It’s local history month in the UK. Once again, I’ve been digging into the history of where I live. Get ready to learn about the Yorkshire Luddites, and I don’t mean technophobes. The Luddite uprisings caused chaos and fear in the industrial towns and cities during the late Georgian period.
Yorkshire, and particularly the West Riding, was at the centre of the cloth-making industry. It’s clear why when we’re surrounded by hills that are not good for much except looking wildly beautiful and raising small woolly animals that can scamper across the rugged terrain.
With hundreds of tradesmen earning a living from the textile industry, it’s not surprising that the introduction of machinery led to Luddite movements forming in the area.
Who Were the Luddites?
The Luddites were highly skilled craftsmen. They were self-employed weavers or croppers who worked from their homes and were paid a fixed price for their work.
I live in a former weaver’s cottage, identified by the long row of small rectangular windows designed to allow in as much light as possible. The entire upper floor of our house would have been dedicated to the business of cloth making.
Weavers used hand looms to make the cloth, and croppers—also known as cloth finishers—used huge shears to trim the nap from the surface of the fabric to make it smooth.
The Luddites took their name from Ned Ludd, who supposedly led the first machine-breaking raid in Manchester in 1779. It’s uncertain whether he was a real person, but his name achieved a mythical status, and he apparently lived in Sherwood Forest.
Why Did the Luddites Rebel?
The Luddites were not necessarily against machinery. What they stood against was the destruction of their skilled trade by the mechanisation of the textile industry. If anyone could now operate a loom or a finishing machine, the weaver’s and cropper’s livelihoods were at risk, and they didn’t want to lose their place in the chain of production.
At first, the skilled weavers and croppers worked in the factories, but they did not earn as much as before, because they classed the machinery operation as unskilled. The Luddites tried to negotiate with mill owners to improve working conditions in the factories, however, mill owners refused to concede. The Luddites felt they had no alternative but to resort to violence to make their voices heard.
Other factors like the Napoleonic Wars, trade embargoes from the United States, food shortages and inflation also made them desperate to protect their livelihoods so they could support their families.
To discourage factory owners from purchasing machinery, the Luddites attacked mills, destroying machinery, and burning buildings. They also invaded homes where they knew they could find weapons to use in their raids.
In Linthwaite (a village three or four miles from my home), John Sykes, who worked for William Cotton, testified before the Justice of the Peace after his master’s mill was raided. In his statement, Sykes said on 6th March 1812 that 30 or more people with their faces blackened or disguised came in and took the family hostage before they “began to break the tools and did break 10 pairs of shears and one brushing machine.” He also went on the state the leader of the mob threatened that “if they came again and found any machinery set up they would blow up the premises.”
The unrest led the government, which feared a revolution, to crack down on the radicals. They deployed militia troops in the industrial towns and cities to help mill owners to protect their property. Thousands of troops, including cavalry, were stationed in Huddersfield alone.
The Kirklees Luddite Rebellion of 1812
Here’s where the events become really local. On 11th April 1812, Luddites in Kirklees (Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Mirfield, Cleckheaton, Batley and the surrounding areas) met up to attack Rawfolds Mill in Cleckheaton, owned by William Cartwright. This raid inspired Charlotte Brontë to include a similar raid in her novel, Shirley. (Yes, the one I haven’t read.)
Some met earlier in the day at Dumb Steeple in Cooper Bridge, where a monument now stands to mark what was a rallying point for the Kirklees Luddites.
Photo by Tim Green, CC by 2.0.
Cartwright had bolstered his defences with militia soldiers on site and was able to hold off the mob. The soldiers fired into the crowd and killed two men.
Shortly after the mob fled, in the small village of Crosland—just two miles from where I live—another mill owner, William Horsfall (who had installed a canon to protect the machinery at his mill), was shot. He was taken to a local inn to tend to his wounds, but he died 36 hours later.
Following the attack, martial law was declared. They deployed seven thousand militia troops in the West Riding to round up the dissidents. Breaking machinery was made a capital offence, and eventually, over 100 men were arrested in connection to the raid. Four men were also arrested and charged with the murder of William Horsfall, three of whom were found guilty and hanged.
A year later, 64 men stood trial: 34 of them were from Huddersfield, many were croppers, and their average age was 27. 14 of those men were sentenced to death, and those not hanged were transported to Australia. Many left wives and children to face destitution.
The Aftermath of the Luddite Troubles
The crackdown and the threat of execution quelled the Luddite uprising. By March 1813, the militia withdrew from the West Riding. However, a legacy of unrest continued. Huddersfield remained central in the movement calling for the radical reform of parliament, the introduction of trade unionism, resistance to the factory system, and opposed the new and harsher poor laws that were introduced in the 1820s and 1830s.
Unfortunately for the croppers, their trade vanished within 20 years as the mechanisation of the textile industry continued unabated.
I enjoyed reading about the Luddites we did this in history at school, it followed, how Huddersfield became a town, it was to do with using the river Colne to power the looms to make the cloth