometimes as if the plotters neglected to take the commonest precautions, but they doubtless were well aware that many who did not actually join them, sympathised with the movement to some extent, hoping, unlikely though it seemed, that it would tend in some way towards the amelioration of their own hard lot; and with regard to their members, the leaders were well aware that fear of the con sequences which would follow the breaking of the terrible oath they all took was sufficient to deter them from breathing a syllable of their secrets.

It is a Saturday afternoon, about the middle of March, 1812. Mr. Wood’s men have stopped work for the day, and are now gathered round a young man who is reading aloud from a newspaper. The whole of the group are listening intently, for it is an account of the daring proceedings of the Nottingham frame breakers. The sheet which the youth is reading is the “Leeds Mercury” which at that day was smaller than the newspapers sold at the present time at a halfpenny each. It was published at 6£d. per copy, but the sale being limited and the carriage comparatively heavy, it was generally sold out of Leeds at 7d. A copy was subscribed for at most of the workshops and was read aloud for the benefit of all. The day c n which it was issued was looked upon by the workpeople as the great day of the week—the day on which they stretched beyond their petty surroundings and learned something of the events that were transpiring in the great world without, and a considerable portion of each succeeding Saturday, and probably Sunday also, was often spent in discussing the exciting intelligence with which the columns of the newspapers were crowded at this eventful period.

The young man, whose pale cheek flushes as he reads of the marchings and counter marchings of the Yeomanry, and the doings of the triumphant Luddites, is evidently not one of Wood’s workmen. His dress is different, and his appearance is altogether brighter and more intelligent. In other respects too lie contrasts greatly with his audience. There, close iu front of liiin, is a young man with square jaws, and resolute, determined appearance, who is strongly moved by the news; his eyes shoot forth a lurid fire, and the veins stand out on his temples like whip-cord, iihder the strong excitement which seems to agitate every fibre of his body, as he listens to the thrilling account of daring deeds and hair-breadth escapes. This is George Mellor, a man of iron will and reckless daring, who dominated strongly over his fellDw workmen and forced them into the commision of deeds which they would have shrunk from if left to themselves. Near him is a fellow workman, Thomas Smith, a man of much feebler type of character, the chief expression of whose face is one of sullen obstinacy. This person works in the same room as Mellor, and is his right hand man and supporter. On the other side is a man of a still more stolid aspect, who betrays no special excitement during the reading, but stands with eyes fixed upon the reader in a half dreamy fashion. This is William Thorpe, who works at Mr. Fishers cropping shop, just across the way. These and one or two others completed the inner circle, while further back were others sitting or lounging, who were also listening to the reader with intense interest, as with clear voice and correct enunciation he made known the startling news from Nottingham, Lancashire, and other disturbed parts of the country. The youth who formed the centre of this interesting group was, we have said, in many respects very different to the rest. He was evidently better educated and more refined, although he was plainly a worker at some handicraft. He was the son of the Rev. John Booth, a clergyman of the Church of England, residing at Lowmoor. Mr. Booth was educated at Huddersfield, and when a young man was employed as a cloth cropper. Being a studious, well educated youth, he was taken in hand by the venerable vicar of Huddersfield, who assisted him in his ordination. He was a first-class scholar. The living at Lowmoor being very scanty he went into partnership with another person at Toad Holes, near Oakenshaw, as a cropper. Mr. Booth and his partner kept a bed on the premises, and many a night did the former sit up compiling a Greek lexicon. He put his son apprentice to one Wright, who lived at Huddersfield, to learn of him the art and mystery of saddle and harness making, and also of. ironmongery. Young Booth’s appearance, while bespeaking a fair share of intelligence, was on the whole rather elfeminate; his thin twitching lips and the general expression of his face showing plainly that he lacked firmness and resolution. Unfortunately he had fallen into evil company. His feeble will melted like wax before the fiery determination of Mellor, and he was swept along in defiance of his own better judgment. The opinions of the celebrated theorist, Robert Owen, were about this time making some noise in the country, and Booth had read the writings of that amiable enthusiast, till he had thoroughly imbibed the notion that the whole framework of society was out of joint, and that the nations and governments of the earth required a thorough remodelling. He had endeavoured to make a convert of Mellor, with indifferent success. The processes of Owen were too slow for that fiery enthusiast and he refused to trouble himself to grasp his far-reaching theories. His method in arguing with Booth was to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and it is not difficult to understand how an amiable young man possessed with ideas of this kind should fall an easy prey to a resolute and unscrupulous individual like Mellor.

But the reading is now finished, and a stormy discussion follows, if a discussion it can be called when all are nearly of one opinion. Perhaps, if we follow it, we shall disoover still more of the chief characteristics of the speakers, their opinions, and the motives that urge them on.

Chapter II The Oath.

Persuasion hung upon thy lip;

And sly insinuation’s softer arts

In ambush lay about thy flowing tongue.

—Blair.

Nay, but weigh well what you presume to swear;

Oaths are of dreadful weight! and if they are false,

Draw down damnation.

—Savage.

Mellor is the speaker, and, like the rest, uses the broad Yorkshire dialect, which, however, we shall take the liberty of refining a little, in order that it may be read with more ease. During the reading of the exciting narrative just brought to a conclusion, he has been interjecting tierce comments, and now the account is ended, he gives vent to his pent-up feelings.

“Hurrah! that’s right,” he cried in a hoarse voice, “the Nottingham lambs are shewing them specials and clodhopping soldiers a bit of real good sport. O, but I wish I was there,” he added with a sudden accession of energy, “I wish I was there. It would be glorious to dash them cursed frames into a thousand pieces!”

“Aye,” growled Thorpe, surlily, “but wishing’s all nowt. It strikes me we’ve had rather too much of that.”

“Thou it right. Will,” answered Mellor, savagely, “but what can two or three do? What are we doing here? Look at Booth, for instance--he’ll come here and talk about the evils under which we working men groan, by the hour together, and air all his new fangled notions that he’s picked up through Socialists; he knows very well that machinery is destroying us and nowt but the workhouse will be left for us soon, and yet he’s never got farther than talk. Join us, lad, join us, thou’st talked long enough, it’s time for action now. Isn’t machinery increasing on all hands, and aren’t working men half starving and seeking in vain for work? It’s true these machines aren’t taking Booth’s trade out of his fingers, or he’d happen see things in a different light.”

“Come, now, George,” said a phlegmatic individual at the back, who up to this time had stood with his arms crossed, caimly listening and puffing the smoke at regular intervals from his short black pipe, “Come, now, let’s have fair play. Its hardly the thing to set at Booth like that. He’s never pretended to be one of us.”

Booth listened to the interposition of the last speaker with apparent indifference, but Mellor’s fiery appeal had moved him deeply, and his colour came and went rapidly during its delivery. He paused for a little oefore speaking but at last broke silence: —

I quite agree with you, my friends, as some of you well know, respecting the harm you suffer from machinery, but it might be man’s chief blessing instead of his curse if society were differently constituted. We and other countries are already so placed by it tliat a very large number of people are thrown idle greatly against their will and they must be supported or starve. We know this is so, but are we therefore to conclude that machinery is in itself an evil? You are all aware that cropping by hand as you now practice it is by no means easy work; nay, we all know that it is very painful for learners to handle the shears until the wrist has become hoofed. Now look at cne of these machines. Observe how smoothly and how beautifully it works 1 How perfectly it does for the workman the most arduous part of his task. By its aid, as we well know, your task has become chiefly one of care and watchfulness. To say that a machine that can do this for you is in itself an evil is manifestly absurd. Under proper conditions it would be to you an almost unmixed blessing, but unfortunately the favourable conditions do not exist. Society, in the true sense of the word, implies a number of individuals united for the purpose of promoting their physical, intellectual, and moral improvement, individually and collectively, and if the capitalists and the millions of unemployed would abandon large towns and cities for communities of moderate size, and were all employed as economically as such a union would occasion, m agriculture, making and working machinery for the common benefit of the whole, these islands in the course of a few years would present an entirely different aspect, and poverty and starvation become utterly unknown.”

“If! if! if!” almost yelled Mellor, “What’s the use of such seimons as thine to starving men? It’s a oase, I reckon, of ’live horse and thou’st have grass.’ If men would only do as thou says, it would be better, we all know. But they wont. It’s all for themselves with the masters. What do they care if a thousand or two of us are pined to death if they can make brass a bit faster 1”

“Hold!” cried Booth, “No man can feel for the poor, starving workmen more than I do, but I fear the course adopted by the Luddites to remedy it is not the right one. To confess the truth, I am in a strait. I am afraid your plan will never succeed, and I don’t see much chance of re-organising society on a better and sounder basis at present, working men being as a rule almost totally uneducated.”

“Feel for them that’s starving,” shouted Benjamin Walker, another of Wood’s workmen and one-of the most violent in the band, “thou’rt, either a liar or a coward. How can thou feel for them when thou willn’t lift up thy finger to help ‘em. Thou should have gone with me yesterday to Tom Sykee’s, and thou would have seen something that would have knocked all thy grand notions out of thee. Tom, as you all know, has been Avithout work aboon a month, and I found that his wife, a poor, delicate craytur, was just dead—pined to t’death, they say—and I believe she was. When I got to his house he was just opening the door and ordering a parson out, and he called out after him ‘I want none of thy sympathy; if it hadn’t been for such as thee, she’d have been alive still.’ And there she lay on the bed, poor thing, skin and bone, nowt else.”

“I am no coward, Walker, and again I say I do feel, from the bottom of my heart, for you, and for poor Sykes most of all. It is hard for people to starve to death in their own houses in a christian land, but would it not be better to lay these things before the masters and to reason with them, rather than to infuriate them by destroying their machines and—”

“‘Reason with them,” impatiently interrupted Thorpe, “reason with the stones I say, for their hearts are as hard as flint. What’s the use of talking about reasoning with a man when his interest pulls all the other way? They’ll have these machines if we all clam to death. The only chap that can reason with them is ‘Enoch;’ that chap is the best reasoner I know of, when he breaks them into a hundred pieces—they understand that!”

“If mere was any trade in the country,” resumed Booth, in a sad tone, “I should say to you, seek a livelihood by some other means; but this cruel war has drained the very life-blood of the nation, and I know not what to advise or what to say.”

“Say thou’lt join us,” replied Mellor, “for thcu 6ce8 with all thy reasoning, as thou calls it, thou can’t find us a w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Introduction to the Fourth Edition
• Preface to the Third Edition
• List of Illustrations.
• Table of Contents
• Errata
• Chapter I John Wood’s Workshop
• Chapter II The Oath
• Chapter III Bad Times
• Chapter IV Spread of the Movement
• Chapter V The Gathering at the Shears inn, Liversedge
• Chapter VI Meeting of Luddites at the “St. Crispin,” Halifax
• Chapter VII A Raid for Arms
• Chapter VIII Lord Byron’s Speech
• Chapter IX Preparing for Action
• Chapter X The Attack on Cartwright’s Mill
• Chapter XI The Wounded Luddites at the Star inn, Roberttown
• Chapter XII The Two Deserters
• Chapter XIII Flight of the Luddites: Local Reminiscences
• Chapter XIV Attempt to Shoot Cartwright
• Chapter XV Punishment of a Traitor. Mr. Horsfall, of Marsden
• Chapter XVI A Deed of Blood
• Chapter XVII Death of Horsfall: Flight of the Assassins
• Chapter XVIII The Assassins Alarmed
• Chapter XIX Murder of the Prime Minister
• Chapter XX The Apprehension of Baines, the Halifax Luddite Leader
• Chapter XXI The Arrest of Hartley and the Murderers of Horsfall
• Chapter XXII A Narrow Escape
• Chapter XXIII Trial of Horsfall’s Murderers
• Chapter XXIV Continuation of the Trial of Horsfall’s Murderers
• Chapter XXV Execution of Mellor, Thorpe, and Smith
• Chapter XXVI Trials of the Halifax Luddites, also of William Hartley and Others
• Chapter XXVII Trial of the Raw Folds Rioters
• Chapter XXVIII Continuation of the Trial of the Rawfolds Rioters
• Chapter XXIX Defence of the Rawfolds Rioters
• Chapter XXX The Sentences
• Chapter XXXI Execution of the Luddites
• Chapter XXXII After the Bloody Assize
• Chapter XXXIII Comforting Friends
• Chapter XXXIV The Nottingham Captain
• Chapter XXXV Oliyer, The Spy
• Chapter XXXVI Peterloo
• Chapter XXXVII The Rising at Grange Moor
• Chapter XXXVIII Chartist Risings
• Chapter XXXIX Chartist Risings
• Chapter XL THE Plug Riots
• Chapter XLI Last Struggles of Chartism