Writings of the Luddites

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Writings
of the

Luddites
edited by

Kevin Binfield

The
JohnsJohns Hopkins
Hopkins University
University PressPress
b a lt i m o r e a n d l o n d o n
© 2004
2004Johns
The Johns Hopkins
Hopkins University
University Press Press
All rights reserved. Published 2004
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Writings of the Luddites / edited by Kevin Binfield.

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isbn 0-8018-7612-5 (hardcover : acid-free paper)
1. Luddites—Sources. 2. Sabotage in the workplace—
England—History—19th century—Sources. 3. Textile
workers—England—History—19th century—Sources.
4. Riots—England—History—19th century—Sources.
5. Great Britain—History—1789–1820—Sources.
6. Regency—England—Sources. I. Binfield, Kevin.
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 Contents

List of Documents vii

Foreword, by Adrian Randall xiii
Preface xix
Note on Texts and Citation xxiii

n Introduction 1
Midlands Luddism, 19
Northwestern Luddism, 32
Yorkshire Luddism, 47

n Midlands Documents 69
n Northwestern Documents 167
n Yorkshire Documents 199

Notes 239
Bibliography 267
Index 273
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 List of Documents

v midlands

M1 November 1811: Posted ‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’ by ‘‘Thos Death’’ to ‘‘Edward

Ludd,’’ Nottingham (H. O. 42/119; Facsimile C in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’), 70
M2 8 November 1811: Threatening letter from ‘‘Ned Lud’’ at Nottingham to ‘‘Mr H’’ at
‘‘Bullwell’’ (H. O. 42/118), 73
M3 27 November 1811: ‘‘Address of the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers to the Gentlemen
Hosiers of Nottingham’’ (Nottingham Review, 29 November 1811; also H. O. 42/117),
74
M4 28 November 1811: ‘‘An Address from the Framework-Knitters to the Gentlemen
Hosiers of the Town of Nottingham’’ (Nottingham Review, 29 November 1811; also
H. O. 42/117), 77
M5 16 December 1811: Proclamation, ‘‘Ned Lud Gives Notic, to the Coperation,’’
Nottingham (Facsimile D in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’), 78
M6 20 December 1811: Address of the Plain Silk Hands of Derby (Nottingham Review,
20 December 1811), 79
M7 21 December 1811: Letter from ‘‘Ned Lud’’ at Nottingham to the Corporation
Committee at Nottingham (Transcript 3 in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ 61), 84
M8 23 December 1811: Posted proclamation signed ‘‘By order of King Ludd,’’
Nottingham (H. O. 42/118; Transcript 2 in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ 60), 85
M9 27 December 1811: Address of the Framework Knitters of Melbourne (Nottingham
Review, 27 December 1811), 86
M10 1 January 1812: Posted proclamation titled ‘‘By the Framework Knitters, A
Declaration,’’ Nottinghamshire Archives version (Nottinghamshire Archives M 429,
pp. 31–32) and Home Office version with Douglas’s emendations (H. O. 42/119), 87
viii v List of Documents

M11 [Before 5] January 1812: Solicitation letter from ‘‘Edward Lud’’ to ‘‘Gentlemen All,’’
Loughborough (Gilbert version in H. O. 42/119), 91
M12 10 January 1812: ‘‘Address of the Plain Silk Hands, to the Gentlemen Hosiers,’’
Nottingham (Nottingham Review, 10 January 1812), 93
M13 [Before 14] January 1812: Posted proclamation by ‘‘Mr Pistol,’’ Nottingham
(H. O. 42/119; Facsimile A in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’), 94
M14 [Before 27] January 1812: Song titled ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph,’’ Nottingham
(H. O. 42/119), 95
M15 Late January or early February (?) 1812: Threatening letter signed ‘‘Remember Nedd
Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Harvey,’’ Nottingham (H. O. 42/119; Facsimile B in Russell, ‘‘The
Luddites’’), 100
M16 7 February 1812: Letter from ‘‘General Lud’’ to ‘‘Unknown Stranger,’’ Clifton
(Nottingham Review, 7 February 1812), 101
M17 11 February 1812: Advertisement for meeting of framework knitters, by Gravener
Henson, Nottingham (H. O. 42/120), 102
M18 13 February 1812: Address ‘‘To the Gentlemen Hosiers Concerned in the
Manufacturing of Plain Silk Work,’’ Nottingham (Nottingham Review, 14 February
1812), 103
M19 16 February 1812: Letter from ‘‘Joe Firebrand’’ at ‘‘Robin Hoods Cave’’ to ‘‘Mr. Trevit
Biddles Bowler’’ at Nottingham (Transcript 1 in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ 59), 106
M20 17 February 1812: Address ‘‘To the Framework-Knitters of the British Empire,’’
Nottingham (Nottingham Review, 21 February 1812), 107
M21 19 February 1812: Letter from James Richardson at Nottingham to James Kennedy at
Selkirk (H. O. 42/122), 110
M22 22 February 1812: Letter from ‘‘Genl C Ludd’’ at ‘‘Shirewood Camp’’ to Spencer
Perceval at London (H. O. 42/120), 112
M23 March 1812: Letter ‘‘From head Quarters Genaral Lud’’ to George Rowbottom at
Beaverlee (H. O. 42/122) 113; facsimile, 113–14
M24 2 March 1812: Poem by Lord Byron, ‘‘An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill,’’
London and Nottingham (Nottingham Review, 6 March 1812), 114
M25 6 March 1812: Letter from Thomas Latham at Nottingham to the Mayor of
Tewkesbury (H. O. 42/122 and Nottinghamshire Archives CA 3984, I, 22), 116
M26 11 March 1812: Poem by ‘‘A Poor Stockinger,’’ titled ‘‘Poetry,’’ Nottingham
(Nottingham Review, 20 March 1812), 118
M27 16 March 1812: Letter signed ‘‘your for Genl Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Byrnny,’’ Nottingham
(H. O. 42/122), 120
M28 17 March 1812: Posted paper inscribed to ‘‘Mr lud,’’ Chesterfield (H. O. 42/121), 121
M29 8 April 1812: Letter with poem by Thomas Large, Nottingham (Nottinghamshire
Archives CA 3984, I, 44; Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 8:141–42), 122
M30 [Mid to late] April 1812: Letter from ‘‘W Balfour, Captain of Division,’’ at Nottingham
to William Trentham at Nottingham (H. O. 42/120), 124
 List of Documents v ix

M31 24 April 1812: Letter with poem by Thomas Large, Nottingham (Nottinghamshire
Archives, CA 3984, I, 64), 126
M32 [Late] April 1812: Poem titled ‘‘Well Done, Ned Lud,’’ Nottingham or Mansfield
(Nottinghamshire Archives M297) 129; facsimile, 131–32
M33 [9] May 1812: Poem titled ‘‘Welcome Ned Ludd,’’ Nottingham (H. O. 42/123), 130
M34 29 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘N. Ludd’’ mailed to Henry Wood, Leicester (H. O. 42/124)
132; facsimile, 134
M35 Late Spring or Summer 1812: Song titled ‘‘Hunting a Loaf,’’ Derbyshire (Broadsheet
Collection, Derby Local Studies Library, box 15), 133
M36 4 June 1812: Letter from ‘‘L..’’ at Nottingham to the prince regent at Carlton House
(H. O. 42/124), 136
M37 7 June 1812: Letter from ‘‘Tho Jones’’ at Bristol to the prince regent at London
(H. O. 42/124), 138
M38 11 June 1812: Letter from ‘‘a poor woman’’ at ‘‘Lester’’ to James Stevenson at
Leicester (H. O. 40/1/4), 139
M39 16 July 1812: Circular letter from ‘‘The C--m---tee’’ (H. O. 42/125), 141
M40 September 1812: Encrypted letter and key, ‘‘The Committee’’ (H. O. 42/127), 142
M41 May 1814: Letter from ‘‘William Trueman’’ to John Bullock at Nottingham
(H. O. 42/139), 143
M42 16 June 1814: Letter from S. Simpson at Nottingham to an unknown recipient at
Dumfries (H. O. 42/140), 144
M43 31 August 1814: Letter from ‘‘A Priest’’ to the ‘‘Editor of the Nottingham Gazette’’
(Nottingham Review, 9 September 1814), 146
M44 5 October 1814: Letter from ‘‘General Ludd’’ to ‘‘the Editor of the Nottingham
Review’’ (Nottingham Review, 14 October 1814), 149
M45 17 October 1814: Letter from ‘‘Ned Lud’’ at Basford to William Beer at Derby
(H. O. 42/141), 152
M46 12 June 1816: Letter from ‘‘Edward Ludd’’ at Hinckley to ‘‘Needham and Bray and
Company’’ at Hinckley (H. O. 42/151), 153
M47 10 March 1817: Letter from Thomas Savidge in Leicester County Gaol to his wife
(Sutton, Some Particulars 4), 153
M48 2 April 1817: Letter to E. Ward, Derby (H. O. 40/5/2), 155
M49 6 April 1817: Letter from William Towle at Leicester County Gaol to his father
(Sutton, Four Additional Letters 1), 156
M50 7 April 1817: Letter from Thomas Savidge at Leicester County Gaol to his father
(Some Particulars 4–5), 157
M51 8 April 1817: Letter from Thomas Savidge in Leicester County Gaol to his wife and
children (Some Particulars, 5–6), 158
M52 8 April 1817: Letter from Joshua Mitchell at Leicester County Gaol to his brother
(Some Particulars 9), 159
x v List of Documents

M53 8 April 1817: Letter from William Withers at Leicester County Gaol to his wife
(Some Particulars 11–12), 160
M54 10 April 1817: Letter from John Amos at Leicester County Gaol to his wife (Some
Particulars 6-8), 162
M55 [Before 17] April 1817: Verses titled ‘‘The Last Gift of John Amos’’ (Some
Particulars 8), 164
M56 17 April 1817: Letter from John Crowder at Leicester County Gaol to his wife
(Some Particulars 10), 165

v northwestern

N1 February 1812: Letter to Mr. Kirkby, Ancoats (H. O. 42/120), 168

N2 8 April 1812: Poster titled ‘‘Now or Never,’’ Manchester (H. O. 40/1/1, H. O. 40/1/5),
169
N3 19 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘General Justice’’ to Thomas Garside, Stockport
(H. O. 40/1/1), 171
N4 23 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘Thousands, upon thousands’’ to ‘‘Mess McConnal &
Kennady,’’ Manchester (McConnel and Kennedy Papers 2/1/18/1), 172
N5 26 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘Falstaff’’ to Fire Office Agents, Wigan (H. O. 40/2/3,
Part 1), 174
N6 26 April 1812: Posted notice ‘‘To Whitefield Luddites’’ (H. O. 42/122), 175
N7 Late April 1812: Posted address ‘‘To the inhabitants of this Town,’’ Macclesfield
(H. O. 42/123), 176
N8 30 April 1812: Letter (‘‘A’’) to Mr. Simpson, Manchester (H. O. 40/1/1), 178
N9 30 April 1812: Letter (‘‘B’’) to Nathaniel Milne, Salford (H. O. 40/1/1), 179
N10 5 May 1812: Letter from Holywell, Flintshire, to Mr. Douglas and others at
Manchester (H. O. 40/1/1), 181
N11 5 May 1812: Letter to Mr. G. Platt, Holywell, Flintshire (H. O. 40/1/1), 182
N12 5 May 1812: Handbill posted up at Holywell, Flintshire (H. O. 40/1/1), 183
N13 6 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Thomas Paine’’ to Richard Wood, Manchester
(H. O. 40/1/1), 184
N14 11 May 1812: Letter to the prince regent at London (H. O. 42/123), 186
N15 [12 May] 1812: Letter from ‘‘Luddites’’ at Manchester to Richard Ryder at London
(H. O. 42/123), 187
N16 23 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Ned Ludd’’ to Nicholas Vansittart at London
(H. O. 42/123), 188
N17 27 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Iulius - Lt. de Luddites’’ to ‘‘Revd W. Blacow’’ at Liverpool
(H. O. 42/123), 189
N18 30 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘L[?] Teoxperorator’’ at Manchester (H. O. 42/123), 190
N19 13 June 1812: Posted ‘‘Notice’’ signed ‘‘Guilty Death,’’ Chow Bent (H. O. 40/2/4), 191
N20 [Late] June 1812: Address posted in the neighborhood of Bolton (H. O. 40/2/2), 192
 List of Documents v xi

N21 Summer 1812: Letters to and from Lancaster Castle prisoners (H. O. 42/129), 192
N22 1810s: Song titled ‘‘The Hand-loom Weavers’ Lament,’’ Lancashire (Harland and
Wilkinson, Ballads and Songs of Lancashire: Ancient and Modern 193–95; Broadsheets
Collection, Derby Local Studies Library, box 15), 194
N23 May 1816: Handbill poem titled ‘‘The Death of Calico Jack’’ (H. O. 42/150), 196

v yorkshire

Y1 Pre-1812: Song titled ‘‘Horsfall’s Mill,’’ Huddersfield vicinity (Peel, Spen Valley: Past and
Present 258–59), 200
Y2 February 1812: Song titled ‘‘The Cropper’s Song,’’ Huddersfield (Peel, Risings of the
Luddites 47–48), 201
Y3 [February or March] Early 1812: Song titled ‘‘T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley’’
(Daisy Baines, serialized in Huddersfield Weekly News, 22 January 1881), 203
Y4 [March] 1812: Address ‘‘To all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at Large,’’ Leeds
(Leeds University Manuscripts 193, Gott Papers, vol. 3, 106), 207
Y5 9 or 10 March 1812: Letter from ‘‘Ned Ludd Clerk’’ addressed ‘‘To Mr Smith Shearing
Frame Holder at Hill End Yorkshire,’’ Hill End near Leeds (Leeds University
Manuscripts 193, Gott Papers, vol. 3, 106), 208
Y6 [Before 15] March 1812: Letter to Frank Vickerman, Taylor Hill near Huddersfield
(H. O. 42/121), 211
Y7 20 March 1812: Letter from ‘‘Soliciter to General Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Ratcliffe’’ at
‘‘Millsbridge’’ (Radcliffe Papers 126/27) 211; facsimile side one, 212–14; facsimile side
two, 213, 215
Y8 8 April 1812: Letter from Leeds signed ‘‘I ham for lud and the poor’’ to ‘‘Mr Joseph
Ratcliff, Milnsbridg’’ (Radcliffe Papers 126/1), 213
Y9 [Early] April 1812: Letter from ‘‘Mr Love Good’’ to Joseph Radcliffe at Milnsbridge
near Huddersfield. (Radcliffe Papers 126/28), 216
Y10 [After 9] April 1812: Song titled ‘‘Forster’s Mill,’’ Huddersfield vicinity (Peel,
The Risings of the Luddites 120), 217
Y11 [Before 18] April 1812: Proclamation to ‘‘Croppers’’ (H. O. 42/122), 218
Y12 19 April 1812: Two letters from ‘‘John and Martin Middleton’’ at Houghton and
‘‘G. D.’’ (Radcliffe Papers 126/32), 219
Y13 27 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘A. B.’’ to Joseph Radcliffe, Milnsbridge near Huddersfield
(Radcliffe Papers 126/38), 221
Y14 1 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Peter Plush’’ purporting to write from Nottingham to
‘‘Mr Edward Ludd’’ at Huddersfield (Radcliffe Papers 126/46), 223
Y15 15 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘I-G’’ at Leeds to Benjamin Gott at Leeds (Leeds
University Manuscripts 193, Gott Papers, vol. 3, 106), 225
Y16 Late Spring or Summer 1812: Song fragment titled ‘‘How Gloomy and Dark Is the
Day,’’ Huddersfield vicinity (Peel, The Risings of the Luddites 120), 226
xii v List of Documents

Y17 July 1812: Letter from ‘‘a well wisher’’ at Daypool to ‘‘The Secretary of State’’ at
London (H. O. 42/125), 227
Y18 September 1812: Song titled ‘‘The Devil Take the King,’’ Birkby near Huddersfield
(H. O. 42/127), 228
Y19 September 1812: Song by Charles Milnes, ‘‘You Heroes of England,’’ Halifax (Rex v.
Charles Milnes . . . , T. S. 11.813.2673), 229
Y20 21 October 1812: Letter from ‘‘Enemie Anonimous’’ to ‘‘Ratclif,’’ Huddersfield
(Radcliffe Papers 126/91), 230
Y21 29 October 1812: Letter from ‘‘Secretary to the Brotherhood’’ to Joseph Radcliffe,
Milnsbridge near Huddersfield (Radcliffe Papers 126/95), 231
Y22 30 November 1812: Letter from George Mellor at York Castle to Thomas Ellis at
Longroyd near Huddersfield (Radcliffe Papers 126/127a; H. O. 42/123), 233
Y23 1812: ‘‘Address to Cotton Weavers & Others,’’ Huddersfield (Radcliffe Papers I
Appendix, Item 78), 234
Y24 January 1813: Letter from ‘‘L. M.’’ at Elland to ‘‘Cartlege Brow Bridge near Elland’’
(H. O. 40/2/4), 236
Y25 12 March 1815: Letter to Radcliffe, Huddersfield (Radcliffe Papers 126/136), 237
 Foreword

h e l u d d i t e d i s t u r b a n c e s o f 1 8 1 1 – 1 2 have long held a

T place in the public imagination unmatched by any other episode during
the industrial revolution. Yet these disorders formed only part of a continuum
of popular protest against new technology in the industries concerned. Frame
breaking, characteristic of East Midlands Luddism, had a long history in the
hosiery trade, while attacks on cloth finishing machinery, the focus of Yorkshire
Luddism, had disturbed the woolen industry in both the West of England and
the West Riding of Yorkshire from the 1790s. In Lancashire new cotton spinning
technologies had met with violent resistance in 1768 and 1779, while weavers’
battles over wages had led to widespread violence in 1808. Nor did antimachinery
disturbances end in 1812. Renewed attacks on both stocking frames and finish-
ing machinery took place in both the Midlands and the West of England in 1816,
while the extensive power loom riots in Lancashire in 1826 proved far more vio-
lent than earlier Luddite actions in the county, mobilizing whole communities
across the region, something Luddism failed to achieve. Moreover, the Swing
riots of 1830 in southern England, many of which targeted labor-saving machin-
ery, extended over a far wider geography than Luddism and resulted in much
harsher retaliation by government. Yet it is the Luddite disturbances that catch
the imagination and retain a firm, if inchoate, grasp on popular historical under-
standing. In this, history reflects the impact that Luddism made at the time.
One reason for this was the ubiquity of the name. Previous labor struggles
had failed to give rise to a name or an emblem that stuck. Those involved had
rarely given themselves a title and were generically labeled by the authorities
xiv v Foreword

simply as ‘‘depradators,’’ ‘‘the disaffected,’’ or, more frequently, ‘‘the mob.’’ Yet
the machine breakers of 1811–12 were referred to almost from the start as ‘‘Ludd-
ites,’’ the name they gave themselves. This self-depiction as the followers of ‘‘Ned
Ludd,’’ who was soon promoted to ‘‘General,’’ merits some consideration. After
all, the perhaps apocryphal Ned was, at first sight, hardly a heroic figure. An ap-
prentice stocking-frame knitter, he had, the story ran, been criticized for making
his hose too loose. He was therefore instructed to ‘‘square his needles,’’ namely
to adjust the mechanism of his frame. Ned allegedly took this instruction liter-
ally and, with a hammer, flattened the entire workings. Frame breaking certainly
characterized the East Midland disturbances in 1811, but the targets were only
the ‘‘wide’’ frames that produced ‘‘deceitfully wrought’’ hose, not frames in gen-
eral. Naming oneself after such a figure at the least indicates a sense of irony and
self-deprecation that is remarkable, perhaps reflecting the way in which Burke’s
scornful ascription of the common people as ‘‘the swinish multitude’’ was turned
into a badge of honor by plebeian radicals in the 1790s. Certainly, in no time Ned
acquired a fame that set him above a far more famous local hero:

Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood,

His feats I but little admire
I will sing the Atchievements of General Ludd
Now the Hero of Nottinghamshire.*

Robin had famously robbed the rich to give to the poor and defended the weak
against arbitrary baronial power. But Ned Ludd epitomized the right of the poor
to earn their own livelihood and to defend the customs of their trade against dis-
honorable capitalist depredators. While Robin, a displaced gentleman, signified
paternal protection, Ned Ludd evidenced the sturdy self-reliance of a commu-
nity prepared to resist for itself the notion that market forces rather than moral
values should shape the fate of labor. Ned Ludd was not only a symbol of plebeian
resistance; he was an ideological figure as well, one who reflected the deep sense
of history that underpinned the customary values of working communities in the
manufacturing districts.

*‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph,’’ sung to the tune ‘‘Poor Jack’’: HO 42/119. This song
summarized the aim of the East Midland Luddites, and indeed the aspiration of many other
trades, namely that ‘‘full-fashioned work at the old fashioned price’’ should be ‘‘established by
Custom and Law.’’ The capitalization of Custom and Law was original and deliberate,
signifying the importance of both to artisans everywhere.
 Foreword v xv

The Luddite name, one might almost say the Luddite brand, proved fecund.
As the outbreaks of industrial violence died down in the Midlands and new dis-
turbances broke out in both the West Riding of Yorkshire and in industrial Lan-
cashire, participants there took the name to heart and in turn pronounced them-
selves supporters of General Ludd. How far this reflected simple mimicry—we
might wonder in this case why men in different regions and different industrial
contexts saw fit to appropriate the name—or a calculated decision, we cannot
know. But the choice proved effective. The authorities were in any case alarmed
by the extension of the disorders, especially because they occurred against a back-
drop of war with Napoleonic France. However, the spread of Ludd’s name to new
regions suggested to those in power that they faced a great conspiracy, one that
threatened not merely new technologies and the property of those who intro-
duced them but the very security of the state. Defining Luddism—fixing its char-
acter and understanding its generation and development—are, then, not merely
arcane historical questions: they were questions of moment to the rulers of Re-
gency England. In tackling these questions the historian is sent back to the texts.
Here Luddism is comparatively rich in material, as Kevin Binfield’s excellent
collection shows. In these texts Luddism both defined itself and was defined by
others.
The hallmark of Luddism, as with the Swing riots later, was the threatening
letter. We might note that such letters were in no way a Luddite innovation. The
pages of the eighteenth-century London Gazette demonstrate that the threaten-
ing letter had long been not only the recourse of the disgruntled but also a typical
tool of effective negotiation in all sorts of labor disputes. Such letters enabled
workers to present demands in a form that protected individuals from the sorts of
employer retaliation that face-to-face meetings risked. Although historians have
been inclined to see such letters as indicative of an essential weakness in bargain-
ing position, this is not entirely true. Even skilled workers often conducted nego-
tiations in this way. The croppers, highly organized into a combination, the Brief
Institution, which linked men in the trade across the country, saw advantages
in announcing their demands in this form to recalcitrant and hostile employers.
But for outworking trades, such as the framework knitters and cotton weavers,
the threatening letter provided their main means of dealing with employers who
rejected customary practice.
The purpose of threatening letters was, of course, intimidation. In 1811–12,
as in earlier years, they might well be supplemented by further sanctions. The
xvi v Foreword

Wiltshire shearmen had made extensive use of incremental industrial violence in

their campaign to resist finishing machinery ten years before Luddism. At first
they supplemented their letters by cutting down sapling trees and by setting fire,
in turn, to a dog kennel, six hay ricks, a stable, and a barn. They also broke a large
number of windows. It was only when such minor demonstrations of force failed
to ensure compliance with their demands that they progressed to attacks on mills
and houses. And it was only when their campaign to safeguard the old legisla-
tion, which they believed protected their trades, had been effectively defeated
that they had recourse to direct personal attacks upon the leading employers.
This same pattern was repeated, if on a much larger scale, in the Midlands in 1811
and in Yorkshire in 1812.
Threatening letters, therefore, were in themselves a significant weapon. How-
ever, Luddite letters carried an additional power and authority, because Ludd’s
imprimatur suggested the presence of a coordinated force whose ultimate
strength could not easily be discerned. This opacity of Luddism, the community
solidarity that prevented the authorities from obtaining any effective informa-
tion concerning the perpetrators of the attacks, the ubiquity of the name across
so extensive a geography, and the way in which Ludd’s men seemed to strike at
will all reinforced the sense of alarm that gripped both magistrates and govern-
ment ministers. In such a context Luddite letters created a cultural space filled
both by protesters in enlarging their demands for change and by the authorities
in their attempts to come to terms with what seemed to them a many-tentacled
underground conspiracy.
Luddite letters, however, were by no means confined to threats to employers.
A variety of proclamations, poems, songs, and other statements emanated from
the pens of General Ludd himself, his lieutenants, and supporters. These articu-
lated, Kevin Binfield argues, three essential styles of discourse: petitioning, seek-
ing the support from the respectable classes and local and national authorities for
the regulatory model that Luddites demanded; economic analysis, expounding a
Luddite moral economy that asserted the rights of labor within a framework of
custom, as seen in ‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary,’’ a notice posted in Nottingham
in November 1811; and political analysis, propounding the views of radical and
even revolutionary politics. The Luddite ‘‘text’’ was rich and complex, varying
from region to region and from context to context.
This brings the reader to the question of whether there was an ‘‘authentic’’
voice of the true Luddites, a question that continues to vex historians. As Kevin
 Foreword v xvii

Binfield demonstrates in this valuable collection, there were many authentic

voices. And, because General Ludd’s message was promulgated through oral and
literary channels, the process of transmission allowed for further variation in
both ‘‘text’’ and ‘‘reading.’’ Binfield’s reconstruction of the derivation of the song
‘‘Welcome Ned Ludd’’ shows this clearly. His researches show that the earliest
version, ‘‘Well Done, Ned Ludd,’’ proves to be in the handwriting of Charles
Sutton, the editor of the Nottingham Review, a paper that initially tended to sym-
pathize with the stockingers’ complaints. Yet it seems unlikely, to this writer at
least, that Sutton was the song’s author. Rather, as a journalist he recorded the
version that he had heard. Different versions, dependent on the preferences or
memories of different singers, may have been recorded elsewhere. Other ele-
ments might have been changed according to the ‘‘reading’’ that other ‘‘record-
ers’’ placed upon the ‘‘text.’’ Historians, too, are not innocent of slanting the
reading, as Binfield indicates when examining the famous letter sent by the York-
shire Luddites to ‘‘Mr Smith Shearing Frame Holder at Hill End Yorkshire.’’ The
readers of this volume may judge for themselves how far an inserted word changes
the ‘‘meaning’’ of this source.
Given that there was no monolithic Luddite ‘‘movement’’ but a series of over-
lapping protests, Luddism allowed differing voices access to a wider community
while deriving the legitimacy that was seen to come from General Ludd’s reasser-
tion of customary moral values. Ludd’s imprimatur might therefore be called
upon not only by those seeking what they saw as the reassertion of customary
economic rights but also by those who demanded political rights as well. Here
historians disagree most strongly, inasmuch as the text offers no easy delineation
between ‘‘trade’’ and ‘‘radical’’ discourses. Here context was all. In the Midlands,
the framework knitters saw in their ‘‘Charter’’ a legal bastion that they hoped
might be supported by the authorities to safeguard their trade. Here too there
were at least some employers who preferred customary regulation to a market
free-for-all. In Yorkshire there was little hope that any support might be forth-
coming from the authorities. In the wake of the repeal of the old woolen stat-
utes in 1809, the croppers had only their industrial muscle to fall back upon.
Moreover, they felt betrayed at the way in which their ‘‘rights’’ had been so cava-
lierly thrown over. With their campaign of direct action stalling, they may well
have found the solutions of the radicals increasingly convincing. In Lancashire
the weavers had long sought to effect a legal framework to safeguard their trade,
without success. Here the local authorities showed no disposition toward com-
xviii v Foreword

promise. Here, too, insurrectionary politics had struck deep roots since the later
1790s. Yet while we may posit a line from industrial action to insurrectionary
politics, tracing such a route remains a matter for conjecture. On this question,
the jury must remain out. The reader, like the authorities in 1811–12, is left to de-
termine whether ‘‘Ludd’’ was in any respect a voice of commonality or merely a
series of voices appropriating a common name.
Kevin Binfield’s book marks a major contribution toward the study of Ludd-
ism. His assiduous collection and editing of texts allows, as he says, the Luddites
to speak for themselves. But he does more than this. As a rhetorician and student
of linguistics, he brings a new and critical eye to the texts, showing the ways in
which the forms and nature of Luddite writings changed and were transformed
over time and space. He also alerts historians to the need to reflect upon the
modes and purposes of Luddite language and, in so doing, makes a valuable inter-
vention in the ongoing debates about popular protest generally. This is a book
to be welcomed with open arms.

Adrian Randall
 Preface

h o m a s l a r g e , a Nottingham stockinger, was at work in London dur-

T ing late April 1812, seeking parliamentary support for a bill to provide relief
in the framework knitting trade. He wrote to Thomas Allsop and asked him to
save a letter that Large had written some weeks earlier. Nearly two hundred years
later, I am attempting to complete the task set for Allsop.
I decided to begin work on this book in 1992 after reading E. P. Thompson’s
statement of purpose in The Making of the English Working Class: ‘‘I am seek-
ing to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom
weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna South-
cott, from the enormous condescension of history’’ (p. 12). At the time I was
writing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Nebraska on Percy Bysshe
Shelley and had been reading of Shelley’s simultaneously generous and bitter at-
titudes toward members of the working classes and of scholarly commentary on
the same. Struck by Shelley’s lack of familiarity with working-class discourse—
and the same lack in scholars of Shelley—I formed my own idea about the na-
ture of the condescension of history and how to pursue my work in a manner
that at the very least does not impede the rescue that Thompson effects. I began
collecting texts by the Luddites a year later, minutes after submitting my com-
pleted dissertation to the Office of Graduate Studies. A short walk took me to
Love Library. Longer journeys followed, as I carried this work to two other in-
stitutions and to archives in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
In the course of collecting and compiling the materials for this book, I have
xx v Preface

tried to understand the lives and perspectives of the persons whose words I col-
lect; however, every new letter revealed the distance between the Luddites and
me. Even my younger days spent cleaning toilets, loading and unloading trucks,
and changing hydraulic hoses inside garbage trucks, under the protection of laws
governing wages and working conditions, afforded me no understanding of labor
undertaken two centuries ago by persons who lacked such protections.
What you read in these pages is the result of a trail of debts extending from
Lincoln, Nebraska, to Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and dozens of places in
between and off the path as I attempted to reduce that distance. The tremen-
dous sense of obligation that I feel to the many persons who have helped me
as I stumbled through researching and writing makes acknowledging them—by
name, where possible—a pleasure. I hope that I have lived up to their assistance.
All of the faults and shortcomings in this volume are my own.
Valerie Parry, Janet Snowhill, and Barbara Cook of the Dover Library at
Gardner-Webb University helped me to locate archives and documents in the
United States and the United Kingdom. This book would perhaps have ended as
a frustrated wish had I never met them. Librarians and archivists in the United
Kingdom never failed to be helpful. In particular, I thank the staff of the Public
Records Office, Kew; Adrian Henstock, Christopher Weir, and the staff of the
Nottinghamshire County Archives; Dorothy Johnston, Caroline Kelly, and the
staff of the East Midlands Special Collections Library at the University of Not-
tingham; the staff of the Nottingham Central Library, Local Studies Library;
Janet Wallwork at the John Rylands University Library at the University of Man-
chester; the staff of the John Rylands Library at Deansgate; Alain Kahan at the
Working Class Movement Library in Salford; the Local Studies staff at the Man-
chester Central Library, especially Judith Baldry and Gordon Sharples; the staff
of the Greater Manchester County Record Office; Michael Powell at Chetham’s
Library; the staff of the Derby Local Studies Library; Lesley Kipling and the
staff of the Huddersfield Local Studies Library and the West Yorkshire Archives,
Kirklees; W. J. Connor and the staff of the West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds;
Jenny Cooksey of the Special Collections Department of the Brotherton Library
at the University of Leeds; Jack Smurfitt of the Framework Knitters Museum at
Ruddington; and the staff of the Leicestershire Record Office.
Stephen Behrendt and Paul Olson of the University of Nebraska provided
guidance from the beginning of my work. Susan Staves of Brandeis University
 Preface v xxi

pointed me toward some important revisions of an early draft of the chapter

on Nottingham Luddism. Joyce Brown, my department chair at Gardner-Webb
University, and Gilmer Blackburn, former academic dean at Gardner-Webb, en-
couraged me, relieved me of committee burdens when they could, helped me to
fund my research in the United Kingdom, and demonstrated that small-college
faculty can conduct research despite heavy teaching loads. Paul Holroyd, of Hali-
fax, shared much of his own research into radicalism in the West Riding.
I owe a different sort of debt to Robert Smith, past director of the Tennessee
Governor’s School for the Humanities, for permitting me to teach a course on
Luddism in 1998, and to my students in that course. My undergraduate student
assistants—Jeanna Ford, Nicole Hartis, Karen Brower, and Gary Mitchem—de-
serve special acknowledgment for helping me with bibliographical research at
Gardner-Webb and for smiling as I rambled on about the complexities of Lan-
cashire Luddism.
Funding for this project was provided by grants from the Academic Dean and
the Faculty Development Committee at Gardner-Webb University, a Summer
Stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Murray State
University Presidential Research Fellowship. Much of my travel would not have
been possible had not Joyce Brown always managed to find for me additional
summer teaching that paid for several trips to Britain. On those trips, my work
was eased by a number of friends who housed me—especially, Meryl Hobbs and
Mike and Sheila Spratt. I am also grateful to John Leach, of Marsden, who gave
me a very fine tour of the Luddite-related sites in the vicinity of Marsden and
Huddersfield. His sharing through weekly e-mails his experience of growing up
amid that history made Luddism much more ‘‘real’’ to me and made writing the
sections on Yorkshire Luddites wonderfully exciting.
Special thanks to Doug Armato, formerly of the Johns Hopkins University
Press, and Michael Lonegro, the current humanities editor. Brian MacDonald
improved my manuscript immeasurably with his excellent copyediting.
Others who have contributed directly and indirectly to this volume include
Kate Ronald, Linda Pratt, James McShane, Richard Quinn, Roger Cognard,
Tony Epp, Bruce Erlich, June Hobbs, Steve Jones, Malcolm Thomis, Adrian
Randall, Michael Cohen, and Bill Foreman. Finny, Bear, Milford, Autumn, and
Phillipsburg never failed to help hold down important papers on my desk.
My greatest debt is to my family for teaching me to value an education that I
xxii v Preface

was extremely fortunate to receive, for exemplifying hard work, and for respect-
ing my own work, which must seem frivolous and insubstantial compared with
theirs.
With the greatest love and esteem, I dedicate all that succeeds in this volume
to my parents, Glenn and Marie Binfield, and my friend Ramona Jean Smith.
 Note on Texts and Citation

m a k e n o c l a i m to have compiled a comprehensive and definitive edi-

I tion of the Luddites’ writings, although my aim has been to amass a compre-
hensive collection; I have selected between texts only when such selection was
necessary for reasons of coherence and precision. The texts included in this vol-
ume and reproduced in their entirety range from original texts that appear, due
to internal evidence or external circumstances, to have been written by Luddites
to background texts and texts written by persons sympathetic to Luddism and
its associated political and economic aims. The internal evidence for including
a document in this collection might consist of a letter’s being signed ‘‘General
Ludd,’’ the invocation of the name of ‘‘Ludd,’’ or the writer’s reference to Ludd-
ite attacks and threats in a manner typically used by the Luddites (for example,
a threat to a master to remove machines or increase wages). External evidence is
often provided by letters from public officials enclosing a threatening letter or a
declaration of protest and identifying the document as associated with Luddism
or with the larger ‘‘disaffection’’ complained of by the authorities of the time.
The concept of disaffection problematizes the selection of Luddite texts.
Early in the Luddite protests, the authorities lacked a clear understanding of the
protests as a coherent and unique movement or rising, so most of the early let-
ters to the Home Office enclosing threatening letters and proclamations referred
to the documents only as evidence of what they broadly named ‘‘disaffection.’’
Furthermore, most of the categorization of the documents was the result of the
early conception of disturbance formulated by the Home Office authorities. The
system of cataloging used by the Home Office clerks did not allow for careful dis-
xxiv v Note on Texts and Citation

tinction between the types of domestic disturbances but facilitated the creation
of an inventory based on geographical location (notably differentiating between
protest in London and in provincial Britain). Consequently, what came to be
known as Luddism some weeks into the protests was not regularly indexed or
analyzed as a set of events separate from other ‘‘disaffection,’’ particularly out-
side of Nottinghamshire, until well into the protests. Furthermore, for a long
time after the Home Office Secretary Richard Ryder and Undersecretary John
Beckett became aware of Luddism as a movement of sorts, the authorities con-
tinued to conflate other forms of riot and dissent in the Luddite regions with
Luddite machine breaking.
Another type of ‘‘evidence’’ used in selecting texts, especially those written by
Luddite sympathizers and associated protesters, is the evidence of affinity. That
is to say, many documents of industrial protest during the Regency period might
be understood to fall under the classification of ‘‘Luddite’’ by the fact of their
appearing within the regions or addressing issues in the regions that saw violent
labor action by textile workers during that time. Documents such as the July 1812
letter from ‘‘a well wisher’’ at Daypool to the secretary of state, preserved in the
Home Office Papers at 42/125, might not originate in the West Riding (the part
of Yorkshire that experienced nearly all of the Luddism in that county), but it
treats matters of concern to the Luddites, indicates an affiliation of the writer
with labor protesters, and employs a discourse similar to that of paradigmati-
cally Luddite writing—reasons sufficient to include it among Luddite texts from
Yorkshire. This is not to say that all marginal documents ought to be included
among the productions of Luddism. As historians have indicated, some violence
not connected to protests within the textile trade was threatened or carried out
by persons who nevertheless invoked the name of Ned Ludd. Texts associated
with those crimes are not collected in this volume of Luddite writings. One letter,
written by Adam Wagstaff and thrown inside the door of Richard Dennis, em-
ploys Luddite discourse for a private purpose (a complaint against the continued
employment of a particular ‘‘rouge,’’ or rogue) unrelated to the stockingers’ pro-
tests against the depression in trade and the threat of machinery. That letter and
others like it have been omitted from this collection.
Authentication and attribution of anonymous texts are singularly difficult ex-
ercises. In this volume, the problem is quite specific—determining whether the
texts contained herein are likely to have been the work of Luddite writers or their
sympathizers. The most important criteria that have been applied in their selec-
 Note on Texts and Citation v xxv

tion have been the dates of the documents, their style and handwriting, and the
compatibility of the documents with the aims and methods of the Luddites. The
aims and methods can be ascertained from authorities’ reports, the depositions
of victims, the confessions of captured Luddites, and the documents themselves.
Currently, these aims and methods are understood in terms of protests against
hiring practices that resulted in the abatement of wages, increases in rents of
machines used to produce or finish cloth, the use of machines that damaged a
trade’s reputation for quality, increases in the costs of provisions, and the denial
of a political voice to those persons affected by the decline in wages and the in-
crease in prices. I choose not to include documents that do not fall under one
of those criteria. (Texts that provide background or prior models for Luddite
writing are exceptions.) Searching for Luddite aims and methods in the docu-
ments themselves is a precarious endeavor, with the potential for expanding pre-
viously accepted notions of the aims and methods by reading into Luddism the
ideas contained in the documents under scrutiny. In other words, every text that
might be of Luddite origin has the potential to change the current understanding
of Luddism, thereby shifting the criteria for evaluating whether the text under
consideration is Luddite or not. Each new text is measured against a changing
gauge. It is probably not possible to avoid the problems that I have just described,
so I have attempted to explain in the headnotes the circumstances surrounding
the production of each text, especially when texts might expand what we know
as Luddism into areas of practice not previously known to be within the sphere
of Luddism. The most obvious example is the incorporation of a letter to the
McConnel and Kennedy Company in protest against hiring practices within the
Lancashire spinning industry. The letter indicates that Luddite discourse was
employed to protest the hiring of women as spinners, a grievance not previously
understood to be significant within Luddism; however, the general aim of the
letter, to protest against wage abatement, fits the larger pattern of Luddism.
Problems of versioning and stemmatic concerns over the Luddite documents
are minimal. With few exceptions, the documents are in manuscript form. Most
of the original materials appear to be in the handwriting and style of persons
with a minimal education but nevertheless sufficient to write a threatening let-
ter or a lengthy broadside proclamation, but some of the documents have been
copied by Home Office clerks or, less frequently, provincial authorities. Occa-
sionally, the fact that a document is a clerk’s copy is indicated on the manuscript.
More frequently, however, only the similarities in handwriting among a number
xxvi v Note on Texts and Citation

of manuscripts provide indirect evidence that an unlabeled copy is in fact a clerk’s

copy. When a source manuscript is evidently a copy, I have mentioned so in the
headnotes to that document. I have found no need to provide a stemma for any
text within this collection because I have found no evidence that, with two pos-
sible exceptions, any of the source texts is a copy of a copy. Those exceptions are
the Nottinghamshire song ‘‘Welcome Ned Ludd’’ and the Leicestershire letter
of threat sent to Henry Wood. The problem of the song ‘‘Welcome Ned Ludd’’
was resolved by my having found an earlier version of the song, differently titled
as ‘‘Well Done, Ned Lud,’’ but that discovery leads to new difficulties, which, at
this point, seem to be unavoidable. Specifically, the ‘‘Well Done, Ned Lud’’ ver-
sion is in the handwriting of Charles Sutton, the editor of the Nottingham Review.
Sutton was sympathetic to the Luddites, but the song does not provide enough
material to judge whether Sutton is its likely author or merely a transcriber of a
song that he saw or heard elsewhere. The problem of the 29 May 1812 letter to
Henry Wood is that the only known source for the letter is a reward notice that
reproduces the letter. No mention is made by the authorities whether the printed
transcription was made from the original or from a copy.
Many of the Luddite writings make sense only in conjunction with each other,
or perhaps with other, non-Luddite texts. Although I generally choose not to
stray from chronology, I do attempt to indicate in the headnotes the relationships
of documents to other documents located elsewhere in the volume. Occasionally
in the headnotes, I have chosen to include or quote extracts from non-Luddite
correspondence when the correspondence provides additional information on
the matters treated in a Luddite document, indicates the attitude of the authori-
ties or the recipients of a Luddite letter, or describes how the document moved
from one set of hands to another. The supplementary documents also provide
some sense of the similarities and differences between the styles of the Luddites
and other writers, including the authorities and those non-Luddite working-class
writers whose aims overlapped the aims of Luddism. Scholars who are interested
in the discourse of the authorities might like to know that the largest part of
the correspondence of officials and others from which the supplementary quota-
tions have been selected are preserved in the Home Office Papers, series 40 and
42. The officials’ letters are typically legible and clear. The exceptions are the
correspondence of Huddersfield magistrate Joseph Radcliffe, whose frequently
illegible papers are gathered in the West Yorkshire Archives Service, Leeds.
In the interest of unity and coherence, I have omitted some documents (such
 Note on Texts and Citation v xxvii

as most of the letters, broadsides, and minutes of meetings of the Framework

Knitters Company) that might be relevant to a larger study of trade unionism
and direct action within the framework knitting trade but which do not bear di-
rectly upon Luddism; however, documents extraneous to Luddism but which are
related to or dovetail with Luddite concerns or which incorporate rhetoric that
resembles that of Luddite texts have occasionally been included, either as quo-
tations in the headnotes or as complete documents.
I have chosen to reproduce all of the documents verbatim and as closely re-
sembling the original manuscripts as typescript will allow so that readers might
study the varieties and peculiarities of Luddite grammar, punctuation, and or-
thography. The principle of verbatim reproduction extends even to the inclusion
of intercalations and struck words. I have, however, deviated from the original
punctuation in a couple of instances. I have substituted dashes for the marks
that resemble something between short underscoring and dashes. Such marks
occasionally functioned as periods, commas, or dashes in the handwritten texts
and were typically ambiguously placed in their vertical position in each line. I
have also substituted periods for short marks that resemble abbreviated hyphens
placed at the end of sentences in the vertical position where a period ordinarily
appears. Original authors’ insertions appear in square brackets.
Persons not familiar with manuscripts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries might be struck by the absence of punctuation, especially periods.
Often, writers left a somewhat larger space between the word ending one sen-
tence and the word beginning a new one. I have tried to preserve that spacing.
What is more difficult to reproduce, given the absence of punctuation in most
sentences, is an indication of the frequent conclusion of one sentence at the right
edge of a page and the beginning of a new sentence at the left edge of the page
on the next line. Occasionally, writers began that new line with a capitalized ini-
tial letter of the first word, but, more frequently, the next sentence or line begins
without regard for capitalization, perhaps because capitalization was often not
uniform in much working-class writing.
I have tried to cite the original sources of the works as clearly and as com-
pletely as possible. For decades, the customary practice of historians and cultural
scholars had been to cite documents in the Home Office Papers thus—H. O.
42/119. I follow this practice, although it can be problematic. Some of the series
contain documents with as many as three stamped numbers on individual pages,
making determination of the proper fold number quite difficult. Some docu-
xxviii v Note on Texts and Citation

ments are missing fold numbers entirely. Still other documents have not been
microfilmed, as my requests to view the original boxes allowed me to discover.
In any event, I have tried to provide enough information so that the interested
reader might be able to find the original documents in order to examine them,
to correct any errors that I might have made in transcription, and to advance the
study of working-class writing in general and of Luddite writing in particular.
With rare exceptions, all of the documents within this collection have been
transcribed from the original version. In some cases, determining whether a ver-
sion is original is difficult. Home Office clerks’ copies are often labeled as copies,
but many of the documents in the Home Office Papers appear to be in the hand-
writing of a person who writes frequently—in other words, someone who is not
likely to have been a textile worker.
All of the Home Office and Treasury Solicitor’s documents transcribed herein
are out of copyright under the Copyright Act, having been anonymous or pseud-
onymous, or copyright has been waived, as in the case of official correspondence
by civil servants to and from the Home Office. The Public Record Office is the
custodian of the original documents from the Home Office and Treasury Solici-
tor’s Papers. Documents from the Radcliffe Papers have been reproduced with
the kind permission of the custodians of the papers, the West Yorkshire Ar-
chives Service, Leeds. The materials from the McConnel, Kennedy and Com-
pany Papers are reproduced by courtesy of the University Librarian and Direc-
tor, The John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Letters from the Gott
Papers appear by permission of Leeds University Library, the owners of the let-
ters. Permission to publish extracts from Miscellanies is given by The Department
of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham Library. Let-
ters contained in the Records of the Borough of Nottingham are reproduced by per-
mission of the publisher of the volume, the Nottingham City Council, Adrian
Henstock, Principal Archivist.
Writings of the Luddites
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

o m e o f f i c e s e c r e t a r y Richard Ryder received the following let-

H ter from Manchester shortly after the May 1812 assassination of Prime
Minister Spencer Perceval.

Every frame Breaking act you Make an amendment to only serves to shorten
your Days Theirfore you may Prepaire to go to the Divel to Bee Secraterry
for Mr Perceval theire for there are fire Ships Making to saile by land as well
as by Warter that will not faile to Destroy all the Obnoctious in the both
Houses as you have been at a great Deal of pains to Destroy Chiefe part of
the Country it is know your turn to fall The Remedy for you is Shor De-
struction Without Detection--prepaire for thy Departure and Recomend the
same to thy friends
your Hbl sert &c
Luddites 1

The threat is anonymous, inflammatory, colorful, ungrammatical, and exagger-

ated. It shares those qualities with letters sent by Luddite protesters to employers
in various textile industries during the previous half year, but, while retaining
concern with machinery, it goes beyond the earliest Luddites’ local, measured
threats to destroy machines and takes Luddite writing to a point of visceral fu-
tility that many scholars would consider to be Luddism’s logical extreme. This
letter captures Luddism on a single page.
In the Midlands and the North of England from November 1811 to April 1817,
the Luddites broke machinery, rioted against high food prices, and wrote threat-
2 v writings of the luddites

ening letters, proclamations, and verses. Of course, machine breaking, food riots,
and threats were neither unique nor original to the Luddite movement. What
Luddism provided was a centralizing eponym, the name of Edward (‘‘Ned’’)
Ludd, who was at various times titled General, Captain, or King. The name cir-
culated widely and became a centralizing force largely through Luddite writ-
ing. The name was used to distinguish Regency-period machine breaking from
early outbreaks of frame destruction soon after Nottingham lace manufacturer
William Nunn reported to the Home Office that ‘‘many Hundreds Letters have
been sent sign’d ‘Ludd’ threatening the Lives and to burn and destroy the Houses
Frames and Property of most of the principal Manufacturers through the Post
office.’’ 2 Not all of the activities, however, were conducted by persons announc-
ing themselves as members of General Ludd’s army, and not all of the anony-
mous, threatening letters were signed ‘‘Ludd.’’ We should begin, then, by trying
to define Luddites and Luddite writing.
The problem is a textual-editorial version of that ‘‘problem of definition’’
posed by Malcolm Thomis at the beginning of his book, The Luddites.3 Defining
Luddites or Luddism, however, is not an unproblematic maneuver. For example,
rather than initially providing direct definitions of Luddism, Thomis, J. L. Ham-
mond and Barbara Hammond, and Brian Bailey chart the movement from its
1811 origins among textile workers in Nottinghamshire through its spread into
Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire to its conclusion at the gallows
in front of Leicester Gaol in April 1817. Trade, region, and chronology narrow
the activities that scholars might designate as Luddite.
The protesting workers whom we call Luddites varied from region to region
and even within each region. The Luddites in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and
Leicestershire were framework knitters, also called stockingers, in both the hose
and lace trades. There is very little evidence of persons who were not framework
knitters participating in any attacks on the wide stocking frames that were the tar-
gets of Midlands Luddite protests and destruction. The Midlands saw both the
first and last instances of Luddism—an 11 March 1811 protest in Nottingham fol-
lowed by attacks on stocking frames in Arnold later that same day and the sending
of threatening letters in Derby and Leicester in early 1817 following the execu-
tion of James Towle and others involved in the Loughborough raid of 1816. In the
West Riding of Yorkshire, most Luddites were cloth dressers in the woolen indus-
try, also called croppers; however, Luddite assemblies near Huddersfield regu-
larly included members of other trades—saddlemakers and hatters, for instance.
 Introduction v 3

Luddism there ran a course from a 19 January 1812 arson fire at Oatlands Mills to
a series of threatening letters sent to officials and manufacturers in January 1813
in the wake of the execution at York of Luddites convicted of murdering a Mars-
den mill owner. Cheshire and Lancashire Luddites are typically said to have been
cotton weavers; however, spinners, colliers, fustian makers, and women working
in no textile trade at all were quite likely to be found in the midst of Luddite
riots in Manchester and the surrounding cotton towns. Luddism in the North-
west began with threats made against Stockport factory owners in February 1812
and ended with the 27 August 1812 acquittal of thirty-eight Luddites accused of
illegal oathing.
Luddism must also be defined according to its activities and aims. In all three
of the Luddite regions—the Midlands, Yorkshire’s West Riding, and the vicinity
of Manchester—Luddites sought to put an end to the manufacturers’ use of cer-
tain types of machinery. More precisely, the Luddites opposed the use of ma-
chines whose purpose was to reduce production costs, whether the cost reduc-
tions were achieved by decreasing wages or the number of hours worked. In the
Midlands counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Leicestershire, the ‘‘ob-
noxious’’ machines (in Luddite parlance) were wide knitting frames used to make
cheap and inferior articles in the lace and stocking trades. In Yorkshire, the crop-
pers opposed the use of shearing frames and gig mills in the process of finish-
ing woolen cloth. In the Northwestern cotton districts surrounding Manchester
(Cheshire, Lancashire, northern Derbyshire, and Flintshire), weavers in particu-
lar sought to eliminate the steam-powered looms that were driving down wages
in the cotton trade.
In all three regions, the Luddites used threats against manufacturers and de-
structive attacks on machines, shops, and factories to realize their goals. Not sur-
prisingly, the efforts to destroy machinery were accompanied by threats against
the local officials who attempted to prevent the coercion of the manufacturers
and the destruction of their machines. In the Midlands, Luddism worked in tan-
dem with union-like negotiations to pressure hosiers. Frequently, in the Man-
chester area, attacks on the steam-powered looms coincided with food riots. In
both Manchester and Yorkshire, machine breaking went side by side with politi-
cal radicalism and, at times, arms raids and the administration of illegal oaths.
Definitions by period, location, occupation, and activity are obviously helpful
for concentrating attention on a group whose membership is small enough to be
manageable, but those definitions do little to illuminate the margins of an active
4 v writings of the luddites

population, the membership of which was already economically and politically

marginalized, was spread widely across several counties, and was experiencing
cultural instability wrought by industrialization, famine, economic depression,
and war. Where do we place a spinner from Flintshire who, in May 1812, wrote
a letter to absentee mill owners in Manchester demanding that they raise wages
at a Holywell mill and ‘‘had better be content with a moderate profit, than have
. . . mills destroyed’’? What additional significance is to be found in the fact that
the Flintshire writer backs the threat by alluding to the Luddite attacks on power
looms in Stockport during the previous month? Is it possible to find in that let-
ter a discursive continuity that joins the Flintshire letter to other writing that is
more obviously classified as Luddite? If so, what would that discursive continuity
signify about the character of Luddite protests across regions and trades?
One important, preliminary question remains: what terminology should be
used to refer to those activities? Although my focus is on understanding Ludd-
ism as a discursive continuity, I use the terms ‘‘Luddism,’’ ‘‘riots,’’ ‘‘movement,’’
and ‘‘protests’’ throughout this book. The various historians of Luddism have
their own preferred terms, including risings, riots, campaign, disturbances, agi-
tations, movement, revolt, or rebellion. Each term reflects a bias and structures
the ways in which readers are led to think of the Luddites. Let us consider just a
few examples.
To Hammond and Hammond, the term ‘‘campaign’’ ascribes a purposiveness
to Luddism and an almost political equality with the governmental and indus-
trial forces that the Luddites opposed. Considering Luddism to be a ‘‘campaign’’
with ‘‘aims,’’ Hammond and Hammond can interpret it as generally progressive
and minimally violent but also subject to the plots, designs, and subterfuges of
a government that feared and sought to discredit it. Frank O. Darvall refers to
the machine breaking as the Luddite ‘‘disturbances,’’ which helps him to place
Luddism among the other instances of public disorder that he studies. To E. P.
Thompson, Luddism remains ‘‘Luddism,’’ a transient, though developing ideol-
ogy that shared some features with a larger, underground, nationwide (or per-
haps kingdomwide) process of class formation with the insurrectionary poten-
tial to counteract the combination of capitalism and unreformed government.
‘‘Luddism’’ has become the conventional term, despite the troubling hint of at-
tributing a monolithic character to a very diverse movement. Malcolm Thomis
employs the term ‘‘Luddism,’’ too, but prefers ‘‘machine breaking’’ so as to check
the idea that Luddism was a coherent, revolutionary movement and to distin-
 Introduction v 5

guish genuine Luddism (that is, the breaking of certain textile machinery) from
the food riots, arms raids, politics, and other activities that often accompanied
the breaking of machines. Like Thompson, John Dinwiddy prefers the term
‘‘Luddism’’ for its ability to convey the impression of an ideology developing not
toward revolution but toward a realization among the working classes of the need
to participate in democratic reform. Adrian Randall also seems to prefer ‘‘Ludd-
ism’’ for its ideological, though perhaps not revolutionary, significance—that is,
to define resistance to industrial change and the loss of social cohesion. Most
recently, Brian Bailey employs the term ‘‘rebellion,’’ but, in his final chapter, he
dances from ‘‘campaign’’ to ‘‘movement’’ to ‘‘agitation’’ in an attempt to fix upon
a fitting characterization while avoiding the implications of settling upon one. It
appears that Bailey uses the term ‘‘rebellion’’ to situate the Luddites somewhere
between an angry mob and an organization of purposive revolutionaries.4
Many of these terms entail complications, if only because some of the histo-
rians using them attempt to represent a Luddite totality based to a significant ex-
tent on the secondhand information of spies, manufacturers, soldiers, constables,
magistrates, and government officials. The problem of representation applies to
many studies of working-class life generally. In The Handloom Weavers, Duncan
Bythell writes:

Like any group which fights a losing battle, the cotton handloom weavers
and their problems became an almost forgotten bad dream as soon as they
lost their place in the social and economic structure. . . . And in common
with other long-vanished groups of poor, ill-organized and badly-educated
working men, the weavers left very few literary remains in the form of let-
ters, diaries, notebooks, or memoirs which might give in their own words an
indication of their complaints and aspirations. As a result, they must largely
be seen through the eyes of outsiders—journalists, employers, magistrates or
politicians—who interested themselves in the weavers’ problems, and whose
views have proved more able to survive.5

Bythell’s pessimism about the representation of resistance to economic

change is founded on the difficulty of finding texts written by members of the
laboring classes. The difficulties are not insurmountable. Amid the mass of cor-
respondence and documents that found their way into the Home Office Papers,
county records archives, the collected papers of manufacturers and officials, and
broadsheet collections in town libraries, the form and content of resistance can
6 v writings of the luddites

be discovered, and from that morass the words of the historical losers can be re-
cuperated in such a way that a continuous rhetorical thread might be discerned.
Luddite writing is as various as it is intense, and the writings that are col-
lected here have resisted my early attempts to offer totalizing critiques and broad
generalizations. The variety has led me to think in terms of a continuity, but
not a totality, in Luddite writing. Exploring Luddism’s discursive continuity
avoids the problem of defining Luddism as a purposive campaign, opportunistic
hooliganism, or some other totality in between; however, it also risks blurring
material distinctions, facilitating arbitrary and shifting categorizations, and re-
ducing Luddism to ‘‘text’’ in such a way that we might ignore or overlook the
unique material realities that impel the various Luddite writers and charge their
writings with motives and patterns.
Despite the variety, Luddite discourse can be understood as a more or less
continuous practice deriving from one forceful exercise of naming—the cre-
ation of the eponym ‘‘Ned Ludd.’’ Luddism is also a discourse with a small num-
ber of centralizing features that pertain even when the name ‘‘Ludd’’ is absent.
Commonality in surface features such as threatening language and anonymity
is obvious, but various contextual and intertextual features are more important.
First, Luddite writing typically is aware of its place in relation to a larger array
of activities of resistance to industrial practices, and it recognizes the similari-
ties between activities within the array. Second, it refers to those other activities,
thereby presenting a discursive and active continuity to readers then and now.
Third, it presents itself in opposition to a network of oppressive economic prac-
tices by manufacturers, merchants, and public officials. The following prelimi-
nary sections treating Luddism in the Midlands, the Northwest, and Yorkshire
attempt to sketch the continuity of Luddite rhetoric and its variety, and to ad-
vance the thesis that Luddite writing takes its shape from the discursive contexts
of the different regions and the rhetorical needs of the movement’s writers.
There is good reason to ascribe to the Luddite writers an intention to present
themselves as participants in a continuous discourse. Luddism is distinct from
other movements or disturbances or riots in that the writers of the movement
named themselves and their movement through their embracing the eponym
‘‘Ned Ludd.’’ The authorities, manufacturers, and journalists attempted to im-
pose other labels—‘‘disaffected,’’ ‘‘depredators,’’ ‘‘Jacobins’’—but the labels failed
to stick because Luddite texts superseded the language of the authorities. The
 Introduction v 7

Luddites were the losers in their fight, but their ‘‘linguistic legacy’’ is formidable
and indelible, as Randall has noted.6
That linguistic legacy has not been examined to the extent that it might be.
Although the period of Luddism was brief and its range geographically limited, it
produced a significant body of writing—primarily ballads, chalkings, manifestos,
and, of course, anonymous letters. It is true that the exploits of the machine
wreckers have inspired several authors, even though the writings of the Luddites
have not. The results of inspiration have included a number of novels (among
them, Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley, Phyllis Bentley’s Inheritance, G. A. Henty’s
Through the Fray, and D. F. E. Sykes and G. H. Walker’s Ben o’ Bills, or the Ludd-
ite), a drama (Ernst Toller’s The Machine-Wreckers), and recently an Internet
‘‘techno-opera’’ based on the Luddite song, ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph.’’ 7 Late
twentieth-century critics of culture and apologists for technology misappropri-
ate the term daily. My web-surfing students regularly torment me with a ‘‘Ludd-
ite Purity Test’’ that they have discovered online.
The list of historians and historical scholars who have undertaken to examine
Luddism is every bit as impressive: Frank Peel, John Russell, J. L. Hammond and
Barbara Hammond, Frank Darvall, Malcolm Thomis, Robert Reid, Eric Hobs-
bawm, E. P. Thompson, George Rudé, John Dinwiddy, Craig Calhoun, John
Bohstedt, John Rule, Adrian Randall, Alan Brooke and Lesley Kipling, Kirk-
patrick Sale, and Brian Bailey. As a result of the historians’ monopoly on Ludd-
ism, students of the events of 1811 through 1817 tend to understand the machine
wreckers primarily as historical, economic, and political creatures (although this
last designation is hotly contested). With few exceptions (Hammond and Ham-
mond and Thompson most prominent among them), historians do not consider
the Luddites as rhetoricians or, in the most extreme contrast, as writers of verse
as well as swingers of hammers. Despite the influence of the linguistic turn upon
historical and social studies, scholars typically fail to examine the writings for
rhetorical qualities. My intention in compiling this book is to give a linguistic
and rhetorical face to the Luddites, to let them speak for themselves, insofar as
the passing of time has spared their writings.
Thus, this book is not a work of history but rather of rhetoric and textual
recovery. By collecting and studying Luddite writing in its rhetorical, regional,
and temporal variety, it provides readers with the means to consider Luddism
through the words of the Luddites themselves, not just through the words of
8 v writings of the luddites

those authorities who reported on Luddism, even as they endeavored to suppress

it. This book’s concern with the rhetorical appeals, models, and values under-
lying the Luddite discontent distinguishes it from previous treatments by his-
torians, who frequently read Luddism as a series of events either flowing to or
from some point of economic or historical significance.8 That limited mode of
reading is made possible by historiographical views that acknowledge the exis-
tence of Luddite writing but treat it as if it were secondary evidence at best or,
at worst, little more than silence—in John Bohstedt’s words, the expression of ‘‘a
rage of impotence.’’ 9
Writing to Huddersfield magistrate Joseph Radcliffe, Colonel Thomas Nor-
ton describes the behavior of Luddites hanged at York Castle during the first
two weeks of 1812. Making a leap of judgment, Norton interprets the silence of
the condemned men and, in doing so, reveals the consequences of the erroneous
perception or construction of Luddite ‘‘silence’’:

You know how the three Murderers died, and the five Men for Rawfold’s Mill
died precisely the same. The Chaplain told them it was his Duty to entreat
them to confess. They were silent. He then told them he should take their
Silence as confessions. They were still Silent on that Subject, but spoke Gen-
erally of their Sins. Thus in Fact tacitly allowing their Guilt as to the Offence
they died for, but not doing so in Words. . . . Nor was one Word said by their
People.10

Silence had economic and juridical consequences for the textile workers of the
English Midlands and North who suffered from and resisted the use of machin-
ery to drive down wages and to displace highly skilled laborers from their trades.
Colonel Norton, for example, believed that he had discovered in the selective
silence of the hanged Luddites a tacit confession of guilt, free of negotiation
or qualification. Norton selected a silence and thereby neglected to notice what
others who observed the hangings had noticed—that George Mellor, one of the
three convicted Luddites, forgave his enemies in the crowd and wished them
peace.11
Luddite silence has also had historical consequences in how the disaffected
textile workers have been portrayed and in how their actions have been inter-
preted. My choosing in the opening pages of this book to resort to the words
of one of those authorities who was engaged in suppressing the Luddite risings,
 Introduction v 9

Colonel Norton, is emblematic and symptomatic of the historical consequences

of Luddite silence.
In the field of meaning left vacant by the constructed silence of the Ludd-
ites, many historical and popular works distort Luddite intentions according to
twentieth-century ideational preferences, in the same way that contemporary au-
thorities interpreted them according to the fears, desires, and theories prevailing
in Britain during the Regency period. One result has been a sort of critical can-
nibalism in which historians of Luddism and British labor movements feed on
their own. E. P. Thompson, J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, Malcolm
Thomis, and others, despite their foundational work on Luddism and their pio-
neering research in the Home Office Papers (the single most valuable archive for
studying Luddism), all have been taken to task in a series of disputes over the
structure of history. The disputants have employed Luddism as an occasion or a
moment for those disputes. John Rule, in his excellent introductory study, The
Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England, 1750–1850, traces the disputes but
fails to mention, except briefly, that few of the successive critics have added much
in the way of archival materials to the debate over Luddism. Rule himself pays
little attention to the Luddites’ own writing.
All of the liberties, interpretations, and distortions are made possible by an
uncritical acceptance of a dearth of Luddite texts—that is, by the construction of
silence through historical strategies of ignoring, reducing, or rendering curious
or impotent those Luddite texts that are known to exist. But the Luddites were
not silent. They did not write for a historical record, and there is no indication
that they believed that their words would outlast their purpose, but they were not
silent. Although the Luddites did not produce the same quantity of letters, proc-
lamations, reports, and reward notices as did the magistrates, army officers, spies,
and manufacturers who opposed them and wrote about them, they did write and
left a record of their values, perceptions, methods, and struggle.
This book is an attempt to gather into one volume those texts that fall along a
continuous thread that we might designate ‘‘Luddite’’ and critically, though in-
completely, to reconstruct some of the contexts within which Luddite rhetoric
operated between the years 1811 and 1817. Insofar as is possible, I have attempted
to place my own rhetorical interpretations at a distance from the Luddite docu-
ments themselves; nevertheless, I recognize that any attempt to sketch the discur-
sive and historical contexts against which a reader might better understand each
10 v writings of the luddites

document is necessarily theorized. I hope that rhetorical and literary scholars in

particular will scrutinize and correct any errors and inadequacies in contextual-
ization that may have resulted from my own theoretical presuppositions.

l u d d i s m has inspired a small but important body of scholarship, mostly in

the field of history, as the following brief bibliographical sketch will indicate.
One of the earliest accounts is Francis Raynes’s An Appeal to the Public, Containing
an Account of Services Rendered during the Disturbances in the North of England in
the year 1812 (1817), an account written largely but not entirely from the firsthand
experience of Captain Raynes in leading troops who suppressed Luddism in the
North. His account is useful for understanding Luddism from the perspective
of an army officer, but it is limited to that single perspective and further limited
by Raynes’s choice to concentrate only upon the events of 1812 and 1813 in the
North.
Other firsthand accounts appear in larger histories of trades in the regions.
Gravener Henson’s two-volume History of the Framework-Knitting and Lace Trades
(1831) and William Felkin’s A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace
Manufacturers (1867) make brief mention of Luddism in the framework knitting
trade and are useful for placing the protests within the context of the long history
of trade relations and customs; however, the works treat only Midlands Luddism.
Secondhand histories began to be published in the late 1800s. The most fa-
mous is Francis Peel’s The Risings of the Luddites, Chartists and Plug-drawers (1880).
Peel’s history has been criticized for its creative use of dialogue, but the work
continues to be used as an important resource for understanding Luddism in
the West Riding woolen industry. Shortly after Peel’s work, D. F. E. Sykes and
G. H. Walker published Ben O’ Bill’s, The Luddite: A Yorkshire Tale, a work that
crosses boundaries between history and historical fiction. Like Raynes’s Appeal,
Ben O’ Bill’s concentrates solely on Luddism. Like Peel’s Risings of the Luddites,
Ben O’ Bill’s gives a dramatic account of the events surrounding the attack on
Rawfolds Mill, but it could also be criticized for some creative liberties. An-
other work of local history, but in a documentary tradition, John Russell’s article
titled ‘‘The Luddites,’’ gathered Luddite texts from the collection of papers in
the estate of Richard Enfield, Nottingham Town Clerk after George Coldham.
In 1919 J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond published The Skilled La-
bourer, a work of British labor history that includes what is probably the first his-
tory of Luddism to be based on documentary evidence. They make excellent use
 Introduction v 11

of the Home Office Papers, still the best single archive for the study of Luddism.
They also are the first writers to analyze Luddism region by region, thereby set-
ting the tone for scholarship for the rest of the twentieth century. Although in-
debted to Hammond and Hammond, subsequent scholars have pointed out their
interpretational bias, which includes a tendency to treat the Luddites as proto-
unionists and to dissociate Luddism from revolutionary conspiracy and violence
against persons.
Frank Darvall’s Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England (1934)
is another history that places Luddism within a larger social context and uses
documentary evidence. Though basic, Darvall’s history is useful as an attempt
to examine Luddism as a public, civil phenomenon. His history presaged later
scholarly studies of Luddism as riot.
From the late 1950s through the 1970s, historical interest in Luddism in-
creased. One documentary history, David Douglas’s two-volume English Histori-
cal Documents 1783–1832 (1959), contains some writing by Luddites and by textile
workers bent on organizing to protect the trade and petition for parliamentary
relief. Douglas’s collection is selective and contains many errors in transcription,
but it introduced culturally interested historians to the vast quantity of Luddite
materials. More traditional works of history followed. In Primitive Rebels (1959),
Eric Hobsbawn examined the Luddites as popular forces who sought to express
grievances through means that twentieth-century scholars understood to be re-
actionary. In Labouring Men (1964), Hobsbawm treated the Luddites as part of a
nascent working-class movement. Hobsbawm attempts to bridge a gap between
labor history and Darvall’s study of Luddism as public disturbance by developing
the often cited term ‘‘collective bargaining by riot.’’
The most important treatment of Luddism from the mid-twentieth century
comprises several sections of E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working
Class (1963). Thompson places the Luddites in a line of development of working-
class consciousness that had both economic and political components and was
manifested in lawful and violent ways. Like Hammond and Hammond, Thomp-
son makes a great deal of use of the documentary evidence available in a variety
of archives. Unlike Hammond and Hammond, Thompson seems quite ready to
accept that Luddism was part of an underground, but probably not nationwide,
radical movement. Thompson’s apparent readiness to welcome that possibility
prompted a reply from Malcolm Thomis in his 1970 book, The Luddites: Machine-
Breaking in Regency England. In The Luddites, Thomis makes a convincing case
12 v writings of the luddites

that Luddism was not a conspiratorial movement and that it lacked a clear leader-
ship. Thomis’s documentary history, Luddism in Nottinghamshire, followed soon
after, in 1972. It draws heavily, even comprehensively, on the Home Office Papers,
but Thomis only considers Luddism in the Midlands and overlooks other archival
sources.
After the publication of Thomis’s The Luddites, several books tried to popu-
larize the history of Luddism. These include Douglas Liversidge’s The Luddites:
Machine-Breakers of the Early Nineteenth Century (1972), John Zerzan and Paula
Zerzan’s very brief overview The Luddites: A History of Machine Breaking at the
Dawn of Capitalism (1976), Angela Bull’s The Machine-Breakers: A Story of the
Luddites (1980), and Laura Salvatori’s Luddism: A Revolution That Failed (1983).
None of the works contains much original research, and Bull’s and Liversidge’s
books are aimed at a youth audience.
In a 1979 article, ‘‘Luddism and Politics in the Northern Counties,’’ and a 1986
book, From Luddism to the First Reform Bill, John Dinwiddy makes the clearest
attempt yet to locate Luddism accurately within a broader context of political
action and the increasing awareness of the need for political action among the
working classes at the time. Dinwiddy’s work is important for its demonstration
of the linguistic similarities between Luddism and Radicalism and for it cautious
treatment in distinguishing real links for cases where only similarities exist. Din-
widdy sees Luddite politics as more reformist than revolutionary.
Two other works from 1986 examine Luddism in vastly different ways. John
Rule’s The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England, 1750–1850 contains an
overview of prior histories of Luddism and an evaluation of those histories. Rule
cautiously approves Thompson’s interpretation of Luddism for its being in ac-
cord with popular tradition. Robert Reid’s Land of Lost Content: The Luddite Re-
volt, 1812 is a study of Luddism in the West Riding that draws primarily on the
same resources as other histories in reaching a conclusion that heralds much of
the late twentieth century’s understanding of Luddism. Reid concludes that amid
contradictory evidence of broader labor organization and local resentments, only
one factor stands out as a cause of Luddism—the widespread and systematic use
of technology. Reid’s work heralds the most recent trend in the study of Luddism,
interpreting it as a reaction against technological innovation and the incorpora-
tion of new technology into what had previously been manual trades.
Craig Calhoun’s The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular
Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (1982) and John Bohstedt’s Riots and
 Introduction v 13

Community Politics in England and Wales, 1790–1810 (1983) initiated a trend toward
understanding Luddism as a community phenomenon. Both authors examine the
ways in which Luddism results from tensions manifested in local contexts with
particular social structures and traditions. Both works are important examples
of what can be done within the current field of cultural studies, but both works
have limitations. Calhoun makes less use of primary documents than Bohstedt,
and Bohstedt concentrates only upon Manchester. Neither writer pays much at-
tention to actual Luddite writing.
Adrian Randall’s Before the Luddites (1991) continues the trend toward localiz-
ing interpretation but Randall does not assume community as the operant locale.
Rather, he treats Luddism in the woolen industry by considering the differences
between trade structures in the West Country and Yorkshire. Randall’s history is
among the most important works of labor history in recent years, and he makes
extensive use of primary sources, but his purpose is not to study Luddism proper
but rather the pre-Luddite machine breaking in the West Country.
Liberty or Death: Radicals, Republicans, and Luddites, 1793–1823, by Alan Brooke
and Lesley Kipling, examines Yorkshire Luddism as a part of a larger study of
labor and radicalism in the decades following the French Revolution. Brooke and
Kipling make good use of primary documents relevant to Luddism and quote
from many of them, but presenting a large collection of Luddite texts from all
Luddite regions is not part of their project.
For nearly twenty-five years after Thomis’s The Luddites, no comprehensive
treatment of Luddism itself was produced. In the 1990s, two writers undertook
the task. Kirkpatrick Sale’s Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on
the Industrial Revolution (1995) examines Luddism across all regions. Sale quotes
extensively from primary documents, particularly Luddite texts; however, Rebels
against the Future advances the thesis that Luddism is primarily an antitechnology
movement, and it ignores some Luddite texts that express wider grievances. In
other words, a reader will find a rather narrow, albeit interesting, view of Luddism
in Sale’s book. Unfortunately, Sale has contributed to the very narrow percep-
tion of Luddites as technophobes—a misconception that has defined Luddism in
popular and business periodicals and on Internet sites for the past decade.
Brian Bailey’s 1998 The Luddite Rebellion is the most complete chronological
study to date, though not a documentary history. Bailey concludes his study by
denying that Luddism had a political agenda, reaffirming George Rudé’s earlier
remark in The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and En-
14 v writings of the luddites

gland, 1730–1848 that politics was not intrinsic to Luddism but rather was intru-
sive. Besides exemplifying the condescension of history about which Thompson
warned later generations of scholars, Bailey’s conclusion is based on his assump-
tion that politics means macropolitics. He attempts to chart the differences be-
tween Luddism in the different regions, but he lacks the sense of politics and
protest as local, an approach that Calhoun and Bohstedt had already proved valu-
able.
Prior to Sale’s Rebels against the Future and Bailey’s The Luddite Rebellion, the
trend in the study of Luddism had been toward considering the importance of
communities in shaping or employing discourses that occurred across several
communities and regions. This volume uses documentary evidence to continue
that trend by demonstrating the varieties of discourse within the different Ludd-
ite regions. The volume contains texts that suggest that Luddism emerged in
different regions as a labor movement uniquely suited to the exigencies of the
affected trades in the different regions between 1811 and 1817 and shaped by the
discourses prevalent in those regions. Furthermore, while presenting documen-
tary sources region by region, this volume also expands the study of Luddism by
considering the rhetorical influences and devices employed by the Luddites and
their sympathizers.

a l t h o u g h t h e h i s t o r i e s that I have surveyed here range from ade-

quate to excellent and are readily available, a brief, historical overview of Ludd-
ism is in order. The Luddites were artisans—primarily skilled workers in the
textile industries in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Cheshire, the
West Riding of Yorkshire, and Lancashire—who, when faced with the replace-
ment of their own skilled labor by machines and the use of machines (operated
by less-skilled labor) to drive down wages by producing inferior goods, turned to
wrecking the offensive machines in order to preserve their jobs and their trades.
This is not to say that the Luddites were the only machine wreckers. Because
organized, large-scale strikes were impractical due to the scattering of manufac-
tories throughout different regions, machine wrecking, which E. J. Hobsbawm
calls ‘‘collective bargaining by riot,’’ had occurred in Britain since the Resto-
ration.12 For example, in 1675 Spitalfields narrow weavers destroyed ‘‘engines,’’
power machines that could each do the work of several people, and in 1710 a
London hosier employing too many apprentices in violation of the Framework
Knitters Charter had his machines broken by angry stockingers.13
 Introduction v 15

Even parliamentary action in 1727, making the destruction of machines a capi-

tal felony, did little to stop the activity. In 1768 London sawyers attacked a mech-
anized sawmill. Following the failure in 1778 of the stockingers’ petitions to Par-
liament to enact a law regulating ‘‘the Art and Mystery of Framework Knitting,’’
Nottingham workers rioted, flinging machines into the streets. In 1792 Man-
chester weavers destroyed two dozen Cartwright steam looms owned by George
Grimshaw. Sporadic attacks on machines (wide knitting frames, gig mills, shear-
ing frames, and steam-powered looms and spinning jennies) continued, espe-
cially from 1799 to 1802 and through the period of economic distress after 1808.14
The first incident during the years of the most intense Luddite activity, 1811–
13, was the 11 March 1811 attack upon wide knitting frames in a shop in the
Nottinghamshire village of Arnold, following a peaceful gathering of frame-
work knitters near the Exchange Hall at Nottingham. In the preceding month,
framework knitters, also called stockingers, had broken into shops and removed
jack wires from wide knitting frames, rendering them useless without inflicting
great violence upon the owners or incurring risk to the stockingers themselves;
the 11 March attack was the first in which frames were actually smashed. The
grievances consisted, first, of the use of wide stocking frames to produce large
amounts of cheap, shoddy stocking material that was cut and sewn rather than
completely fashioned and, second, of the employment of ‘‘colts,’’ workers who
had not completed the seven-year apprenticeship required by law.15
Frames continued to be broken in many of the villages surrounding Notting-
ham. The Nottingham Journal of 23 March 1811 and 20 April 1811 reports several
weeks of almost nightly attacks in the villages, all successful and carried out with-
out the arrest of any attackers. The summer of 1811 was quiet, but a bad harvest
helped to renew disturbances in November, when, as the story goes, stockingers
assembled in the wooded lands near Bulwell and were led in attacks on a number
of shops by a commander calling himself Ned Ludd.16
Letters from correspondents in the region to the Home Office report a num-
ber of riotous disturbances, including the burning of haystacks and ‘‘an anony-
mous letter received by a Magistrate threatening still greater acts of violence
by fire.’’ 17 Letters dated 13 and 14 November 1811 request that the government
dispatch military aid because ‘‘2000 men, many of them armed, were riotously
traversing the County of Nottingham.’’ In December 1811 public negotiations
between the framework knitters and their employers, the hosiers, some of which
were carried out in the two Nottingham newspapers, failed to result in the return
16 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

of wages, piece rates, and frame rents to earlier levels or in any satisfactory ame-
lioration of the framework knitters’ economic circumstances.18 Frame breaking
continued in the Midlands counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Lei-
cestershire through the winter and early spring of 1812. It resurfaced in 1814 and
again in Leicestershire in the autumn of 1816.
The first signs of the spread of Luddism to the cotton-manufacturing center
of Manchester and its environs in Lancashire and Cheshire materialized in De-
cember 1811 and January 1812. Manchester Luddism was centered on the cotton-
weaving trade, which had failed in an attempt to organize in 1808, and which was
suffering from the use of steam-powered looms to decrease the wages of skilled
weavers at a time of rising food prices and depressed trade. In Manchester, un-
like Nottingham, the offensive machinery was housed in large factories. Luddite
raids in and around Manchester tended to be carried out by large numbers of
attackers and also often coincided with food riots, which provided crowds that
were large enough to carry out the factory attacks and that came from a broadly
distressed population ready to take action. Luddite activity continued in Lan-
cashire and Cheshire into the summer of 1812 and blended into efforts to establish
larger trade combinations and into political reform.
The factory owners and cloth merchants of the woolen industry in the West
Riding of Yorkshire were the targets of Luddism in that county. Although West
Riding Luddites represented a variety of skilled trades, the most active and nu-
merous by far were the cloth dressers, called croppers, whose work was threat-
ened by the introduction of the shearing frame. The croppers’ work consisted of
using forty- or fifty-pound handheld shears to cut, or crop, the nap from woven
woolen cloth in order to make a smooth and salable article. They were threat-
ened by two types of machines. The gig mill, which had been prohibited by law
since the rule of Edward VI, was a machine that raised the nap on woolen cloth
so that it might be sheared more easily. The shearing frames actually mechanized
the process of shearing and reduced the level of skill and experience necessary to
finish an article of woolen cloth, even though the machines could not attain the
quality of hand-cropped cloth. From January 1812 through midspring, Luddite
attacks in Yorkshire concentrated on small cropping shops as well as large mills
where frames were used. In April Luddites began to attack mill owners and raided
houses and buildings for arms and lead.
In all three regions, Luddites responded to the distressing concurrence of high
 Introduction v 17

food prices, depressed trade caused by the wars and by the trade prohibitions im-
posed under the Orders in Council, and changes in the use of machinery so as to
reduce wages for the amount of work done. Luddite activities ended as a result
of the rescinding of the Orders in Council, the suppression of the riots by the
government’s use of spies and the military, some wage and usage concessions,
and some reduction in food prices.
I have said that I would like to avoid overtheorizing in treating the writings of
the Luddites. At the same time, however, I have discovered, guided by the work of
a number of scholars, that Luddite writing is best considered not as a totality but
rather as a set of discourses generated under unique local circumstances. Four
scholars in particular, working in three different disciplines, have developed ap-
proaches that guided me through my decision to arrange the texts by region and
to discover in the following sections the local discursive circumstances that gen-
erated Luddite writing in each region.
In a chapter titled ‘‘Community in the Southeast Lancashire Textile Region,’’
Craig Calhoun writes:

Different sorts of communities were apt to be involved in different agitations,

and involved in agitation to different degrees. This was partly because of the
different strengths of social and material resources which they could bring to
the support of their action, partly because of the different trades which gave
their members economic interests, and partly because of the different social
values which gave the members of those trades moral interests in one or an-
other kind of agitation.19

Calhoun’s examination of local custom as the basis of the formation of social

structures that we eventually came to understand as class has influenced later
considerations of Luddism, such as Adrian Randall’s. Working at much the same
time and in the same vein as Calhoun, John Bohstedt applied the idea of local-
ization to his study of riots as events emerging from unique structures of com-
munity politics.20
Luddite language is quite varied. Dealing with that variety and the often con-
tradictory discourses subscribed by the name of Ludd would be a difficult task but
for the historical and literary models set out by Adrian Randall and John Mee.
Randall argues that apparently contradictory forms of discourse in the resistance
against machinery need not be compartmentalized: ‘‘These forms were in no way
18 v writings of the luddites

mutually exclusive. . . . Different methods were adopted singly or in combination

as and when deemed appropriate both in the particular context obtaining at any
one time and in the general context of that community’s tradition and experi-
ence of previous conflicts of a similar kind.’’ 21 Randall anticipates very impor-
tant work by John Mee, who utilizes a version of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s concept
of bricolage to portray William Blake as a writer who, for practical reasons, ap-
propriates and employs contradictory discourses, much like other working-class
radicals and autodidacts.22
David Worrall has extended localization to the study of romantic-period dis-
course in his book Radical Culture. Worrall’s structuralist method proves quite
useful in examining the Luddite texts and reclaiming them from the margins of
history. Worrall’s most important lessons, I think, are that ‘‘there are no discur-
sively marginal figures in Radical Culture’’ and that ‘‘Every ultra-radical utterance
is already fully constituted elsewhere within the culture of its specific language
system: there are no soliloquies.’’ 23 Such ideas have made it easier for me to con-
sider what the repeatability of Midlands Luddite discourse in the Northwest and
Yorkshire means to the Luddites in those regions.
I say earlier that Luddism is generated not by conspiracy or the sudden emer-
gence of class consciousness but rather by a single, forceful act of naming—the
creation and appropriation of the eponym ‘‘Ned Ludd.’’ Of course, in order to
be just to the Luddite writers and keeping in mind the lessons of particulariz-
ing historians and cultural scholars, I must emphasize here that the forceful act
of naming meant different things to writers in the different regions. In Notting-
hamshire, Ned Ludd was a force generated wholly from within the framework
knitting trade that perceived itself as constituted and sanctioned, although
threatened. In Manchester, Ludd was a fairly unified set of resistances that could
provide a focus for constituting new laboring populations in the cotton trades
into a cohesive body capable of expressing its will to industrialists and a magis-
tracy that sought to keep it unconstituted and weak. In Yorkshire’s West Riding,
General Ludd was a combination of law and local power that could be mapped
onto a trade that recently had lost its statutory protections but that had not yet
become impotent. The remainder of this introductory chapter examines the pri-
mary discursive features in the three Luddite regions and the unique character-
istics that led to the varied significance of the eponym ‘‘Ludd’’ in the different
regions.
 Midlands Luddism v 19

v midlands luddism

Early in his book Radical Expression, James Epstein recounts one side of an ex-
change between Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke. In The Rights of Man, Paine
demands of Burke a clear enunciation of ‘‘the Constitution.’’ Defining a con-
stitution as ‘‘a thing antecedent to government,’’ Paine protests in the form of a
question: ‘‘Can then Mr. Burke produce the English Constitution? If he cannot,
we may fairly conclude, that though it has been so much talked about, no such
thing as a constitution exists, or ever did exist, and consequently that the people
have yet a constitution to form.’’ 24
The appeal to ‘‘the Constitution’’ was a master trope during much of the long
eighteenth century. The Whig interpretation of history, which Herbert Butter-
field demonstrates did much to unify a dangerously diverse English society, has
obscured from the view of twentieth-century scholars the existence of a number
of English subcultures with constitutive codes of their own, not isolated from
the larger culture but rather paralleling and intersecting it. Constitutive rheto-
ric extended far beyond the argumentative appeals of the usual suspects—the
Whigs, Tories, Jacobins, and Radicals, whose narratives are typically reproduced
as the history of Great Britain during revolutionary, Napoleonic, industrial, and
Reform eras. The subcultures grounded their claims, whether innovative or re-
sistant, upon constitutive codes that gathered and named a collective body.
Some scholars have begun to note this diversity of codes, and the search for
diversity has almost come to replace the latter-day whiggist search for unity.
These scholars include Craig Calhoun in his reevaluation of Thompson’s Making
of the English Working Class; Iain MacCalman in his reconstruction of the ‘‘radi-
cal underworld’’ of revolutionary-era London; David Worrall in his discovery
of the circulation and recombination of Spencean and other radical texts in the
context of governmental surveillance; John Mee in his application of Claude
Lévi-Strauss’s concept of bricolage to William Blake’s use of a variety of radical
and millenarian discourses; and the contributors to James Vernon’s Re-reading
the Constitution, an effort to bring postmodern narrative approaches to bear upon
nineteenth-century debates over the English ‘‘constitution.’’
Calhoun, for instance, recognizes the diversity and identifies community, in
its local particularity, as ‘‘the crucial social bond unifying workers’’ during the
early years of the industrial revolution.25 Although many of the ‘‘reactionary radi-
20 v writings of the luddites

cals,’’ as Calhoun calls them, were community-oriented, we ought not to ignore

the codes, transcending and transecting communities, that constituted various
groups—even those which cannot be subsumed under the term ‘‘reactionary rad-
icals.’’ Each of these groups sought validation in its own particular constitutive
experiences, and these experiences derived from a larger mass of cultural values
and presumably shared experiences. For example, the Whig government and its
historians sought validation in the Glorious Revolution; the Yorkshire Move-
ment sought it in Alfred the Great and the ‘‘ancient constitution’’; the Tory-
turned-Radical journalist, William Cobbett, sought it in the mores of his child-
hood, mores that defined an individual’s relationship to the land.
Nevertheless, motives and occasions to innovate or resist, as well as the dis-
courses that express or narrate those motives in action, are not created in or
appropriated into a vacuum. Furthermore, motives and occasions have increas-
ingly come to be understood as local, especially since Thompson’s empirical-left
perspective has come to define the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
British culture. The study of Althusserian structures, so well exposed by Thomp-
son in The Poverty of Theory, has been supplanted by nontotalizing studies of
narratives, voices, customs (even those held ‘‘in common’’), and ‘‘community
politics.’’ Some of the historical and discursive studies mentioned in the previous
section—the work of Calhoun, Bohstedt, Randall, Worrall, Mee, and Janowitz,
for example—have been especially important to undo the damage done by total-
ization. They have revealed historical and discursive realities that are transgres-
sive, contradictory, bifurcated, and embedded in local culture.
This section considers the utilization of constitutive discourses in the texts of
resistance of the Midlands Luddites in ways that cross boundaries of law, custom,
community, and trade. Like the discourses that Mee and Worrall examine, Ludd-
ite rhetoric is transgressive, mutant, and hybridizing; nevertheless, Luddite writ-
ing seeks and assumes a constitutive ground and makes use of originary docu-
ments, texts that create a myth of origins and impart legitimacy to the framework
knitting trade and to activities undertaken in its defense. In short, I argue that
the writers of the Luddite movement assume a model of selective culture that
enables them to avail themselves of a text-oriented language of origination and
constitution that parallels the language employed by radicals of the period and
enables them to apply it as a metaphor for advancing their own local cause.
Like other groups, the textile workers of the English Midlands and North
based both their daily vocational practices and their breaking of the machinery
 Midlands Luddism v 21

that was being used to drive down wages and produce cloth of inferior quality
upon a group foundation—the customs of ‘‘the Trade,’’ which Trade often takes
the form of a governing body, both in its legitimate and covert forms. A Ludd-
ite letter from Nottingham (M13) illustrates such a trade discourse: ‘‘I do hereby
discharge all Persons what soever from takeing out work called the Single Preess,
or the two Coarse ole which is condemn by Law, any Persons Found so doing to
the great----injuries of our Trade.’’ The ‘‘Single Preess, or the two Coarse ole’’
was a type of knitting that produced an inferior article of hosiery or gloves that
unraveled and lost its shape. The reputation of the entire trade, including that
part of the trade that did not produce the two-course hole, would have suffered
by association with the disreputable producers. The writer of the letter assumes
the weal of the trade to be deserving of legal protection, and injuries to it, such
as inferior knitting practices like the two course hole, are actionable under law.
The existence of the Charter of the Company of Framework Knitters provided
a memorial of legal origins for the stocking trade and allowed it to build its own
constitutive texts, such as wage agreements and the Company Rule Books, on
that foundation. Furthermore, the charter and the additional texts were inter-
preted and expanded according to custom and trade usage, along the lines of the
model of ‘‘customary legality,’’ a practice described by Adrian Randall in which
custom interprets law.26
Custom provided the practical, everyday foundation for the framework knit-
ting trade. It governed what knitting techniques ought to be employed, how jour-
neymen and small masters negotiated for wages with hosiers and large masters,
and how frame rents would be set. Although custom helped to ground the culture
that gave rise to Luddism and defined its codes, in their writings the Luddites
did not appeal merely to the customary, or to what J. G. A. Pocock calls ‘‘the im-
memorial.’’ 27 Rather, they often sought validation for custom itself. Calhoun has
argued that the ‘‘Luddite phenomenon was a movement which grew directly out
of local community roots.’’ 28 Indeed, custom does play a role in communal en-
deavors; however, in the case of the Nottinghamshire Luddites in particular, cus-
tom was extracommunal, in terms both of ‘‘origin’’ (if that word retains any sig-
nificance) and of extension, evident in the texts produced by protesting workers
in the stocking trade from 1811 through 1812—texts that have been consulted too
infrequently.
Often, the Luddite writers sought validation for custom itself in originary
documents of sorts. These documents served a ‘‘constitutional’’ purpose for the
22 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

textile trades and, ironically, were created by Paine’s ‘‘unconstitutional’’ English

government. They include statutes regulating the trades by prohibiting colting,
which is the hiring of workers who had not completed apprenticeships within a
trade (5 Elizabeth cap. 4), prohibiting the use of the gig mill (5 & 6 Edward VI
cap. 22), and limiting the number of looms any weaver could possess (2 & 3 Philip
and Mary cap. 11).29 In probably the best example of such validation, the frame-
work knitters or stockingers, who launched the Luddite protests in Nottingham
in 1811, justified their actions by referring to their own originary or constitutive
charter, the 1663 Charter of the Company of Framework Knitters.30 Previously,
scholars had believed that no copy of the charter existed, so little consideration
has been given to the derivation of codes from the charter and similar docu-
ments. However, inspection of copies of the charter, which are available in Lon-
don’s Guildhall Library archives and in the Report of the Select Committee on
Petitions of the Framework Knitters, makes it possible to supplement what we
already know of the framework knitters’ primary constitutive document through
the company’s Rule Book (derived from the charter) and through the historical
work of Gravener Henson, William Felkin, and J. D. Chambers.31
Although the charter founds a particular trade community, the extracommu-
nal character of the charter is evident in two facts about it. First, by its origin
in the seventeenth century and by its extension during the period of Notting-
ham Luddism, the charter and its derivative discourses were English nationalistic
documents. Through the charter, the company was established to protect the En-
glish stocking industry against transplantation to foreign shores. Early attempts
at transplantation almost smack of ‘‘industrial treason.’’ William Lee, the inven-
tor of the knitting loom, had removed his own frames and artisans to France,
although most returned to England after his death. Other Britons conspired with
foreign states to capture the industry—Henry Mead and Southcot Vaymouth
with Venice, and Abraham Jones with Holland.32 The charter and the Worship-
ful Company’s rules provide for the punishment of such offenders. Furthermore,
the most constitutionally ‘‘refined’’ of the trades that produced Luddism, Mid-
lands framework knitting, was also the least insurrectionist. Founded to pre-
serve an English industry, the charter perhaps tempered any revolutionary fervor
that might otherwise have pulled Midlands Luddism outside of its nationalistic
and legal-regulatory bounds. For instance, Midlands Luddism did not consis-
tently produce Jacobinical threats in the way that Yorkshire Luddism—which
lacked founding documents and a formal, document-based trade organization—
 Midlands Luddism v 23

did from its beginning, as we find in a leaflet (Y4) distributed in Yorkshire early
in 1812, in which ‘‘General Ludd Commander of the Army of Redressers’’ calls
upon ‘‘all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at large . . . to shake off the hateful
Yoke of a Silly Old Man.’’
A revolutionary style in the Yorkshire proclamation is clear in both the sub-
stance of the argument (‘‘crush the old Government & establish a new one’’) and
in the totalizing tenor of the salutation, which combines into a single ideological
entity (‘‘Generous Countrymen’’) the interests of particular trades (‘‘all Crop-
pers, Weavers’’) with a general and unbounded ‘‘&c & Public at large.’’ Although
it would be difficult to demonstrate that the framework knitters’ charter had a
moderating influence on Nottinghamshire Luddism, I think that it is sufficient to
demonstrate that moderation characterized the ludding of the framework knit-
ters, who had a document that instituted, organized, and provided for the regula-
tion of their trade and the addressing of grievances. In contrast, the more violent
and insurrectionary croppers of West Yorkshire had no constitutive document
and only one protectionist document—the very specific statute prohibiting the
use of the gig mill. And that statute had been repealed in 1809.
Second, the codes and values embodied in the charter had been carried from
London, the center of stocking manufacture in the seventeenth and early eigh-
teenth centuries, to Nottingham and other Midlands communities during the
middle and late eighteenth century. The masters and assistants in the stocking
trade were aware of national, and not just communal, issues facing the trade. Mi-
gration from one community to another was one method by which the knitters
participated in the new industrial economy, but the charter moved with them
from one community to others and was invoked periodically as the binding force
of the trade.
The charter is unusual as a constitutive document in that it designates eco-
nomic (and what amount to legal and political) operants through the dispensa-
tion of King Charles II. The Luddites, however, do not necessarily appeal to the
dispensation of the king but rather to the charter itself. We cannot know to what
extent they may have been concerned about the risks inhering in what might ap-
pear to be a Jacobite appeal (the Stuart line having been deposed in the 1688
Revolution); it simply is beside the point. What is to the point is that the Ludd-
ites continued to locate their founding document in what was a living context
linking their present to their past through a moral economy that was recognized
and chartered by a king and empowered to regulate and sustain itself.
24 v writings of the luddites

The nature of self-regulatory power is evident in the charter and the com-
pany’s Rule Book and has also been outlined by J. L. Hammond and Barbara Ham-
mond and by Chambers. Among the most important mechanisms were those
specifically authorizing search, supervision, and legal standing to ensure quality
of work. There were also mechanisms for prosecuting those selling substandard
goods or undercutting prices, for licensing apprentices, and for preventing the
flow to the continent of workers and machines.33 As recently as 1808, the com-
pany brought a claim, decided at King’s Bench favorably to the company, against
William Payne, who had set up shop without being a freeman of the trade.34 Both
Henson and Chambers note the national-protectionist intentions underlying the
charter. The mingling of trade, legal, and national-political languages and pur-
poses in the charter make it interesting as a discourse event. Most important, its
multiple purposes seem to have facilitated its use as law against law and its use
to justify the violent breaking of the objectionable wide stocking frames used to
drive down wages and produce inferior material—especially hosiery articles that
were flimsy or lost their shape.
Trade claims were pursued through other avenues, too. In 1805 and 1809 the
stockingers had negotiated higher piece rates with the large hosiers who em-
ployed them, and in 1811 Nottingham and Melbourne knitters wrote letters to
the Nottingham Review reminding the hosiers of the earlier agreements.35 Stock-
ingers also asked hosiers for advice in petitioning Parliament. By 1813, after Par-
liament passed legislation prohibiting frame breaking and repealing many of the
earlier laws that had constituted the codes of the Luddite subculture, the tex-
tile workers joined other artisans (unsuccessfully) to petition Parliament not to
repeal the Elizabethan statute (5 Elizabeth cap. 4) that fixed apprenticeships at
seven years and prohibited colting.36 But the charter itself had established a sys-
tem of self-regulation, running beside and sometimes intersecting (but usually
not threatening) the larger legal system.
The charter was not merely a political document conferring legal rights over
property to the knitters. Even the independent artisans working in the moral
economy did not own, in an ordinary sense, the materials that were produced into
cloth; the regulatory powers held by the Framework Knitters’ Company are evi-
dence of this. Each knitter did, however, have an investment in those materials
by virtue of the charter. In this case, economic power and accompanying legal
rights derive from a political assignation.37 Often, the legal and trade languages
are blended almost seamlessly, like the sketch of a gallows and the mention of the
 Midlands Luddism v 25

stocking frame in a March 1812 letter (M23) from ‘‘Genaral Lud’s’’ headquarters
to George Rowbottom, a Nottinghamshire hosier.
To investigate Luddite conceptions of trade law and societal law and the for-
mation of a discourse of political and economic power, we might consider the
legalistic vocabulary of stockinger self-regulation as it appears in a number of
documents. Luddite declarations are especially good examples of the Luddites’
appropriation of official discourse, repeated in the course of transforming the
moral economy into a moral-economic polity.38
Although frame wrecking seems not to have taken place in Nottinghamshire
between March and November 1811, it appears from the 1 January 1812 document
titled ‘‘By the Framework Knitters, A Declaration’’ (M10) and the November 1811
‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’ posted by ‘‘Thos Death’’ to ‘‘Edward Ludd’’ (M1)
that a Luddite subculture had been forming and devising its own language of
origination and continuation, despite the lull. The January ‘‘Declaration’’ (M10)
is the more general of the two declarations, more clearly oriented toward affirm-
ing a system with regulatory powers: ‘‘[T]he Framework knitters are empowered
to break and destroy all Frames and Engines that fabricate Articles in a fraudu-
lent and deceitful manner and to destroy all Framework knitters Goods what-
soever that are so made.’’ The Luddite writer conceives of the power granted by
the charter to be so great, perhaps for reasons of primacy or of decentralizing
custom, that the framework knitters empowered by the charter can nullify even
an Act of Parliament, the law that made breaking frames a capital felony, that
contravenes the charter. Under this conception, power devolves to the trades and
falls under the regulatory powers of custom, thereby becoming permanent and
legitimating the subculture against the larger nation.
The second Nottinghamshire declaration that is also useful for understanding
the formation of a Luddite culture with a discourse of legitimation and power
of its own is the ‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’ (M1). One of the more remark-
able features of the ‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’ is its manifesting a democratic
political and juridical structure within which the assembled ‘‘General Agitators’’
judge the guilt of a master, determine a penalty, and charge or authorize Ludd
with the execution of that penalty and the distribution of the recovered money
among the workmen. Devolved power, then, is even a feature within texts struc-
tured as Luddite-to-Luddite communications.
A democratic subtext also helps to explain the nature of the Nottinghamshire
Luddite ‘‘judgment.’’ The artisan tradition had provided for the levying of fines
26 v writings of the luddites

or forfeitures (usually of finished and unfinished goods) against trade members

who violated the trade’s rules. The violating members typically were masters, but
artisans nevertheless, hence subject to government by the society and its rules.
Even during the period of increasing social and professional distance between
master and artisan in the late eighteenth century and the early years of the nine-
teenth, made possible by increased mechanization and by the replacement among
the large masters of trade customs and usages by the accumulation of capital,
artisans sought to enforce their rules against masters whom they still considered
to be members of their society.
The language of the ‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’ is juridically legalistic; the
document titled ‘‘By the Framework Knitters, A Declaration’’ (M10) is more po-
litical in its legalisms. Both address matters of jurisdiction, judgment, damages,
forfeiture, and punishment in case of default, and the assignment of agency and
surrogacy in enforcement. Although the Luddite writers did not make any direct
attribution of their stylistic sources, in vocabulary and points of concern both
declarations seem to be hybrids of legal and other governmental forms. Such
forms were readily available within some of the established trades of the period.
For example, an 1812 document, ‘‘The Articles to Be Observed by the Wool-
combers,’’ contains a number of forms, such as a ‘‘Form of an Address, To any
master, or firm, who has employed men who have been divided,’’ and a ‘‘Form of
a Petition, To obtain redress of any grievances, &c.’’ Many of the forms resemble
the Luddite documents in style and vocabulary.39
Legal forms and models of writs and warrants for all varieties of offenses were
readily available, too, in books written specifically for magistrates and clerks.40
Another likely influence and model may have been the prince regent’s ‘‘Procla-
mation,’’ which was posted up and published in several newspapers in the Luddite
regions:

By His Royal Highness the PRINCE OF WALES, A PROCLAMATION.

George, P. R.
WHEREAS it has been represented that a considerable Number of dis-
orderly Persons, chiefly composed of Stockingers . . . have for some Time
past assembled themselves together in a riotous and tumultuous Manner, in
the TOWN and COUNTY of the TOWN of NOTTINGHAM. . . . We,
therefore, acting in the Name and on the Behalf of His Majesty, being duly
sensible of the mischievous Consequences which must inevitably ensue . . .
 Midlands Luddism v 27

from such wicked and illegal Practices, if they go unpunished . . . issue this
Proclamation, hereby strictly commanding all Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs,
Under-Sheriffs, and all other Civil Officers whatsoever, within this said Town
and County of the Town of Nottingham . . . that they do use their utmost En-
deavours to discover, apprehend, and bring to Justice the Persons concerned
in the Riotous Proceedings above mentioned.41

The Luddite declarations employ not only a vocabulary similar to both the
model warrant and the prince regent’s proclamation but also a similar struc-
ture—a movement from representation of a grievance to rule to remedy to
authorization. Even those letters making the most violent of threats, without
offering the recipient an opportunity to reform or make a remedy, employ the
representation formula. Henry Wood of Leicester (M34) is told that ‘‘It having
been represented to me that you are one of those damned miscreants who deligh
in distressing and bringing to povety those poore unhapy and much injured men
called Stocking makers; now be it known unto you that I have this day issued
orders for your being shot through the body with a Leden Ball.’’ No conditions
and no chance for redress are offered, but the representation formula remains
intact.
Such vocabulary and structure seem to have been deliberately chosen by the
Luddite writers in reliance upon the model of authority afforded by the char-
ter, but the style depended upon the perceived power of the charter. We might
contrast the style of an 1812 Nottingham letter (M15), written shortly after the
stockingers had exhausted hopes of restoring the force of the charter:

This is to inform you that if you do make any more two course Hole, you will
have all your Frames broken and your Goods too, though you may think you
have made your doom just I shall know how to break your frames, we will not
suffer you to win the Trade will die first, if we cant do it just to night we will
break them yet, and if we cant break them we can break something better and
we will do it too in spite of the Devil.

The letter uses no official or legal model, makes no appeal to the charter or to
negotiated prices, and is much more direct in its threat against a hosier. The
document resembles much more closely the style of Yorkshire threats, which
tended to rely on trade disapproval, unsanctioned by law, for its moral and per-
suasive force.42
28 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

Following the creation of the Nottingham Corporation Committee and the

increased involvement of the national government in suppressing the risings,
Nottinghamshire Luddism also became more political. A threatening letter sent
to Prime Minister Perceval (M22), after introduction of the bill making frame
breaking a capital crime, exemplifies the new Luddite tendency: ‘‘The Bill for
Punish.g with death. has only to be viewd. with contempt & opposd. by measure
equally strong; & the Gentlemen (who framd. it will have to repent the act: for if
one mans life is Sacrificed,! blood for blood.’’ The legal intervention was seen as
a terrible affront to the charter and the devolving of juridical power to the trade,
and Luddite resentment extended even to the local level. Members of juries were
seen as collaborators with an enemy. In a 16 March 1812 letter (M27), a jury fore-
man, Mr. Byrnny, is warned that he has been acting without the sanction thought
by the Luddites to define his social duty: ‘‘[B]y Genaral Ludds Express Express
Commands I am come to—worksop to enquire of your Character towards our
cause and I am sory to say I find it to correspond with your conduct you latly
shewed—towards us.’’ By the time of the writing of the letter to Mr. Byrnny, the
legal power of the charter had been replaced rhetorically by a ‘‘cause’’; however,
the structure of custom and the idea of the power to regulate economic behavior
remained.
While the charter facilitated the emergence and continuation of a subcul-
ture, the ‘‘official’’ legal and political discourses of the day provided the subcul-
ture with models for its conduct and its rhetorical extension and participation in
larger public life. The timing of the appearance of the two Nottinghamshire dec-
larations suggests evidence of such modeling. The ‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’
(M1) uses a more focused legal vocabulary drawn, perhaps, from sources avail-
able in late 1811. The January 1812 Framework Knitters’ declaration (M10) pits
sovereign against sovereign (Charles II against George III and the prince regent)
and reward against reward, apparently parodying the prince regent’s December
1811 proclamation.
The fact that the legalistic discourse appears to resemble or derive from offi-
cial forms but also to contradict the official forms in intent may have caused
scholars such as E. P. Thompson to concentrate their attention more on the di-
rectly threatening letters as more uniquely Luddite; however, the double treat-
ment of law is manifested in some other of the more familiar documents, too.
One such document, the Luddite anthem ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’ (M14), is
remarkable for its dual treatment of law. Early in the ballad, General Ludd is de-
 Midlands Luddism v 29

scribed as having ‘‘disrespect for the laws’’ and as outdoing Robin Hood in the
material expressions of disrespect; however, later stanzas create an alternative-
legal discourse—‘‘guilty,’’ ‘‘estate,’’ ‘‘sentenced to die,’’ ‘‘unanimous vote of the
Trade,’’ ‘‘executioner.’’ We must inquire into the source of the blending of anti-
legal and alternative-legal language, the blending of ‘‘Custom and Law.’’ How,
for example, did ‘‘the Trade,’’ as an extralegal and even renegade institution, ac-
quire the power to pass sentence? Furthermore, what role is served by the ep-
onymic General Ludd?
First, the eponym ‘‘Ned Ludd’’ grows out of the framework knitters’ experi-
ences, mythic or actual. It is not, like a metonym, a gathering figure used to draw
together an immaterial plurality into a material singularity. Wai Chee Dimock
describes a metonym as a ‘‘a form of reduction, involving the telescoping of an
immaterial order within a material embodiment.’’ 43 The Midlands Luddite ex-
perience was very material in the sense that the mechanisms through which it
was known and interpreted—the charter, the trade, and custom—were tied to the
materiality of working life in an established and entrenched manner. In contrast
to the metonym, the eponym expresses resentment specific to the trade, where
that resentment existed. General Ludd is a singularity, but one that grows out
of material existence in an almost organic sense. The eponym offers not a new
gathering but rather a method of bringing renewed attention to a charter that
had fallen into obscurity, perhaps even disuse. Although they needed a way to ex-
press grievances, the Midlands Luddites could not claim a new charter, but they
needed new attention to the old one. The eponym provided a way of drawing
that attention.
Second, at least part of the stanza is representational. We might remember
the alternative governments proposed during George III’s reign. These alterna-
tives ranged from the ‘‘little senate’’ set up in every public house (noted in the
Leeds Mercury, 6 March 1802) to Percy Shelley’s nationwide caucus (in A Proposal
for Putting Reform to the Vote) and Sir Charles Wolseley’s ‘‘National Convention.’’
The Luddite alternative differs from these in that the Luddites defined them-
selves by their trade and affirmed an already existing constitution that had been
violated and corrupted by latter-day laws. Even when the force of the govern-
ment caused some of the Luddite writers to rely less than before on an appeal to
the charter, the style and structure of discourse emanating from the charter re-
mained strong. The framework knitters’ January 1812 ‘‘Declaration’’ (M10) states
that the 1663 charter gives the knitters the right to break frames and further de-
30 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

clares null and void the 1788 act making frame breaking a felony. It warns all
hosiers, lace manufacturers, and frame owners that the Luddites would ‘‘break
and destroy all manner of frames . . . that make spurious articles and . . . that do
not pay the regular price heretofore agreed to by the Masters and Workmen. . . .
[A]ll Frames of whatsoever description the Workmen of whom are not paid in
the Corrent Coin of the Realm will invariably be destroyed.’’
Such political appeals have a dual nature, which helps us to understand the
dual treatment of law in the ‘‘Triumph’’ and other texts. The declaration’s cita-
tion of the charter suggests a self-contained and self-governing system of laws
and constitutions, which must be construed as an alternative to the usurping sys-
tem of laws of which the Frame-Breaking Act is part; however, another appeal
is also at work. In the last sentence, the Luddite writer makes payment in the
‘‘Current Coin of the Realm’’ a standard of compliance. The double appeal af-
filiates Luddism with a legal tradition issuing from the Crown even as it exposes
the abuses and injustices of a system controlled by the present government, even
though the Nottingham stockingers stopped short of opposing the government
itself, at least until Midlands Luddism had run through its first phase. Kenneth
Brown notes, ‘‘There are no records . . . of Luddites turning against overt politi-
cal targets such as town halls or magistrates’ homes.’’ 44 Yorkshire Luddism, of
course, saw threats against Huddersfield magistrate Joseph Radcliffe, and Salford
coroner Nathaniel Milne was threatened after he found no cause to prosecute
a soldier who killed a Luddite, but generally the Midlands Luddites did not see
government as enough of a threat to attack its physical structures. Rather, they
seem to have thought themselves part of a culture that originated in, intersected,
and at times overlapped the government. The originary appeal merely under-
scores the continuity of a sanctioned artisan tradition that only recently had been
interrupted by industry and magistracy. In fact, even the Yorkshire song, ‘‘You
Heroes of England’’ (Y19), in the course of attacking the industrial tyrants Cart-
wright and Atkinson, asserts no incompatibility between ‘‘the Rules of General
Ludd’’ and ‘‘the laws of England.’’
Despite the affiliating language, the government perceived a threat in the dis-
course of alternative or parallel government, a perception evidenced by the words
that a Home Office official wrote across the framework knitters ‘‘Declaration’’
(M10), saying that it ‘‘cannot be answered.’’ It could not be answered because it
was an anonymous document and was forwarded to the Home Office without an
enclosing letter, but it also cannot be answered effectively in an ideological sense
 Midlands Luddism v 31

because it is neither entirely inside nor outside the system of English governance.
Certainly, the people of the area considered the ‘‘Frame-Work Knitters Act as a
protection against the vagrant laws.’’ 45 Of the popular sympathy, Frank Darvall
writes, ‘‘To make matters worse the population was so unanimous in sympathiz-
ing with the Luddites. No one would give evidence against them. No bystanders
would stir a hand to stop the attacking parties or to warn the authorities. Many a
householder in charge of the hated machinery was himself a sympathizer, if not
an aider and abettor, of the attacking parties.’’ 46 In this light, Luddism appears
as a collective, perhaps even majoritarian, movement in many areas. Eventually,
the government attempted to address this problem. The act of 52 George III,
cap. 16, §3, extending the Act of 28 George III, cap. 55, required householders
to give information of frame breaking to the frame owner and to a justice of the
peace.47 The new law had little effect. Nottinghamshire Luddism continued for a
time until a number of arrests combined with a rise in wages to halt the machine
breaking.48
By mid-1812, the continued complicity of masters and magistrates, the con-
tinued abuses on the part of the government, and the futility of collective bar-
gaining by negotiation and riot forced even Nottingham Luddism to turn more
and more to grand threats and desperate complaints. Whereas before Ned Ludd
had served as the center of a discourse of moderation and constraint, yet never-
theless effective and demanding of the perceived rights of the trade, he later came
to be seen in terms of an adversary, the prince regent. Nevertheless, Ludd con-
tinued to provide a discourse of morality and even patriotism, whereas the prince
regent embodied and distilled all of the abuses that the Luddites found reprehen-
sible and merited an enormous variety of threats, such as one from Nottingham
(M36) written on 4 June 1812:

The cry of your hard and unmoveable heart to the sufferings of your Poor
Starving Subjects is gone into the eres of General Lud-Four thousand of his
bravest Men (whoes lives are not worth keeping in this wretched period of
your Reign) have sworn to revenge the wrongs of their countrymen and their
own, if you dont stand still, and think and act differently to what you have
done. . . . Take the advice of one who wishes well to his Country.

Ludd’s posture in this letter is militant, but nevertheless it is restrained. Ludd

seeks less to overthrow a government than to effect the repentance of the old
one.
32 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

More militant documents than the letter to the regent were circulated, and
can be found in the collection of Midlands texts, but the militancy typically was
constrained by the figure of Ned Ludd. In one 1814 letter to the Nottingham Re-
view (M44) General Ludd writes to the editor to describe the success of one
of his sons, Ned, then serving His Majesty in the war against America. Part of
the letter seeks to forget the troubles of the past. In fact, Ludd affiliates himself
with the government, to an extent, but wields the imprimatur of his son’s having
served Britain against its American enemy in the recent war: ‘‘I am of opinion
that all which I and my son have done in Nottingham and neighbourhood, is
not half so bad as what my son has done in America; but then you now he has
supreme orders, from indisputable authority, for his operations in America, and
that makes all the difference.’’
Throughout much of its course, Midlands Luddism based its resistance to
machinery on legal dispensations and the charter of their trade and devised a sys-
tem of regulation that had effects both inside and outside of the trade, upon the
larger culture as a whole. The 1814 letter to the Review illustrates what I believe
characterizes many of the Midlands documents collected here—that the figure
of Ned Ludd served as a discourse for concentrating public attention on a set
of principles, previously sanctioned by the government but under threat at the
time. Ludd is an eponym for a subculture, a selective trade culture, that grew
out of a larger culture. The selected codes that founded and regulated the cul-
ture of framework knitters and facilitated its discursive extension into the larger
culture were products of that larger culture. Studying the discourses of law and
origination in Luddism makes clear that what the Midlands Luddites demanded
was recognition by the larger culture, according to selected, but shared, codes.
In the two other Luddite regions, the task proved to be different.

v northwestern luddism

The language of Midlands Luddism was grounded on a tradition of collective ac-

tivity—specifically, the long-established trade of framework knitting, the trade’s
continued efforts to support wages and maintain the quality of articles, and its
customary pursuit of negotiation through public mechanisms. When Luddite
discourse migrated to the cotton districts of the Northwest, it did not enter a
locale that was as prepared as the Midlands towns had been to incorporate a
structured rhetoric of custom and law into an array of protest. It is true that Man-
 Northwestern Luddism v 33

chester and the surrounding cotton towns had their own traditions that defined
Luddism in the cotton districts; however, as John Bohstedt demonstrates, the
handloom weavers, whose interests were articulated most frequently in North-
western Luddite writing, were a relatively new laboring population at the time
that the Luddite risings commenced. Although they certainly had a sense of com-
mon right, they lacked the long-standing traditions of collective activity, organic
identity, and social practice that would have been imparted by an ancient and
communitarian trade, such as framework knitting, and would have enabled them
to claim their customary rights through traditional procedures.49
When I speak of Northwestern Luddism, I refer to the Luddite activity in
Manchester and its environs, including the cotton towns of Stockport, Oldham,
Bolton, Wigan, Macclesfield, Holywell, and others. I am aware that my gather-
ing the different Lancashire, Cheshire, and Flintshire locales under one label is
misleading and reduces the effectiveness of my larger argument that Luddite dis-
course was locally determined; Luddism in Wigan differed from that in Stock-
port, for example. The smaller towns often had traditions of riot and protest
that Manchester lacked, even though many of the towns shared with Manchester
the same economic concerns that were causing tremendous suffering among the
cotton weavers. John Foster points out that towns such as Oldham had ‘‘iso-
lated groupings of families which provided at least some of the long-term conti-
nuity of language and direction.’’ 50 Manchester had few such demographic traits
that would have provided the kind of continuity enjoyed by Oldham and other
towns; nevertheless, Manchester-area Luddism embodies a certain style that de-
fines much of the writing in the region to such a degree that readers might be
justified in considering the documents from towns in Lancashire, Cheshire, and
Flintshire together (though cautiously) in terms of their shared features.
In this section, Bohstedt’s theory of riot serves as the basis for an examination
of the rhetoric of Northwestern Luddism. Bohstedt’s theory develops the prem-
ise that riot is generated within a context of ‘‘community politics’’ and is defined
by the presence or absence of traditions and institutions that govern collective
activity and the resolution of conflicts in a particular locale. Certain communi-
ties, such as the towns in Devon with which Bohstedt illustrates his theory, had
stable populations, long traditions of collective action, and community struc-
tures that facilitated negotiation. Under the ‘‘classic’’ model of riot exemplified
in the Devon communities, negotiation was an integral part of a communal pro-
cess of resolving economic, riotous disputes through the involvement of the gen-
34 v writings of the luddites

eral populace, the magistracy and constabulary, and the local gentry.51 Although
many of the components of the classic model of riot are missing in Midlands
Luddism, the framework knitters of the Midlands counties can be construed as
having enjoyed some of the essential institutions and features necessary for riot
to progress along the lines of the classic model. Most importantly, the frame-
work knitters had a long tradition of collective action through the existence since
1657 of a chartered and fairly active trade. That tradition gave them not only
experience in resolving disputes but also a solidarity centered on a few clearly
identifiable ideals held by the trade and clearly conveyed in the Midlands Luddite
texts—adherence to negotiated wage agreements, a prohibition on the employ-
ment of unapprenticed workers, and maintenance of the stocking trade’s high
standards of manufacture.
Northwestern Luddism centered on the cotton handloom weaving industry,
which posed special problems for popular protest. The cotton weavers of Lan-
cashire and Cheshire were a relatively new industrial population, ‘‘recent im-
migrants into a new urban industrial world.’’ 52 Bohstedt describes Manchester
as a ‘‘town of strangers.’’ Both the cotton trade and handloom weaving of cot-
ton cloth were still recent industrial phenomena in Britain and Manchester by
the beginning of the Luddite activities, but the number of weavers had grown
quickly. Bythell remarks that ‘‘the recruitment of weavers for the new indus-
try must have occurred on a massive scale’’ following the inventions of spinning
devices and techniques in the 1770s that made possible the production of suit-
able cotton yarn.53 The recent origins of the trade and the tremendous growth
and migration in the Manchester region prevented the development of the stable
communities necessary for traditions of popular protest to operate as they did
in other parts of Britain.
What can be said about the framework knitters (and to a lesser extent the West
Riding croppers)—that is, that their writing reveals that they tended to conceive
of the hosiers and master clothiers as members of a trade but also as persons
attempting to rise above that trade and its regulations—cannot be said of the
cotton weavers. There were masters who had begun in the weaving trade, as the
Middleton weaver and later Radical Samuel Bamford notes in his Autobiography,
but cotton weavers tended to be employed by persons who had not themselves
been weavers and by persons with sufficient wealth to participate on a commer-
cial level in the cotton industry.54 The ‘‘golden age’’ myths about weaving that
drew so many people to the trade consisted largely of mythologized memory
 Northwestern Luddism v 35

about high wages for people who required only a few weeks of training to become
competent in the trade and of stories of a few persons who rose from weaving to
manufacturing in the early years—narratives of realized potential such as those
told later by William Radcliffe, who wrote that a ‘‘young man who was industri-
ous and careful’’ and who had a bit of ‘‘courage’’ might set himself up as a manu-
facturer.55 Such myths of prosperity were merely myths, according to Bythell:
‘‘The people best able to branch out on their own as manufacturers were those
whose previous work had been sufficiently well-paid to allow some saving and
had given them extensive and useful contacts with reliable weavers, master spin-
ners, and merchants; warpers, reed makers, or agents and putters-out in particu-
lar, were the groups most likely to furnish aspiring new entrepreneurs.’’ 56 The
social origins of the manufacturers may have provided the basis for greater con-
tact between weavers and manufacturers, but they also seem to have provided for
greater social distance than that which existed between framework knitters and
hosiers in the Midlands.
With the exception of the spinners, the cotton workers also lacked much of
a union experience. The mule spinners are exceptional, having come to com-
mand an important position in the cotton industry, and have been called ‘‘an
‘aristocratic’ elite among members of the cotton trades.’’ 57 They were fairly suc-
cessful in forming combinations and in gaining wage concessions, but most of
the cotton workers in the vicinity of Manchester had little fortune in attaining
any group solidarity. The Union of Friendly Societies might have provided other
Northwestern textile workers with a pattern of solidarity necessary for collective
labor action, but the union (and subsequent attempts to revive it) failed before
long, frustrated by the war, the Combination Acts, and fluctuations in the mar-
kets.58 Similarly, the short-lived association formed by cotton weavers in 1799 was
hindered by the passage of the Combination Acts later that year.59 The proce-
dures and institutions created by the Cotton Arbitration Acts made it even more
difficult for cotton workers to effect any solidarity. By imposing from the out-
side a structure for resolving labor disputes, the acts removed from a very young
industry the possibility of organic development—that is, of developing its own
structures and traditions in a manner suitable to the trade and the community.60
Even petitioning for governmental relief, a common discursive practice among
weavers, would have externalized the weavers’ sense of agency and efficacy.
Due to the nature of Manchester’s government, the cotton weavers were also
socially distanced from the magistracy. Bohstedt’s account of Manchester’s au-
36 v writings of the luddites

thority structure is instructive on this point. Manorial, parish, and commercial

institutions attempted to cope with rapid growth through a set of practices un-
suited to the municipality. Civic actions tended to be dictated by the interests
of the propertied classes rather than by custom, patronage, or paternalism. The
Manchester magistracy comprised mostly Tory clergymen, retired merchants,
and some gentlemen who ‘‘had none of the family tradition, the patronage, or the
experience that helped equip magistrates of the landed classes for governing—
and for bargaining with rioters.’’ 61 Even a measured desire for reform among
many of the Manchester elite was not conducive to reciprocity and negotiation
between classes. As Bohstedt remarks, ‘‘The laboring poor were objects of social
policy, not political participants having a power to be reckoned with.’’ 62 The ex-
clusion of working-class Mancunians from processes of negotiation might have
played a role in the replacement of price fixing during food riots by forms of sym-
bolic expression. During a 31 July 1795 food riot, for example, ‘‘rioting took the
form of a unilateral crowd action to punish dealers [by destroying food], rather
than disciplined bargaining within a social and moral framework that included
both magistrates and dealers.’’ 63
Without a trade history, long-standing trade institutions, relative social equal-
ity, sympathy from the magistracy, and (in the case of Manchester) community
traditions, the weavers quite predictably eschewed the kind of threat bargaining
that is so clearly and consistently evident in the Luddite writings of the Not-
tinghamshire framework knitters. Instead, the weavers of Manchester grounded
their rhetoric on other, varied forms, and Luddism here entered a discursive field
that was more complicated than in either the Midlands or Yorkshire. Three types
of discourse surround Manchester Luddism. The first is petition. The second is
a language of economic analysis that, although not macroeconomic in any real
sense, does consider economic issues that extend beyond the rather confined pur-
view of any particular trade. The third is Jacobinical language. Luddite rhetoric
blended with each of these discourses, but all of them have in common a hier-
archical perspective. Generally, Manchester-area Luddite writers tended to as-
sume or engage a series of hierarchical tropes; in other words, they tended to
look to the top, to those locations where power in a larger sense was more likely
to reside. Threats to the prince regent, for example, are more common from
Manchester-area writers than from Nottinghamshire writers.
In Manchester, the petition and reform were closely related. Like the weavers,
the reform movement in Manchester made significant attempts to create an arti-
 Northwestern Luddism v 37

ficial collective. I do not mean to use the word ‘‘artificial’’ as a pejorative. On the
contrary, the artifices of forming a community elicited from the people involved
a great deal of creative social thought. Their tasks were several: to identify op-
portunities when collective concerns might be made evident to the population,
to settle upon a language for making those concerns common, and to present the
collective to those authorities who had to acknowledge it in serious terms. The
need for external acknowledgment, so alien to the locales that Thompson de-
scribes in Customs in Common, was an overriding concern in Manchester. Given
the governing structure of Manchester, the social matters that brought the new
migrant populations together through petition and mass meeting could be ad-
dressed only by the authorities, only by persons extrinsic to the newly form-
ing collective. The history of laboring-class self-help in Manchester has not yet
been written. We can, however, infer from the Luddite and pre-Luddite Man-
cunian texts that self-help might have been possible, but the need for collectivity
emerged at a time when only a limiting discourse of collectivity was available.
That most Mancunian of genres, the petition, could have served just that pur-
pose—to draw together on one topic persons whose histories and dislocations
otherwise impede the formation of a community. Petition, however, played an
ambiguous, even contradictory role in constituting the weavers as a collective
body. Petitioning and parliamentary reform, as discourses or as genres, looked
outward to the government to address grievances and might actually have ob-
structed the development of a trade awareness sufficient to engage employers
effectively in negotiations. Furthermore, the differences between the weavers in
Manchester and those in the surrounding cotton towns (Bolton, Oldham, Stock-
port, and others) might also have prevented the formation of a collective identity.
We frequently see, for example, addresses and petitions to Parliament from the
various localities but very few from the cotton weaving trade as a whole during
the years leading up to Luddism. Although the new migrant populations might
have brought with them the desire for community and solidarity, the discursive
culture that they entered permitted them to view solidarity only as a single face
and single voice in order to plead for relief from the authorities. Metaphorically
speaking, each face looked elsewhere for relief rather than to its fellow. Such
petitions as the November 1811 ‘‘Humble Petition of the Clergy, Manufacturers
& other Inhabitants of the Town and Neighbourhood of Bolton in the County
of Lancashire’’ look to the prince regent to intervene in the diversion of grain
from the production of bread to the production of alcohol:
38 v writings of the luddites

Sheweth, That your Petitioners are principally engaged in the Cotton Manu-
factories of this County & situated in the centre of an immense Populations
of the labouring Poor. That your Petitioners have beheld & can bear testi-
mony to the Patience with which the labouring Classes have borne their pri-
vations under the very reduced wages given in the Manufactories which have
for a long time scarcely afforded them the necessaries of life. That your Peti-
tioners view with the deepest concern the rapid increase in the price of Grain
on the approach of Winter after a reported plentiful Harvest & when the
Manufactories afford no prospect of any increase of Wages. That your Peti-
tioners conceive the increased prices of Grain to be in a great degree owing
to the consumption of it in the distilleries, whilst a plentiful substitute might
be found in Sugar of which there is a superabundant stock in this Country.
Your Petitioners therefore most humble pray that Your Royal Highness will
be graciously pleased to take into consideration the necessity of suspending
the distillation of Spirits from Grain until the Sense of Parliament on this
important subject can be taken. And your Petitioners will ever pray &c.64

The petition is interesting because it illustrates the tendency of Northwest-

ern cotton workers to look outside of their own communities and other poten-
tial collective bodies for relief. It also illustrates the absence of the alternative:
why did the cotton workers and the concerned inhabitants of Bolton not exert
their energies to effect a rise in wages paid by the local cotton cloth merchants?
Self-constitution and communal regulation did not materialize in Bolton, even
throughout the Luddite risings.
Without some sort of constituting mechanism, the weavers risked remaining a
sociological and economic mass, not self-determined but rather objective. Strug-
gling to create a collective identity and to constitute themselves as an organized
body recognized by the clothiers, masters, magistracy, and the state apparatus,
the handloom weavers quite logically appropriated the genres and discourses of
other, established groups. As a genre, the petition offered a self-constituting
mechanism that might be understood as performative. Not only does the pro-
cess of creating the petition draw together individuals into a petitioning body
and concentrates what might previously have been widely varied or unfocused
concerns, but also the petition itself incorporates the petitioners into a body, rec-
ognized and scrutinized by the government, especially the Home Office. Home
Office scrutiny was, during the period, the imprimatur of government recog-
 Northwestern Luddism v 39

nition. Even those bodies that were suppressed and prosecuted received some
validation of existence by the attentions of the Home Office. This is not merely
a historical or scholarly construction, wrought by the scholar’s act of reading the
record of the Home Office’s scrutiny in the Home Office Papers; on the contrary,
the Home Office validated such bodies by adjusting its activities to account for
the new bodies. Out of the documents it collected, the Home Office wove a fab-
ric of conspiracy, combination, and disaffection among the weavers and others.
That fabric directed its surveillance and prosecutions, which had material effects
on those petitioning bodies.
The rhetoric of the Midlands Luddites also provided the handloom weavers
with a constitutive model. The framework knitters had exported—through the
news, the reports of commercial correspondents, and the Luddite ‘‘delegates’’
the Home Office greatly feared—the language of a long-established trade in the
process of resistance to economic oppression. The singular identity of a General
Ludd presented collectivity and resistance. The difficulty inherent in the appro-
priation of Ludd’s name was that in Ludd collectivity and resistance were inter-
twined. In Nottinghamshire, Ludd was an organic eponym, derived from and
embedded in Nottinghamshire and framework knitting traditions. The weavers
perhaps were unable to claim an alien tradition, even though they had hoped to
borrow the legitimating function of Ludd’s name. General Ludd did not func-
tion well as a petitioner. Absent their own trade traditions, the weavers had to
resort to a broad range of self-constituting rhetorical strategies that they joined
to the language of Luddism.
Although there would have been (and must have been) important differences
between Manchester and the surrounding cotton towns, the differences do not
show up very frequently in the surviving Luddite letters and proclamations from
those towns. The ineffectiveness of bargaining and the tremendous distance be-
tween the elite and the working classes, distance so great as to preclude negotia-
tion, defines Luddism throughout much of the Manchester cotton district. The
weavers’ recognition of that social distance and a larger socioeconomic order is
exemplified in a number of Luddite texts from the Manchester region and led
to the widespread use of a deflective language that expresses a grievance but re-
directs it to someone other than the likely target of any threatened physical vio-
lence.
Northwestern Luddite letters tend more than letters from the other regions
to contain oblique threats. That is to say, Northwestern letters are more likely
40 v writings of the luddites

to be addressed to persons who are not threatened and are more likely to contain
threats against third parties. I believe that the oblique threat is further proof of
the Northwestern Luddites’ awareness of a system or network of economic rela-
tions. Even though an appraisal of the personal guilt of the mill owners typically
overrode any potential estimates of indirect economic responsibility of insurers,
bankers, and cloth merchants, the awareness evidently existed. In two examples,
the awareness ranges from the knowledge that employers are responsible for or
have an influence over the hiring practices of factory overseers to the recogni-
tion that a fire protection provider would be interested to know that some of its
insureds are at risk of an arsonistic Luddite attack.
In April 1812 the named owners of the largest spinning concern in the Man-
chester vicinity, McConnel, Kennedy and Company, received an anonymous let-
ter (N4) containing compliments and expressions of respect to McConnel and
Kennedy: ‘‘gentm, we wish to Speake with respect to you because you have all
ways Conducted your Selves to your spinners with that sevility and kindness
which is a strong mark of your good Sence and humain harts and Cold wish
to Serve you to the best of our power.’’ The respect for McConnel and Ken-
nedy is part of the background against which the writer registers grievances and
obliquely condemns and threatens the company’s overseers:

[O]ur poor helpless Children have Hundreds of time’s cryed unto us for
bredds but a lass we had none to give them and we think it quiet inconsistent
with Our duty as men as husbands and as fathers to Suffer our Selves to be
ruined Any longer by a set of vagabond Strumpets and them Jibbet deserve-
ing Raskals that is looking Over them, we will lud them to thare Satisfaction.
. . . We sincearly hope Gentlemen that you will discharge the biches and take
men in to your Employ a gain or they must take what they get[.]

Rhetorically, the tactic of indirect criticism and threat involves separating the re-
sponsibility for an abuse from the potential agency of the recipients who might
be able to correct that abuse. The tactic would seem to be sound even if McCon-
nel and Kennedy were not widely respected by their employees as kind and gen-
erous masters. Its effectiveness lies in imparting knowledge of a grievance and
trusting that the recipients will redress that grievance even without having any
threat made against them; were such a threat made, it might have caused the re-
cipients to resist being bullied. The separation of threat from request also im-
plies an understanding of the division of labor along hierarchical lines—that is,
 Northwestern Luddism v 41

between management and labor. Unlike the Nottingham and West Riding Ludd-
ites, the writer of this letter (like the writers of other Manchester documents)
does not think of the employers as masters or freemen, previously within the
trade but recently risen above their station.
The Luddite letter to McConnel and Kennedy is, however, rare. The rarity of
Luddite documents written by spinners might be attributed to the high demand
for cotton thread in several cloth industries—not just cotton weaving—through-
out the period and the continued employment of spinners that resulted from the
demand.65 A voluminous correspondence between McConnel and Kennedy in
Manchester and cloth manufacturers such as Samuel Cartledge, a Nottingham
hosier, indicates a healthy demand for cotton twist throughout 1812.66 The spin-
ners seem to have remained busy throughout the years of the Luddite risings,
although McConnel and Kennedy were under pressure to produce high-quality
yarn at cheap prices.67
Despite its being a rare Luddite letter written within the spinning trade, the
letter to McConnel and Kennedy is fairly characteristic of Northwestern Ludd-
ite writing in its rhetorical features. For one thing, the letter is directed to the top
of the industrial hierarchy. For another thing, the writer of the letter envisions a
wider economic reality than do the documents originating in Nottinghamshire.
More precisely, the writer includes the employers, McConnel and Kennedy, and
the objectionable employees in a matter that could easily be treated as either in-
ternal to the trade or wholly within the hands of the employers.
In the second instance, a Luddite letter from ‘‘Falstaff’’ directed to ‘‘Fire Of-
fice Agents’’ at Wigan (N5) informs the insurers that at least five of their insureds,
all owners of factories containing steam-powered winding machines, were likely
to be the victims of arson, due to a Luddite response to their oppressive labor
practices. Again, the rhetoric involves a separation of the responsibility for the
objectionable labor practice from the ability (and motive) of the recipients to
act as agents for the Luddites—an action that would also prevent harm to their
employers. This letter, perhaps more than any others, epitomizes the discur-
sive features of Northwestern Luddism. Absent long-standing, stable trade and
community institutions for expressing and redressing economic grievances, the
Luddites of the region identified economic systems and networks that supported
or facilitated oppressive employment practices, and they availed themselves of
that knowledge to bring pressure upon their oppressors through legitimate
agents. McConnel and Kennedy and the Fire Office Agents act in the position of
42 v writings of the luddites

mediating agent that magistrates occupied in areas, such as Devon, where more
traditional forms of protest prevailed.
‘‘Falstaff’’ concedes the distance between the group whose grievances he con-
veys and the manufacturers who are perhaps so distant that writing directly to
them would be of no avail. The solution to the problem of discursive and social
distance appears to be to write with a sense of the larger economic scheme that
makes such distance possible. In this case, that sense extended to an awareness
of the role of insurers in the system of cotton manufacture.
‘‘Falstaff’s’’ remonstrance, ‘‘it ill behoves Genm of Proy to . . . take away the
Work of the Poor and therefore their Bread,’’ appears to be an application of
the language of paternalism and negotiation; however, the very scheme of ad-
dress belies that appearance. Although the targets of the threat might be called
‘‘Genm,’’ the intermediaries to whom the letter is addressed are not persons who
play intermediate roles under a paternalistic system or even within a trade rela-
tionship. The commercial vocabulary of the letter is very basic, but its presence
indicates that the writer recognizes either that such lexical overtures are neces-
sary parts of threatening letters from the Manchester region or that the language
of trade custom or of deference and paternalistic obligation would have no effect.
McConnel and Kennedy and the Fire Office Agents are treated as magistrates of
an economic system.
The sense of a larger economic reality requiring negotiation or engagement
among a number of social levels or sectors is, I think, the single most distin-
guishing feature of Northwestern Luddism. Such an awareness grew out of the
absence of a single organization of weavers, the readiness of political radicals to
welcome into their fold new groups searching for redress of their grievances, and
the failure of a magistracy to resolve the problems that resulted from industri-
alization and the spread of capitalism. I cannot be certain that the same pattern
that John Foster discovered held for Oldham held true for Manchester, but the
emergence of political radicalism as the primary discourse within which Ludd-
ite rhetoric was embedded or entwined (as was the case for the language of wage
disputes in Oldham) suggests that the courses of development might be similar.68
Foster says of Luddism (although without mentioning the name and instead
calling the risings ‘‘the troubles of 1812’’) that even the thousands of soldiers used
to quiet the northern counties ‘‘were (not unnaturally) quite powerless against an
opposition built so securely into the structure of the surrounding community.’’ 69
 Northwestern Luddism v 43

It might be more accurate to say that one reason for the relative powerlessness
of the authorities was that the opposition in the Northwest was quite variable
rather than embedded. The many facets of discontent, including those that Fos-
ter highlights in his study of Oldham, permitted the discourse of grievance and
redress to take on several forms, appealing at one time to custom, at another time
to natural rights, and at still other times to what Foster calls ‘‘a very special form
of trade union consciousness.’’ Foster’s explanation of that consciousness comple-
ments Bohstedt’s analysis of the wide-reaching character of Manchester Ludd-
ism: ‘‘If it was the defence of living standards that gave the radicals their position
of leadership, its effective practice involved much more. It demanded the develop-
ment of a coercive occupational solidarity extending to all sections of the labour
community; a solidarity that was radically new, specifically illegal and in its prac-
tical application a direct challenge to state power.’’ 70 In this passage, Foster might
be overstating the threat to state power posed by the form of consciousness he
describes, but his notice of the compass of the ‘‘occupational solidarity extend-
ing to all sections of the labour community’’ is valuable and quite in line with
Bohstedt’s account and with the substance of the Luddite texts from the region.
The enlargement of Northwestern Luddite discourse to address political as well
as local economic issues might have been in part the result of a kind of economic
conflict that did not fit the ‘‘classic’’ model described by Bohstedt or was not ac-
counted for by ‘‘the old controls’’ mentioned by Foster.71 Certainly the disputes
in the Northwest were not about trade reputation and the quality of manufac-
ture (as was the case in Nottinghamshire) but rather about wages and prices. The
‘‘old controls’’ would have been out of place in a wage and price system.
The economic and political analyses of the petitioning weavers in the years
leading up to Luddism and later of the Luddites and their sympathizers do appear
to mark some familiarity with the economic ideas that were driving the industrial
revolution in the cotton districts. The larger economic factors behind the decline
in weavers’ wages are part of the rhetorical calculations of the Manchester-area
Luddite writers. Aware of the general depression in trade, the role of machin-
ery in reducing wages and opportunities for by-occupations, and the govern-
ment’s role in joining economic and political positions so as to pursue wars that
depressed trade in two hemispheres, the Luddite writers were as varied in their
rhetorical appeals, addressees, and modes of threat as the economic-political sys-
tem that confronted them. The wars provided a means of coupling the ruling
44 v writings of the luddites

classes with economic difficulties, including those caused or aggravated by in-

dustrialization and the abatement of wages. Manchester wall slogans from 1801
(‘‘Peace or no King’’ and ‘‘Cheap bread or no King’’) and 1812 (‘‘Peace and a Big
Loaf,’’ ‘‘No Mechenery no King,’’ and ‘‘A Big Loaf or No King’’) demonstrate
the rhetorical splicing of the ruling class, economic troubles, and the wars.72
In many of the Northwestern documents, questions of loyalty and social dis-
tance converge in texts that can best be described as radical or republican. The
same radical strain that helped to shape the discourse of petition also provided a
way for the Luddites to think of the connection between political and economic
forces. At the same time, however, some radical language gravitated against any
language of trade custom that might have emerged. A 6 May 1812 letter (N13)
from ‘‘Thomas Paine’’ to Richard Wood, the boroughreeve of Manchester, illus-
trates that orientation. The writer refers to the 8 April loyalist meeting at the
Manchester Exchange called by 154 persons, a ‘‘respectable committee of Gen-
tlemen, who have sat in this town in aid of & for the information of the civil
power.’’ A group of reformers, most of whom were members of the merchant
classes and led by a wealthy dissenter named Ottiwell Wood, opposed the meet-
ing and published broadside proclamations titled, ‘‘NOW OR NEVER,’’ ask-
ing the public to attend the loyalist meeting to voice their support for political
reform. Anticipating possible violence, the Manchester Boroughreeve, Richard
Wood, withdrew his permission to hold the meeting at the Exchange, citing an
inadequacy of the building’s stairs, but he was actually fearful of ‘‘an insurrection
against society.’’ 73 As the letter says, ‘‘Richard Wood You have been the cause
of much bloodshed; you convened the people and did not meet them: you are
therefore marked for punishment.’’ The letter disavows ‘‘connection with ma-
chine breakers,’’ even though its expressed aims are similar to those expressed by
writers among the weavers engaged in Luddism in the Manchester region:

I say we deny and disavow all, or any connection with machine breakers, burn-
ers of factories, extorters of money, plunderers of private property or assasans.
We know that every machine for the abridgment of human labour is a blessing
to the great family of which we are a part. We mean to begin at the Source of
our grievances as it is of no use to petition, We mean to demand & command
a redress of our grievances. We have both the will & the power.74

It would appear that expressed attitudes toward machinery, in this case at least,
might actually distinguish between levels of respectability, at least in the minds
 Northwestern Luddism v 45

of those members of the middle and working classes who opposed the monarchy
and the government.
Just as frequently, however, radical and Luddite discourses blended well. One
such letter (N8), forwarded to the Home Office by Reverend William Hay, in-
vokes the name of Ludd to advocate radical, even revolutionary, ends. Signed
‘‘Eliza Ludd,’’ the 30 April 1812 letter threatens an American-style revolution:
‘‘Doubtless you are well acquainted with the Political History of America, if so
you must confess that, it was ministerial tyranny that gave rise to that glorious
spirit in which the British Colonies obtain’d their independance by force of arms,
at a period, when we was ten times as strong as now!’’
Even more frequent exercises of the blending of the Luddite and the revo-
lutionary were threats against the prince regent, some of which were cast into
verse, as in a 5 May 1812 Flintshire letter (N10), which first complains of wages
before threatening a Luddite juggernaut:

The poor cry aloud for bread

Prince Regent shall lose his head
And all the rich who oppress the poor
In a little time shall be no more
With deep regret, I write these things,
They’ll come to pass in spite of kings.

But even with the yoking of two significant discourses, Luddism and radical-
ism, Northwestern disaffection remained muddled. No document illustrates that
muddle better than the 30 April 1812 letter to Salford coroner Nathaniel Milne
(N9). Written to protest a coroner’s verdict of ‘‘justifiable homicide’’ by a soldier
who had killed a Luddite during the raid on Burton’s mill, the letter attempts to
combine political and moral discourses in making a threat against Milne’s life,
but it incorporates an additional, confusing discourse in its use of one of Aesop’s
fables, ‘‘The Plague amongst the Beasts.’’
In his 1979 article titled ‘‘Luddism and Politics in the Northern Counties,’’
John Dinwiddy argues that, although there is little evidence of any strong links
between the Luddites of the northern counties and the political radical revolu-
tionaries of the region and ‘‘there was no wholesale shift from industrial to po-
litical forms of activity,’’ nevertheless ‘‘the crisis of 1812 was of some importance
in the process whereby discontent in the northern counties acquired a major po-
litical dimension.’’ 75 In his examination, Dinwiddy turns repeatedly to evidence
46 v writings of the luddites

of the blending of economic and political concerns in the petitions and addresses
of radical and trade groups and in the reports of the government’s spies operat-
ing in the region. Foster and others have already illustrated the concurrence of
economic and political language in slogans and graffiti, but Dinwiddy’s project
is more promising, even if it does not follow through on its course of rhetori-
cal analysis. Dinwiddy’s remarks are qualified by his recognition of the political
dimension of Luddism and of the efforts of economically distressed workers to
seek relief from the government.
A study of Luddite rhetoric, however, suggests quite a different question: to
what extent were the languages of Luddism and of political radicalism appropri-
ated by different groups to express grievances that were not accounted for under
any social model of the time and to constitute a group identity in a shifting social
structure? And what exactly did the importation of Ned Ludd into the Man-
chester region afford to industrial, economic, and political protest in that area?
The documents from the region incorporate such a wide variety of discourses
that it is easy to imagine that Ludd could have been used as a concentrating de-
vice. In fact, in the Manchester region, the figure of Ludd is probably less of
an eponym, generated from its own subculture, than a metonym, in the sense
that the term has been used by Wai Chee Dimock. Dimock has appropriated the
term from Kenneth Burke and George Lakoff to mark a cognitive movement
encompassing instantiation and generalization. The term describes the reduc-
tion of an immaterial plurality to a material singularity. Burke’s version of the
trope ‘‘instantiates ‘some incorporeal or intangible state in terms of the corpo-
real or tangible’; it is thus a form of reduction, involving the telescoping of an
immaterial order within a material embodiment.’’ 76 Dimock employs the trope
to describe ‘‘a kind of cross-mapping, a cognitive traffic between two ontological
orders, the immaterial here being invested in (and encapsulated by) the material
in a generalizable relation: a relation of representative adequacy or logical infer-
ability. . . . [I]t operates not only by instantiation but also by projection, not only
by a play of salient details but also by a play of latent horizons.’’ 77 The reduction
of a group of textile workers, especially those without a long trade tradition, to
a single eponym deserves scrutiny along the lines that Dimock suggests. In fact,
reduction of any sort is problematic. Questions about the class and education
of the Manchester Luddite writers are inescapable, considering not only their
understanding of the systemic character of the difficulties they faced but also the
frequent use by some writers of Latin quotations and other literary references.
 Yorkshire Luddism v 47

Perhaps the figure of General Ludd is a ‘‘transclass’’ bridge (effective because im-
ported from another region) between a systemic awareness and the expression
of basic human suffering.
It would be difficult to argue that weavers in Cheshire and Lancashire copied
the machine breaking of framework knitters in Nottinghamshire because a vo-
cabulary and an eponym made that copying either possible or worthwhile. After
all, ironworkers in Tredegar and workers elsewhere copied machine breaking but
made no claims upon the name ‘‘Ludd.’’ Nevertheless, some groups did not copy
the machine-breaking tactics of the Nottinghamshire Luddites at all but did ap-
propriate the language of Luddism. The spinners in Manchester and Holywell
voiced no objections to the machines that replaced traditional cottage spinning,
but they used the name of ‘‘Ludd’’ to denounce the hiring practices of their em-
ployers. I believe that what Ludd offered to the protesters of the cotton districts
was a metonym that they hoped could concentrate a variety of discourses and en-
able the primary group of disaffected workers, the cotton weavers, to constitute
themselves as a self-determining and articulate body.

v yorkshire luddism

The language employed by the Luddites of the West Riding of Yorkshire, par-
ticularly in the region surrounding Huddersfield, when compared with the dis-
course of Luddism in either the Midlands or the Northwest, presents a very dif-
ferent problem. In the previous section, I have tried to demonstrate that, due to
the immaturity of the weaving trade and its lacking a long-established tradition,
Northwestern Luddism assembled its rhetoric from a variety of customary, re-
formist, and revolutionary discourses, largely as part of an attempt on the part of
the weavers to constitute themselves as a trade body acknowledged by employers
and government. And prior to that, I argued that the Midlands Luddites used the
languages at hand, law and custom, to mold a rhetoric that could effectively con-
vey their grievances and make claims for redress based on their actual situation
as a sanctioned, already constituted trade culture.
The Yorkshire Luddites comprised primarily the cloth dressers of the West
Riding woolen industry, commonly called croppers. The croppers had fewer
problems of self-constitution than the weavers had, and Luddism did not enter a
discursive vacuum when it spread to the West Riding. Like the framework knit-
ters, the croppers had been long-established as a trade. Even though they lacked
48 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

a crown sanction such as that enjoyed by the Worshipful Company of Frame-

work Knitters, a mixture of trade realities and legal protections imparted to the
croppers a position and power that surpassed even that of the framework knit-
ters. The cloth dressers’ labor was invaluable and was protected not only by the
Elizabethan statute requiring apprenticeships in the woolen trades but also by
later laws prohibiting the use of the gig mill. Wool was so important to Brit-
ain that even the deregulatory impulses of MPs such as Nicholas Vansittart were
slow to have their effect upon the woolen trade. As late as 1802, nearly seventy
statutes continued to regulate the woolen industry.78
During the twenty years preceding the Luddite risings, the cloth dressers of
Yorkshire and the West of England had fought against the legalization of shear-
ing frames and gig mills. They even had organized into a trade society that fre-
quently appealed to statutory protections and sought additional regulation of
clothiers’ business practices. In 1809, however, Parliament repealed some of the
statutory protections of workers in the woolen industry. Those repeals were fol-
lowed by a decrease in the legal efforts of the croppers in the years thereafter,
particularly during the period of Luddism. In fact, Yorkshire Luddites placed
less emphasis than their counterparts in the Midlands and the Northwest did
on working in conjunction with a contemporary, lawful movement that sought
to undertake direct, peaceful negotiations with the cloth merchants and larger
clothiers or to influence Parliament to alleviate the depressed conditions in the
manufacturing centers. Nevertheless, despite the greater separation between the
different modes of labor action (that is, between legal-political and violent meth-
ods), Yorkshire Luddites appear, through their writings at least, to have recog-
nized a complicity or connection between the governmental and commercial
forces that were combining to harm their trade interests. The problem faced by
the West Riding Luddites was how they ought to continue to think of and repre-
sent themselves as a constituted body after their legal protections and sanctions
had been removed by a government that was complicitous with the large capital-
ists who sought more control over the labor market. I believe that the Luddites’
recognition of complicity, along with the prior experiences of the croppers, ex-
plains a number of features of much Yorkshire Luddite writing—the variety of
rhetorical appeals, the tension between local and national orientations, the ex-
pansive character, and the importation of the language of Nottingham Luddism
for use in framing the entire discursive array.
 Yorkshire Luddism v 49

In Yorkshire, Luddite language shifted from threats against employers for

using shearing frames to threats against the local authorities for counteracting
the machine-breaking campaign, which the Luddites believed was based on a just,
righteous cause. Rather quickly, the focus in Yorkshire Luddite rhetoric on offen-
sive machinery fell aside, though by no means out of sight, as the Luddites began
to concentrate upon a political-economic system that was manifested locally in a
highly visible and active form. The change in the focus of the Yorkshire machine
breakers happened more quickly than it did in the Midlands. Furthermore, the
rhetoric of Luddism in Yorkshire appears to have been more violent than in the
other Luddite regions. The violent and expansive nature of Luddite rhetoric in
Yorkshire arises from the cloth dressers’ prior experiences with trade unionism
and with methods of legal and forceful negotiations, and from the existence of
an available legalistic discourse that could be used to advance some of the cloth
dressers’ claims.
Yorkshire Luddism has provided the material for one of the most extended
debates on Luddism. E. P. Thompson relies to a significant degree on Yorkshire
Luddism to draw his conclusions about Luddism’s pivotal role in the develop-
ment of class consciousness in England as the moment ‘‘of a crisis between pater-
nalism and laissez-faire,’’ as he says in his chapter titled ‘‘The Army of Redressers’’
in The Making of the English Working Class.79 West Riding rhetoric reveals Ludd-
ism there to have been important in ‘‘marking a ‘watershed’ in economic and po-
litical allegiances.’’ 80 Thompson’s larger conclusions have come under scrutiny
by later scholars. Malcolm Thomis has raised insightful questions about the sin-
gularity of purpose among the Luddites, thereby calling into question Thomp-
son’s observations. Although Thomis is among the least rhetorically and textually
interested of the major historians of Luddism, his historiographical assumptions
about the lack of singularity of purpose closely resemble a rhetorician’s assump-
tions about a lack of univocality in the discourse of a movement. In reply to
Thompson, Thomis outlines what has come to be called a compartmentalizing
approach. He distinguishes between the legal, peaceful methods of withdrawing
labor in protest over wages and the violent methods of the Luddites. Although
Thomis does not condemn Luddite violence or relegate it to the category of van-
dalism (as Brian Bailey has done in his recent book), he nevertheless tends to cast
Luddism as an ineffective expression of narrow trade interests largely because
the Luddites employed methods that would prove futile over the next century.81
50 v writings of the luddites

Thomis’s own approach has come under attack by historians interested pri-
marily in Yorkshire Luddism. In arguing against the compartmentalizing ap-
proach of Thomis and similar historians, Adrian Randall has pointed to the cloth
dressers’ remarkable successes resisting the introduction of machinery in the
West of England and the West Riding, especially between 1792 and 1803. The
compartmentalizing approach consists of distinguishing machine breaking from
other forms of labor protest, and it further involves assuming what Randall calls
a ‘‘teleological view of labour history.’’ Although Randall’s observations are also
capable of being applied to Midlands Luddism (particularly because his analy-
sis is based on a decentralized trade structure similar to the outworking struc-
ture of the framework knitting trade), they are directed toward an explanation
of resistance to the introduction of machinery in the woolen trades, and they ex-
plain much about the rhetoric of Luddism in the West Riding. Randall argues
persuasively that violence and threats worked in conjunction with strikes, com-
munity pressure, and recourse to the law in both the West of England and the
West Riding. Randall’s argument includes a warning: ‘‘Violence was selective,
controlled and aimed at specific targets, supplementing and reinforcing the more
orthodox sanctions of their combinations. We must firmly resist a simplistic im-
position of nineteenth- or twentieth-century models of ‘appropriate’ trade union
behaviour upon the actions and activities of eighteenth-century combinations
regardless of their very different context and culture.’’ 82
Randall’s work provides a useful starting point for this section on Luddite
writing in Yorkshire. Randall, Craig Calhoun, and John Bohstedt have demon-
strated that the different forms of Luddism grew out of regional particulari-
ties. Those particularities are evident in the rhetoric, but they thrived in the
West Riding’s ‘‘Domestic System’’ of woolen manufacture described by Randall.
Any study of Yorkshire Luddite writing ought to begin by revisiting Randall’s
treatment of the organization of manufacture, of unionization, and of the cloth
dressers’ earlier successes in resisting mechanization of the West Riding woolen
industry.
The West Riding woolen industry was relatively decentralized. In very few
instances did large cloth merchants or gentleman clothiers control all stages of
production. Rather, small master clothiers carried out a number of tasks and
worked closely with their employed journeymen to produce an article of woolen
cloth. Centralizing functions were carried out in the cloth halls in Leeds and
Huddersfield. The one stage of production that remained independent even of
 Yorkshire Luddism v 51

the independent master clothiers was cloth dressing. Cropping shops and the
croppers employed therein enjoyed more independence and status than most
workers in the textile trades.83
For centuries, workers and small master clothiers in the woolen industry had
enjoyed the regulation of that industry by a wide range of statutes. The most
wide-reaching was 5 Elizabeth cap. 4, an act fixing apprenticeships in the woolen
trades. The act had fallen into disuse long before the Luddite risings and was
eventually repealed in 1813, but it had been widely perceived as preserving the
status of woolen workers. A more narrowly focused act was 5 & 6 Edward VI cap.
22, ‘‘An Act for the putting down of gig mills.’’ The cloth dressers relied greatly
upon that act in pressing their cause in Parliament.84 Statutes such as these had
been the basis of the cloth dressers’ objections to gig mills and other finishing
machines. Even though the acts were repealed during the first decade of the nine-
teenth century, the cloth dressers had met with success in resisting machinery in
a number of locales prior to repeal.
The cloth dressers already enjoyed a great deal of power and status within the
woolen industry; in fact, Randall writes that the cloth dressers were ‘‘the most
powerful labour interest in the woolen industry,’’ primarily because they were
essential in adding value to woolen articles. One cropper, asked in 1806 about the
value of the trade, replied, ‘‘They can make a piece 20 per cent better or worse
by due care and labour or the reverse.’’ 85 Mechanization threatened the position
of the cloth dressers, but those in the West Riding did not stand idly by when
frames were introduced to the industry. During the two decades leading up to
Luddism, the cloth dressers had pursued legal avenues of resistance to mechani-
zation largely under the aegis of the Brief Institution. Randall describes the Brief
Institution as having been established in 1796 in Yorkshire to prevent entry into
the trade of cloth dressing by ‘‘illegal’’ workers. The Brief Institution’s organi-
zational structure mimicked the structure of the West Riding woolen industry.
It served a largely communicative function and did not replace local societies of
croppers

but built upon them, welding them into a coherent whole. . . . It provided the
means, far better than before, of scrutinising recruitment to the trade by issu-
ing membership cards, of enforcing closed shops and of regulating the tramp
system. It enabled information on disputes to be diffused more completely
than before and, most important, it ensured that any employer standing out
52 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

against his workmen’s demands faced the weight and financial resources not
only of the local cloth dressers but of all the region.86

The Brief Institution might have provided the trade-unionist basis for some
Yorkshire Luddite rhetoric, but the fact of early success in resisting machin-
ery through violence was probably just as much a factor in structuring Luddite
discourse in the West Riding. Pre-Luddite successes include the destruction of
a Holbeck gig mill in 1799, forcing Benjamin Gott to take down a gig mill in
Leeds in 1801, and the destruction by fire of Thomas Atkinson’s Bradley Mills
near Huddersfield in 1804. Indeed, a threatening letter sent from Huddersfield
in September 1805 to the Royal Exchange Insurance Company bears witness to
the blending of law and threat by earlier opponents of machinery in the region’s
woolen trade.87 The blending of legal and violent methods had proved to be
effective.
Additional incentives to take a violent line perhaps included the ambiguity of
the law. Even the statute that the croppers relied upon to oppose the gig mill
through legal means, 5 & 6 Edward VI cap. 22, did not unquestionably apply to
the gig mills that the croppers opposed during the war years. One of the specified
goals of the Yorkshire cloth dressers, contained in a bill drafted and brought for-
ward by Mr. Brooke, MP, and others, was ‘‘To declare that the Act of Edw. VI.
about gig mills applied to the present gig mills.’’ 88
The Yorkshire Luddites might also have been influenced to take a more vio-
lent line by the example of the failure of the purely legal, peaceful methods used
by shearmen to oppose the introduction of the gig mill in Gloucestershire in
the mid-1790s. The Gloucestershire shearmen engaged in few acts of violence
and, while they did send threatening letters, the fact that the threats did not esca-
late into ‘‘outrages’’ probably diminished the rhetorical effect of the threats, and
the gig mills became firmly and quickly established in that region. As Randall
observes, ‘‘Here, then, we can see the fruits of what Thomis labels ‘the labour
approach.’ Constitutional methods, petitions and attempts at negotiation proved
impotent unless supported by direct pressure.’’ 89 In rhetorical terms, in order to
be effective, a threat had to be bounded materially on two sides—by material
suffering and by physical action.
Randall and others have noted that the ideology of Yorkshire Luddism was
developed in the many outlying cropping shops throughout much of the West
Riding. We might expect that the discourse of West Riding Luddism would be
 Yorkshire Luddism v 53

primarily local in nature. Certainly, many of the threats reflect the localized
and community-centered structure of the industry in that region. Although the
Yorkshire croppers were removed from the central control of the cloth mer-
chants and master clothiers, they remained engaged with their communities, and
the Luddite writers assumed that such an engagement was typical. One letter,
dated 27 April 1812, to Joseph Radcliffe (Y13), is replete with localized warnings:
‘‘With respect to this Watch and Ward Act, you are not aware of the additional,
Oppression you are bringing upon your Tenants, and other Occupiers of Lands,
and all for the sake of two Individuals in this District, which I am not afraid
to subscribe their names, Mr Ths Atkinson, & Mr Wm Horsfall.’’ The letter to
Radcliffe is primarily local in its concerns and methods of expressing concerns
but, like other West Riding documents, should not be considered as evidence of
Luddite insularity. On the contrary, a number of experiences of croppers and
other workers within the West Riding impelled the Luddite writers to look out-
side of their own sphere for the causes of problems and the sources of solutions.
Randall describes the Brief Institution as an organization that brought the York-
shire croppers into closer cooperation with the West Country shearmen and
taught them that neither their problems nor the solutions were entirely local.
Similarly, Jacobinical and republican influences had been at work in Yorkshire
since the French Revolution, as Alan Brooke and Lesley Kipling have demon-
strated recently.90 These different forces coincided in Yorkshire between 1790
and 1809, and they lent to Luddism in that region a set of tropes that might be
understood for their expansive character.
When I mention tropes of an expansive character, I use the term to describe
the tendency for the purview of Yorkshire texts to move outward from the local
to the national, or even beyond that. Local clothiers such as Vickerman, Atkin-
son, and Horsfall and magistrates such as Radcliffe might be singled as targets for
Luddite violence, as in a number of threatening letters to those and other per-
sons. The destruction of a local mill containing frames might be celebrated, as in
the song ‘‘Forster’s Mill.’’ However, the scope of causal analysis and of justifica-
tion of the course of action often grew, sometimes line by line within individual
documents, to encompass the community outside of the trade, the trade in other
regions, other trades altogether, the kingdom, and relations between states.
A localist orientation is evident in several types of Luddite writing in York-
shire. In most cases, the texts register the self-sufficiency of the members of the
trade. Songs such as ‘‘T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley’’ and ‘‘The Cropper’s
54 v writings of the luddites

Song’’ reveal that the Yorkshire Luddites had little need to construct heroism
by the same means that the Midlands Luddites did (that is, by the use of com-
parison and outdoing schema, as demonstrated in the Nottinghamshire song,
‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’). ‘‘T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley’’ (Y3), a song
celebrating the reputedly cantankerous character of croppers, is set in that West
Riding town, and is built on the old folktale about croppers’ being so ornery and
unruly that three recently deceased croppers are even evicted from Hell. ‘‘The
Cropper’s Song’’ (Y2), reputedly sung by a Luddite at the Shears Inn, Hightown,
is a straightforward claim of cropper potency. It makes no efforts to legitimate
the croppers’ actions or to eulogize the croppers through comparison with other
figures, such as Robin Hood. The croppers’ character seems to have been suf-
ficient, in the minds of some of the Luddites, to represent their resistance as a
potent force:

Come, cropper lads of high renown,

Who love to drink good ale that’s brown,
And strike each haughty tyrant down,
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke,
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!

The allusions to renown and the croppers’ reputations for ale drinking in the
local public houses combine with the objection to shear frames to render a highly
localized set of verses. Even the methods of redress are local:

Great Enoch still shall lead the van.

Stop him who dare! stop him who can!
Press forward every gallant man
With hatchet, pike, and gun!

‘‘Enoch’’ was the name that the Luddites gave to the great hammers that they
used to smash the shearing frames. The hammers were named after Enoch Tay-
lor, a metalsmith from the Marsden area who produced not only hammers but
also the shearing frames that threatened the croppers’ trade. The choice in the
early weeks of Yorkshire Luddism to name the hammers ‘‘Enoch’’ marks a dis-
 Yorkshire Luddism v 55

course of local containment and communal, internal regulation—that is, the idea
that both problems and solutions can come from within a community.
Perhaps the cloth dressers’ failures in the realm of political economy, specifi-
cally in their efforts to encourage Parliament to retain and expand the statutory
protections for the trade, caused them to take less of an expansive view based
on economic relations between the local woolen trade and national economic
policies during the Luddite years. That is not to suggest that political-economic
analysis did not find its way into Yorkshire Luddite texts but only that it shared
a place with other analytical forms. Those forms were expansive, and the most
basic level of expansion was from the trade to the community. ‘‘The Cropper’s
Song’’ works to situate the croppers as a central force within a local commu-
nity—even as a moral, political force capable of identifying and punishing ‘‘each
haughty tyrant.’’ Other texts, such as an 8 April 1812 letter to Radcliffe signed
‘‘I ham for lud and the poor’’ (Y8), function in a similar manner, proposing that
Luddite aims coincide with the aims of the poor of the community.
The Yorkshire Luddites held local cloth merchants and some master clothiers
responsible for the introduction of shearing frames to the region’s woolen indus-
try, but they also recognized that the magistracy was complicitous in the intro-
duction of machinery to the region. Huddersfield magistrate Joseph Radcliffe
was a special target of Luddite threats, because he was entirely inimical to the
idea that his position as a magistrate might require that he serve as a negotiator
and as a guardian of the moral economy. The Luddites responded accordingly,
with greater hostility for Radcliffe than for any official in any of the regions.
(Radcliffe had little investment and few roots in the community, having come
from Dobcross to inherit the magistracy.) More important, however, Radcliffe
and other magistrates were targets because the Luddites inferred the connection
between the political and the economic and commercial, and they saw it mani-
fested on a local level. Such localization is also the prevailing discourse of many
of the threatening letters sent to other officials in the region. A March 1812 letter
(Y7) from ‘‘Genl Ludd’s Solicitor’’ to Huddersfield magistrate Joseph Radcliffe
even recommends to Radcliffe a sort of internal system of regulation based on
collective responsibility among the local constabulary and magistracy: ‘‘PS you
have Sir rather taken an active part against the General but you are quiet and
may remain so if you chuse (and your Brother Justices also) for him, but if you
either convict [a one], or coutinance the other Side as you have done (or any of
you), you may expect your House in Flames and, your-self in Ashes. . . .’’
56 v writings of the luddites

One language available for treating the connection between the political and
the economic would have been republican or reformist, but that language was
employed only infrequently in the West Riding. More typical, the expansion to
the level of community interest is accompanied by the inclusion of a discourse
of morality, particularly in the threats directed at the officials. The political was
the moral. In the 29 October 1812 letter to Joseph Radcliffe (Y21), the language
of morality and moral struggle (‘‘good and righteous,’’ ‘‘glory,’’ and ‘‘monsters’’)
overrides even the language of political oppression (‘‘tyrant’’ and ‘‘persicuteth’’)
and completely replaces the juridical language of other West Riding documents.
Law is no longer relevant to the struggle, as its logic has become entirely self-
reflexive, dedicated to the persecution of the righteous and the good rather than
to justice. Even the salutation sets that tone—‘‘Unjust Judge.’’
The Yorkshire Luddites also availed themselves of the language of revolu-
tion, but often it was locally and regionally conceived, even amid some Jaco-
binical overtones. One example is a letter from March 1812 (Y4), addressed ‘‘To
all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at Large’’: ‘‘You are requested to come for-
ward with Arms and help the Redressers to redress their Wrongs and shake off
the hateful Yoke of a Silly Old Man, and his Son more silly and their Rogue-
ish Ministers, all Nobles and Tyrants must be brought down.’’ The letter advo-
cates political violence on the national level, thereby recasting General Ludd as
a political figure rather than as an artisan seeking to preserve a trade. Neverthe-
less, the address, ‘‘To all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at Large,’’ is localizing.
The letter is one of the first of the Luddite documents from the West Riding
to attempt to restage labor unrest in national, though not lawful, terms. Its lan-
guage is geographically expansive, but, as in almost every instance of expansion
in Yorkshire Luddite texts, the letter ultimately centers on the West Riding and
its community dynamics. The address registers the expansion of the writer’s pur-
view beyond the cloth dressing trade to the larger community and joins croppers
to other workers in the woolen trade and to the larger public.
Much expansion was quite political. The 9 or 10 March 1812 letter (Y5) from
‘‘Ned Ludd’’ addressed to ‘‘Mr Smith Shearing Frame Holder at Hill End York-
shire’’ is probably the most indicative not only of the Yorkshire Luddites’ blend-
ing of the languages of local trade and demotic concerns and political disaffection
but also of the frequent Luddite pattern of localization, expansion, and return.
Kirkpatrick Sale labels the letter ‘‘Luddism in a nutshell.’’ 91 It begins as a fairly
straightforward protest and threat directed at Smith for his use of machinery:
 Yorkshire Luddism v 57

‘‘Information has just been given in that you are a holder of those detestable
Shearing Frames, and I was desired by my Men to write to you and give you fair
Warning to pull them down.’’ The local trade concerns continue for several lines:
‘‘[Y]ou will have the Goodness to your Neighbours to inform them that the same
fate awaits them if their Frames are not speedily taken down as I understand their
are several in your Neighbourhood, Frame holders.’’ The writer mentions that a
local, popular force, ‘‘the Army of Huddersfield,’’ with twice as many more men
sworn to the same cause in Leeds, are ready to ‘‘redress their grievances.’’ The
threat is locally revolutionary, confined to the woolen districts and thereby to
the persons with some authority over the conduct of the woolen trade.
The first hint of a geographically larger revolutionary discourse in the letter
appears shortly after the enumeration of the size of the ‘‘armies’’ of Leeds and
Huddersfield, in the report that ‘‘the Manufacturers in the following Places are
going to rise and join us in redressing their Wrongs Viz. Machester, Wakefield
Halifax, Bradford, Sheffield, Oldham, Rochdale and all the Cotton Country,’’ as
well as Scotland and Ireland. The writer goes on to identify the government,
specifically the ‘‘Hanover tyrants’’ and ‘‘that Damn’d set of Rogues, Percival &
Co to whom we attribute all the Miseries of our Country,’’ as the cause of the
miseries in the woolen trade, and to ‘‘hope for assistance from the French Em-
peror in shaking off the Yoke of the Rottenest, Wickedest and most Tyranious
Government that ever existed’’ and (ironically) establishing a republic.
The movement within the letter from local, trade concerns to republicanism
and finally to violent rejection of peaceful petitioning is accomplished by a triple
maneuver that plots the Luddites’ course toward violence, disavows the meth-
ods of the past, but nevertheless hints at the connection between the peaceable
and the violent methods. Much of this can be seen in the concluding lines of
the letter. The writer professes a hope that ‘‘The House of Commons passes an
Act to put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality, and repeal that to hang
Frame Breakers. But We. We petition no more that won’t do fighting must.’’ E. P.
Thompson’s transcription includes an emendation, an inserted ‘‘till’’: ‘‘We will
never lay down Arms [till] The House of Commons . . .’’ 92 Similarly, Sale inserts
‘‘until.’’ 93 The added word, ‘‘till,’’ determines the meaning in a manner consis-
tent with Thompson’s thesis that an underground revolutionary network existed
during these years, but Thompson uses editorial license to enhance that mean-
ing. The hope for parliamentary protection continues, just as it had prior to the
statutory repeals of 1809, and Thompson’s emendation suggests that continuity;
58 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

however, through the emphatic two-word sentence, ‘‘But We,’’ and the repeti-
tion of ‘‘We’’ at the beginning of the next sentence, the Luddites’ petitioning
to secure parliamentary protections is severed from action by the Commons. It
is not entirely clear whether the Luddite writer retains a hope for parliamen-
tary processes, spurred on by violence, or whether the conditionality implied
by Thompson’s ‘‘till’’ has been forsaken. The republican sentiments of the first
part of the letter would seem to indicate some faith in governmental action but
not in the government at the time. The writer is vague about the scope of the
‘‘fighting.’’ It could be local, against the constabulary and clothiers, or it could be
kingdomwide. In any event, continuity and scope must be considered together.
Determining the proper scope for the letter is important. Malcolm Thomis
argues that ‘‘there seems every reason to suppose that it [the letter] was a stir-
ring and joyous playing with words rather than a serious call to arms or an
accurate statement of Luddite numbers and intentions.’’ 94 Through its particu-
larized grievances, the letter appears to appeal to the local, customary rights
that Thompson has described so well, except that those rights are recognized
on a larger scale, perhaps as a matter of a principle (‘‘hurtful to Common-
ality’’) that Thompson interprets as an ‘‘ancient right’’ or ‘‘a lost constitution.’’ 95
Sale, in his typically forward-looking and cautionary manner, would read the
letter as a statement of a set of human rights, communally understood. Sale
translates ‘‘commonality’’ as ‘‘the common people in general,’’ but he recog-
nizes, consistently with Thompson, Calhoun, and Randall, that what the Luddite
writer calls ‘‘commonality’’ is manifested in ‘‘particular communities long estab-
lished and much cherished.’’ 96 Nevertheless, all of this occurs within an enlarged
scope (‘‘put down all Machinery hurtful to Commonality’’) that encompasses the
Luddites and their special concerns (‘‘and repeal that to hang Frame Breakers’’)
without unduly limiting the discourse to those concerns (‘‘all’’).
Sale’s judgment of the letter as ‘‘Luddism in a nutshell’’ perhaps should be
qualified, even though he tries not to deviate from the line established by Thomp-
son, who preceded him in assuming the larger significance of the letter.97 The
temporal continuity and contingency assumed by both Thompson (‘‘till’’) and
Sale (‘‘until’’) are consistent with their enlarging (but I would not say totalizing)
interpretations, but the interpretations of the letter depend to a significant ex-
tent on the editorial emendations. Without the insertion, the rhetorical effects
of continuity and contingency are diminished. Instead, reading the letter as it
appears in the manuscript, we find a break between Luddite and parliamentary
 Yorkshire Luddism v 59

actions. The break is accentuated by the curt ‘‘But we.’’ The letter returns to ma-
chine breaking in Yorkshire, to the futility of the petitioning by croppers and
other woolen workers that preceded the repeals of 1809, and to the redressing
of grievances by a plural, first-person collective (‘‘we,’’ Ned Ludd’s ‘‘redressers’’)
rather than a kingdomwide abstraction alone, whether it be government or revo-
lution.
Kingdomwide revolutionary discourse provided not so much a practical ori-
entation for Luddite rhetoric as a parallel structure on a more general level to
accentuate the gravity of local grievances. Jacobinical rhetoric might also have
complemented threats of local violence and actual violence in the same way that
law, industrial action, and violence worked together in both the West of England
and in the West Riding prior to 1809, as Randall has described.98 In the case of
the croppers, however, the legal, peaceful methods did not coexist with the vio-
lence but rather antedated it. This fact distinguishes Luddism in Yorkshire from
that in the vicinity of Manchester, where petitioning coincided with violence and
was, as I have argued, part of a larger attempt by the weavers to constitute them-
selves as a body. In Manchester, any mention of petitioning in a threat or a posted
paper signaled that the weavers were constituting themselves in several dimen-
sions and spheres of action. In the Yorkshire letter to Mr. Smith, mention of the
rejection of petitioning signals that the already constituted body of croppers has
decided to break with its recent past in order to secure its long-held rights.
The break with petitioning has special importance, given both the croppers’
prior use of it and the fact that petitioning was a legal form of trade action. Many
petitioners from those distressed years simply sought relief for suffering, though
without making claims under any specific legal protection. The Bolton petition
of 11 November 1811 to the prince regent is just such a petition. No protective
statute or customary privilege is cited. On the contrary, only an account of suf-
fering and its cause is brought to bear against a customary and legal practice—
the use of grain to distill alcohol even when bread is scarce.99
Many other petitioners based their claims on legal or customary rights, and
petitioning did not bar an interpretative impulse. Randall explains that,

The West of England woollen workers and master clothiers and journeymen
of Yorkshire alike clearly expected Parliament to uphold the existing legisla-
tion or to modify it where appropriate, ‘‘keeping in view the uniform policy
of the state.’’ They did not necessarily intend that the existing law should be
60 v writings of the luddites

enforced to the letter. The crucial factor was how custom had interpreted the
law and what boundaries of enforcement various communities accepted and
felt to be right.100

Randall employs the term ‘‘customary legality’’ to describe an attitude by which

custom and law functioned complementarily in the woolen districts. It is not
clear whether under the concept custom was viewed as preceding law and serving
as its founding basis or whether custom followed, interpreted, and extended law.
Perhaps the distinction is arbitrary. In any event, custom and usage within a
trade community was seen by the cloth dressers as extending beyond legality in
the ‘‘distinct form of words.’’ Rather, the customary legality that prohibited the
shearing frames, regarding which the law said nothing, was defined in 1806 by
Randle Jackson, the counsel hired by the cloth workers to represent their inter-
ests, as a prohibition ‘‘in spirit and in fact.’’ 101
Even though custom was a mode of discourse that looked backward to en-
sure the rights of the community against the individual, thereby hindering full-
fledged capitalistic market practices, it coexisted in Yorkshire Luddite writing
with radicalism. That coexistence complicates an analysis of the writing and sug-
gests that Yorkshire Luddite writing occurs at and reflects a moment in the tem-
poral and numerical orientations of labor organization. There may be some-
thing to be said for Thompson’s emphasis on the centrality of the Luddites in
the making of the English working class. The Yorkshire region, for example, had
passed through a period of radicalism in the years prior to Luddism. For ex-
ample, documents that came into the possession of Joseph Radcliffe in 1802 were
influenced by the outlined radical aims of the United Britons. One document
especially, a pamphlet titled ‘‘Tyrants tremble the people are awake,’’ makes
natural-rights arguments for individual liberties.102 Randall also remarks on the
democratic and individualistic ideals of the master clothiers in the West Riding
and notes that the ideals were shared by many journeymen who aspired to be-
come masters themselves one day:103

The structure and mentalité of the West Riding woolen industry lent itself
better to such ideas than did that of the West of England. The Domestic Sys-
tem’s strength lay in its multiplicity of independent petty-producers and in the
way in which their values, expressed in the cloth hall, the small workshops and
cropping shops, were shared widely by the journeymen who worked along-
side them and who had aspirations to join their ranks. . . . The ethos of the
 Yorkshire Luddism v 61

Domestic System therefore reflected a society of small capitalists, conscious

of personal rights and liberties and jealous of any encroachment by the large
merchant capitalists whose role, they believed, should be confined solely to
selling and not manufacturing cloth. . . . The ideas of Paine could find a con-
ducive home in a culture such as this one, especially among those small master
clothiers who found their modest businesses increasingly unable to compete
with those of the nascent master manufacturers and also among the journey-
men weavers and croppers whose hopes of social mobility and social security
were being eroded by the advent of machinery. . . . The Painite ideal of petty-
producer independence reflected and ratified their view of the Domestic Sys-
tem, only now with the rise of mechanisation ceasing to appear secure and
protected.’’ 104

Randall goes on the assert that many of the ideas of Jacobinism ‘‘were at many
points congruent to the community mentalité of the West Riding.’’ 105 Absent a
constitutive discourse upon which claims might be grounded, Paine’s attack on
the constitutions that supported a government that denied protections to the
trade would have had a special effect. The opposition of the French to the British
government might have had a similar effect.
In the West Riding, as in much of Britain, the French enjoyed the good wishes
of many of the inhabitants. In 1798 a Huddersfield man, John Taylor, was re-
ported to Joseph Radcliffe for toasting ‘‘‘Success to Buonoparte and his under-
takings’ in front of recruiting parties in a public house in Huddersfield.’’ 106 Sym-
pathy for the French continued through much of the first decade of the 1800s.
In 1800, James ‘‘Citizen’’ Gledhill of Battyeford composed ‘‘A patriotic song for
the 14th of July 1800 being the anniversary of the French Revolution.’’ Brooke
and Kipling report that two years later the song was still in the possession of
Edmund Norcliffe, a member of the United Britons.107 Documents associated
the United Britons were also discovered in the West Riding in 1802.108 (Those
same documents were found ten years later at Foster’s Mill following a Luddite
raid.)
One important question remains. By 1812 the woolen industry was suffering
tremendously from the combined effects of reciprocal economic embargoes—
Napoleon’s Berlin Decrees and the British government’s Orders in Council.
Why would a Luddite author express a desire for the assistance of Napoleon, one
of the leaders responsible for the depression of trade? I believe that the answer
62 v writings of the luddites

lies in the numerical orientation of many of the Luddite writers of the West
Riding. Only in the West Riding do the Luddite writers boast of numbers. The
address ‘‘To all Croppers, Weavers, &c & Public at Large’’ mentions that ‘‘Above
40,000 Heroes are ready to break out, to crush the old Goverment & establish
a new one.’’ The letter to Mr. Smith warns that one of General Ludd’s lieuten-
ants will be dispatched with 300 men and that ‘‘2782 Sworn Heroes’’ are ready
to act. Numerical threats pervade Yorkshire Luddite writing. The tactic might
be traced back at least as far as 1801, when a letter was sent to Joseph Radcliffe
claiming that his life was in danger and that ‘‘500000 are redey boys yea & stedy
Boyss.’’ 109 It could be argued that the numerical tactic grew out of the demo-
cratic politics of Yorkshire during the preceding years and provided one method
by which a member of a disaffected group (a Luddite, for instance) was able to
make a representational claim.
A related tactic works in a letter to Joseph Radcliffe (Y8). The writer offers
ironic congratulations to Radcliffe for his work in suppressing Luddism. The
trope of popular disapproval, related to the numerical claims contained in other
writers, is accented by a measure of formality that resembles but contrasts with
the actions of the forty thousand weavers of Manchester, who raised a penny
subscription to give to Joseph Hanson a gold cup.110 Radcliffe’s reward is not,
however, a gold cup: ‘‘[I] think the medalon soon to be given to sutch villons as
you is a ledon ball with powder.’’
These rhetorical tactics demonstrate that the Luddite writers of the West
Riding might have been less concerned with constituting a community or a sub-
culture through their writing than they were with representing that community
to the authorities and cloth merchants. In this way, they more closely resemble
the Midlands Luddites than those of the vicinity of Manchester. Unable to appeal
to laws that recently had been repealed, and lacking (as Thompson points out)
the old paternalistic interventions in wage and price markets, there remained for
the croppers a relatively clear avenue—unionization, or an organizational pro-
cess that resembled unionization. The Brief Institution had provided a model;
however, the Combination Acts barred the public realization of that apparatus.
The result, as Randall implies, was bifurcation. Randall cites a 14 August 1799
letter from William Barlow, a spy for the government, to R. Ford: ‘‘There has
been more persons turned Jacobin within the little time that has elapsed since
the bill was passed than for a year before.’’ 111
 Yorkshire Luddism v 63

There were other Jacobinical influences at hand in the West Riding. John
Baines, described so well in Peel’s and Sykes and Walker’s accounts of Luddite
deliberations in the Huddersfield vicinity, was a Paineite, and Huddersfield had
a long republican tradition. This context suggests that arguments from natural
rights and the rights of man would have been ascendant in Luddite writings from
the West Riding. In fact, at times they are, but perhaps not as much as we might
believe. In the letter ‘‘To all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at Large’’ (Y4),
the writer advocates a Jacobinical revolution: ‘‘[A]ll Nobles and Tyrants must
be brought down. Come let us follow the Noble Example of the brave Citizens
of Paris who in the Sight of 30,000 Tyrant Redcoats brought A Tyrant to the
Ground. by so doing you will be best aiming at your own Interest.’’ The letter to
Mr. Smith (Y5), however, distinguishes an English revolution from the French
Revolution, claiming not to follow ‘‘the Noble Example of the brave Citizens
of Paris’’ but rather desiring the assistance of ‘‘the French Emperor.’’ English
nationalism actually seems to be foregrounded in the letter to Mr. Smith. The
Luddite writer does not seek to follow a French model but rather professes a
willingness to accept French assistance in causing England to progress to a ‘‘just
Republic.’’ There is probably very little unconscious irony involved in the letter.
In fact, the contrast of external assistance in the Mr. Smith letter with external
example in the letter ‘‘To all Croppers, Weavers, &c & Public at Large’’ sug-
gests that different Luddite writers considered different rhetorical options and
kept them separate to some degree. The writer of the letter to Mr. Smith, for
example, does not confuse the French revolutionary example with the assistance
of Napoleon.112
Despite the early saturation of Yorkshire by Jacobinical discourse, Luddite
texts are not themselves replete with such statements, tending more toward ex-
pressions of communal and customary grievances and ideals. In contrast, Ludd-
ite discourse was weakest in Manchester, where radicalism and its Paineite rhe-
toric of individual rights remained most pervasive throughout the Luddite years.
Although republican sentiments might be expressed, communal notions pre-
dominate in Yorkshire Luddism. The language of moral outrage remains clearer
than any Paineite or revolutionary rhetoric in many of the texts. More frequently
than not, the first-person plural of many Yorkshire Luddite texts, the insistent
‘‘we,’’ captures the value of ‘‘commonality’’ that was defended in the March 1812
letter to Mr. Smith (Y5). Paineite, Jacobin, and related ideas complicate the pic-
64 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

ture of Luddite discourse in the West Riding, but it still is possible to envision
how those ideas coexist with others. The rest of this section is devoted to under-
standing that coexistence and how those ideas came to be contained under the
umbrella of Luddism.
The Yorkshire croppers had available to them a highly developed discourse of
petition, political engagement, Paineite political-economic analysis, trade orga-
nization, and threat. Given the vast array of linguistic resources at hand, it is sur-
prising that they chose the language of Luddism, borrowed from the Midlands,
to express their grievances. Certainly, the weavers and spinners of the cotton
districts surrounding Manchester would have desired the constitutive effects of
Luddite rhetoric, but what did the croppers have to gain from Midlands Ludd-
ism? More precisely, what did they have to gain from appropriating a discourse
that had emerged in a different trade, in a different region, and under different
conditions of production?
The croppers had experienced some success in preventing or slowing the in-
corporation of gig mills into the woolen manufactures some years before; how-
ever, the rescission of protective statutes in 1809 removed the possibility of utiliz-
ing what Randall calls ‘‘customary legality’’ as a mode of thinking and as a method
of rhetorical appeal. Midlands framework knitters had experienced no similar di-
rect erosion of legal protections. In fact, as indicated previously, the framework
knitters had conducted successful legal actions against offending masters as re-
cently as 1808. Midlands Luddism, then, might have provided to the disaffected
croppers a still potent legal language that could be mapped onto the Yorkshire
croppers’ experiences and goals, and that could express the croppers’ grievances
in a language that had some rhetorical grounding not only in communally ap-
proved action but also in the sort of legality that the croppers had recently lost.
The mapping can take a number of forms. At times, only the name of General
Ludd is appropriated to signal a singularity of purpose and a militancy in Ludd-
ite resistance. At other times, however, the Yorkshire writers employed a more
highly developed device that might be called the Nottingham trope or an appeal
to Nottingham. The trope involves describing Luddite disaffection in Yorkshire
as having been authorized in Nottingham.
The clearest instances of the more highly wrought form of mapping appear
in two letters from the vicinity of Huddersfield purporting to have originated
in Nottingham. The first (Y7) is a 20 March 1812 letter from the ‘‘Soliciter to
 Yorkshire Luddism v 65

General Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Ratcliffe’’ at ‘‘Millsbridge.’’ Radcliffe is warned of a ‘‘judg-

ment’’ likely to be filed against him:

Take notice that a Declaration was this Day filed against you in Ludds Court
at Nottingham, and unless you remain* neutral judgment will immediately be
signd against you for Default, I shall thence summon a Jury for an Inquiry
of Damages take out Execution against both your Body and House, and then
you may Expect General Ludd, and his well organised Army to Levy it with
all destruction possible.

The legalistic language within the letter coincides precisely with the Notting-
ham trope. Law and legal authority reside in Nottingham, and the authorization
of a remedy for disaffection is typically treated as a process resembling legal pro-
ceedings. It imparts to the threatening letter a legitimacy that extends beyond
the West Riding community. Nevertheless, the threat makes clear that the en-
forcement of the judgment will be felt locally.
The letter also bridges two other gaps. In the first case, legal discourse is joined
to threats of armed activity in the statement that General Ludd’s army will exe-
cute the judgment of Ludd’s Court. The joining serves to counter the execution
of governmental policies and the preservation of law and order by the army in the
north of England during the Luddite risings, but the countering is not Jacobini-
cal. The ‘‘Solicitor’’ writes that Ludd’s Court is governed by equity, an English
legal concept. In this case, the Nottingham trope mitigates the force of revolu-
tionary threat by emphasizing Ludd’s continuity with English law.
Second, the remainder of the letter contains a passage that recalls the cloth
dressers’ earlier efforts to petition Parliament:

[T]he Cloth Dressers in the Huddersfield District as spent Seven Thousand

Pounds in petition Government to put Laws in force to stop the Shearing
Frames and Gig Mills to no purpose so they are trying this method now, and
he is informd how you are affraid it will be carried on to another purpose but
you need not be apprehensive of that, for as soon as ye Obnoxious machien-
ery is Stopd or Destroyd the Genearal and his Brave Army will be Disbandd,
and Return to their Employment, like other Liege Subjects

Again, the letter attempts to contain the threat and to assuage any fears of a
larger, Jacobinical purpose, this time by professing a desire for trade protections,
66 v writings of the luddites

so that the laws no longer have to be preserved and enforced out of Notting-
ham.113
The second letter to employ the mapping of a Nottingham discourse onto
West Riding trade concerns is a 1 May 1812 letter from ‘‘Peter Plush’’ writing from
Nottingham to ‘‘Mr Edward Ludd’’ at Huddersfield (Y14). Peter Plush writes,

By order of Genral Ludd sener the levetinent colonel and every rank of oficers
in the generales servece in the town and county of Nottingham I am reqested
to expres the hye sence of honer We entertan of the meritoreous movment
you and your forses have so gallantly mad in the neborood of Hudersfield to
secure the rites of our poor starving fellow creturs.

The Nottingham trope differs in this rather late Yorkshire text. The letter is writ-
ten in a congratulatory vein and, unlike the letter from General Ludd’s ‘‘Solici-
tor,’’ takes the form of a military commendation, but the letter preserves the
notion that authorization for Luddite activity emanates from Nottingham.
The letter concludes in a nationalistic but also republican vein that makes
clear that Ludd has had to claim the discourse of morality as his own because the
government has failed as a guardian of justice and equity:

I am futher otherised to say that it is the opinion of our general and men that
as long as that blackgard, drunken whoreing fellow called Prince Regent and
his servants have any thing to do with government that nothing but distres
will befole us there foot stooles. I am further desired to say that it is expected
that you will remember that you are mad of the same stuf as Gorg Gwelps
Juner and corn and wine are sent for you as wel as him.

The Peter Plush letter moves beyond the language of judgment into a language
approaching but not quite realizing republicanism.
The rhetorical appeal to Nottingham enables the Yorkshire Luddite writers
to join their number to a larger ‘‘we,’’ comprising disaffected textile artisans in a
number of trades and locales. The numerical and geographical threats of com-
bination and correspondence would have been useful to Yorkshire writers who
were seeking to reestablish their potency in the wake of the repeals of 1809. The
Nottingham trope was also complex in a temporal sense. The legalisms of Not-
tingham Luddite writing, appropriated by West Riding Luddites, harken back
to a time when the textile trades enjoyed legal protections. But the croppers’
protections had vanished, so any rhetorical borrowing of legal claims had to be
 Yorkshire Luddism v 67

undertaken with care. The Midlands Luddites enjoyed the long-established sanc-
tion of the crown, contained in the Charter of the Framework Knitters, but that
sanction had recently been validated by the King’s Bench in 1808 and had not yet
been repudiated by the government. The Nottingham trope was simultaneously
ancient and timely.
The figure of General Ludd ultimately served as an organizing principle that
enabled disaffected English workers to think in terms of both the locality and
the commonality of their difficulties. Even the Nottinghamshire General Ludd
who congratulates the Huddersfield Luddites emphasizes the local nature of their
problems. Even the leader of the Army of Redressers seeks to recruit the local
populations of Huddersfield, Leeds, and the other northern towns into service.
In almost all of the texts, including those with rhetorical appeals to nationalism,
the local is emphasized, despite the lessons of the Brief Institution to consider
national causes.
Nevertheless, even to its end, Yorkshire Luddism exhibited its bifurcation.
Imprisoned in York Castle in November 1812, George Mellor turned his mind to
petitioning Parliament for reform, writing to Thomas Ellis (Y22), ‘‘I have heard
you are petitioning for a Parliamentary Reform and I wish these names to be
given as follows,’’ and sending a list of some thirty names. Weeks after the exe-
cution of Mellor and the other Luddites in January 1813, letters to officials in the
vicinity of Huddersfield mentioned Mellor and threatened vengeance, death, and
destruction to those opposing Luddite aims. As throughout the period of Ludd-
ism in Yorkshire, these letters reflect the Yorkshire Luddite propensity to make
use of whatever discursive tools were conveniently at hand.
This page intentionally left blank
 Midlands documents

i d l a n d s l u d d i s m comprises the machine breaking, letter writing,

M and related forms of protest that occurred in Nottinghamshire, Leices-
tershire, and Derbyshire. Most of the machine breaking occurred in Nottingham
and its vicinity, and most of the Luddite texts also originated in the Nottingham
area between November 1811 and April 1812 and again briefly in the autumn of
1814 and summer of 1816.
The division between the lawful and the machine-breaking strands of Ludd-
ism, assumed by historians since E. P. Thompson, both facilitates and compli-
cates the selection of Luddite documents. On the surface, the division of texts
seems to be more clear in the Midlands than in the North, where writers from the
affected trades rarely signed their names to letters and proclamations that sought
to open public, nonsecretive avenues for resolving wage, usage, and price dis-
putes. In the Midlands, however, anonymity was rather exceptional. The frame-
work knitting trade, as a recognized public body that openly negotiated with
masters through named representatives, provided the Midlands Luddite writers
with an established rhetoric and with neatly delineated and commonly desired
material goals. The grievances, the rhetorical strategies and appeals, and even
the cadences of the writing of both the lawful and Luddite groups are frequently
similar, but the fact that representatives of the Company of Framework Knit-
ters and the local and branch committees signed their names to publicly dissemi-
nated documents creates the appearance of a dissociation from the anonymous,
or eponymous, violent strand. Compared with Luddism in the North, where a
70 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

mingling of constitutional and violent discourses is obvious and ubiquitous, the

division in the Midlands between lawful writing and Luddite writing rings of
artificiality.1
Midlands Luddites were also less interested in kingdomwide political reform
than their Northwestern counterparts. In Nottinghamshire, Luddite writing re-
mained comparatively, though by no means completely, differentiated from other
forms of written protest actuated by different motives, especially political ones.
George Rudé goes so far as to insist that the political language was ‘‘intrusive
rather than intrinsic’’ to Luddism.2 The Luddite texts themselves probably do
not support Rudé’s broad claim or Thompson’s related claim of a division, but
rather they indicate a range of languages and rhetorical tactics centered on the
existence of a form of trade consciousness. Intending to reflect what I believe
to be a focused continuum of discourses, I have chosen to include several other
texts, including signed documents, that share formal, ideological, and strategic
features with anonymous Luddite writings.

M1 v November 1811: Posted ‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’ by ‘‘Thos Death’’

to ‘‘Edward Ludd,’’ Nottingham

The Home Office is the most important archive of Luddite letters, but a col-
lection of papers in the estate of Richard Enfield of Bramcote, discovered during
the early years of the twentieth century, also contains some of the same docu-
ments in the Home Office Papers. These papers, primarily letters and procla-
mations dating from 1811 and 1812, have been compiled and reproduced by John
Russell in his 1906 article, ‘‘The Luddites.’’ Some appear to be originals, but most
are clearly copies. Unfortunately, it is necessary to rely on the Home Office ver-
sions for dates and other information regarding the circumstances of reception
or composition.
Luddite declarations, proclamations, and posted notices provide good exam-
ples of the Luddites’ appropriation of official discourse, repeated in the course of
transforming the moral economy into a moral-economic polity capable of taking
action on behalf of a community and a trade against manufacturers who were
supported by the government. Although frame wrecking seems to have tapered
off in Nottinghamshire from the end of March through October 1811, it appears
 Midlands Documents v 71

from the declaration here (dated November 1811) that a Luddite subculture had
been forming despite the relative quiet. The declaration, like the Luddite anthem
‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph,’’ indicates that the historian’s traditional reliance on
texts descriptive of events may be inadequate to an understanding of a working-
class culture, the formation and operations of which are often undocumented.
A rhetorical analysis of the values manifested in the text here and others like it
may prove effective as supplements in increasing our understanding of Luddite
writing and the subculture that produced it.
One of the more remarkable features of the declaration is its manifesting a po-
litical structure in which the assembled ‘‘General Agitators’’ determine courses
of action, charging or authorizing General Ludd with the execution. Such ‘‘dem-
ocratic’’ markers might recall earlier, similar features of the New Model Army.
Other Luddite documents, such as the 1 May 1812 Yorkshire letter from ‘‘Peter
Plush’’ on behalf of General Ludd to the Huddersfield Luddites, indicate a hier-
archy descending from the West Riding version of General Ludd, who ‘‘other-
ises’’ Peter Plush to convey certain thoughts to the Huddersfield agitators.3 The
purpose of the declaration might explain its more democratic appearances: it is
intended to be presented to the offending manufacturer, revealing to him the
popular, widespread sense of injustice. Given such a rhetorical project, a demo-
cratic subtext would be appropriate.
Recognizing the democratic subtext also helps to explain the true nature of
the Luddite ‘‘judgment.’’ The artisan tradition had provided for the levying of
fines or forfeitures (usually of finished and unfinished goods) against trade mem-
bers who violated the rules of the trade. The violating members typically were
masters, but artisans nevertheless, hence subject to government by the trade, the
Framework Knitters Charter, and its rules. Even during this period of increas-
ing social and professional distance between master and worker made possible by
industrial capitalism, workers sought to enforce the rules against masters whom
they still considered to be members of their trade.
The writer of the declaration took care to make the document resemble an
official proclamation through mimicking the language of legal writs and through
the physical presentation of the lettering. For example, the first three lines appear
in larger characters than the body of the declaration and through underscoring
the writer attempts to reproduce typographical effects of official, printed procla-
mations. Substantive revision, evident in the striking of the more colloquial ‘‘get
72 v writings of the luddites

rich’’ and its replacement by the more formal ‘‘gain riches,’’ indicates the writer’s
preference for elevated constructions appropriate for the language of law.
The declaration follows immediately a copy of a 15 November 1811 outletter
from Home Office Undersecretary John Beckett to High Sheriff Thomas Wright
at Norwood Park, Nottinghamshire, informing Wright that a squadron of the
15th Dragoons will be dispatched to Nottingham in response to the violence.
Beckett’s letter provides no additional information about the text.

H. O. 42/119. A version also appears in John Russell’s ‘‘The Luddites,’’ Transactions of the
Thoroton Society 10 (1906): 53–62, as Facsimile C, facing page 59, with no additional infor-
mation about the document.

v v v

Declaration; Extraordinary.
Justice.
Death, or Revenge.
To our well-beloved Brother, and Captain in Chief, Edward Ludd.

Whereas, it hath been represented to us: the General Agitators, for the
Northern Counties, assembled to redress the Grievances of the Operative Me-
chanics, That Charles Lacy, of the Town of Nottingham, British Lace Manu-
facturer, has been guilty of divers fraudulent, and oppressiv, Acts—whereby he
has reduced to poverty and Misery Seven Hundred of our beloved Brethren;
moeover, it hath been represented to us that the said Charles Lacy, by making
fraudulent Cotton Point Nett,4 of One Thread Stuff, has obtain’d the Sum of
Fifteen Thousand Pounds, whereby he has ruine’d the Cotton-Lace Trade, and
consequently our worthy and wellbelov’d Brethren; whose support and comfort
depended on the continuance of that manufacture.
It appeareth to us that the said Charles Lacy was actuated by the most diaboli-
cal motives, namely to get rich gain riches by the misery of his Fellow Creatures,
we therefore willing to make an example of the said Charles Lacy, do adjudge
the said Fifteen Thousand Pounds to be forfeited, and we do hereby authorise,
impower, and enjoin you, to command Charles Lacy to disburse the said sum,
in equal shares among the Workmen, who made Cotten Nett in the Year 1807,
within ten Days from the Date hereof.
In default whereof, we do command that you inflict the Punishment of Death
on the said Charles Lacy, and we do authorise you to distribute among [the party]
 Midlands Documents v 73

you may employ for that purpose the Sum of Fifty Pounds, we enjoin you to
cause this our Order to be presented to the said Charles Lacy without Delay,
November 1811--By Order Thos Death 5

M2 v 8 November 1811: Threatening letter from ‘‘Ned Lud’’ at Nottingham to

‘‘Mr H’’ at ‘‘Bullwell’’

This letter is one of the earliest Luddite documents from the vicinity of Not-
tingham. Even in its early stages, Nottinghamshire Luddism employed a legal
style (indicated in this letter by words such as ‘‘execution’’ and ‘‘Forfeit’’). ‘‘Mr
Bolton,’’ the ‘‘Forfeit’’ whose name is cited in the letter almost as a form of prece-
dent, is probably the Arnold hosier whose frames were broken during the first
round of Luddite attacks of March 1811.6
The document is in poor physical condition. The addressee’s name is illeg-
ible due to bleeding of the ink, but the long name of more than ten characters
begins with ‘‘H,’’ and the town seems to be Bulwell. The recipient may have
been Edward Hollingsworth, an unpopular Bulwell hosier, whose frames were
destroyed on 10 November 1811 despite his having prepared for the attack, during
which one Luddite ( John Westley or Westby or Wesley) was killed.7
The letter, sent from Nottingham to Bulwell, might serve as partial refuta-
tion of the argument made by R. A. Church and S. D. Chapman, who attempt to
resolve the problem of the apparent division among the framework knitters be-
tween the machine-breaking and the ‘‘constitutionalist’’ branches. Church and
Chapman argue that the effective division was between town and country stock-
ingers. The lower-paid country workers were supposed by Church and Chapman
to have been more resentful, desperate, and prone to violence than their town
counterparts.8 This letter and others indicate that much of Luddite discontent
did issue from Nottingham, even when the threats were made against masters
outside of the town.
The letter appears without any enclosing correspondence and with damage to
the document in several places. I have retained the original format of the letter,
particularly line breaks, to show the position of lacunae caused by bleeding and
tearing.

H. O. 42/118.
74 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

v v v
r
M H[illegible]
at Bullwell

Sr,

Sir if you do not pull don the Frames

or stop pay [in] Goods 9 onely for work
extra work or m[ake] in Full fashon
my Companey will [vi]sit y r machines
for execution agai[nst] [y]ou--
Mr Bolton the Forfeit--
I visitd him--
Ned Lu[d]
Kings [illegible]
m r
Nottingh ---Novemb 8 1811

M3 v 27 November 1811: ‘‘Address of the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers to the

Gentlemen Hosiers of Nottingham’’

The anonymous public writings of the Luddites share many rhetorical fea-
tures with the named public writings of the framework knitters and members of
other trades. Typically, even the lawful, signed publications do not make clear
whether the authors write as agents of the Company of Framework Knitters or
as an ad hoc collective. In November 1811 the Nottingham Review carried two ad-
dresses to the gentlemen hosiers of Nottingham from a group of stockingers.
One of the addresses, ‘‘From the Framework-Knitters,’’ written shortly after the
commencement of the November breakings, appeals to the compassion of the
hosiers, to their desire for commercial advantage and community prosperity, and
to their fears of frame breaking (‘‘suitable defence’’ and ‘‘We wish to live peace-
ably and honestly by our Labour’’). Whereas the address ‘‘From the Framework-
Knitters’’ is unsigned, the ‘‘Address of the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers’’ is signed
‘‘WILLIAM CRUMP, Secretary, In behalf of the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers.’’
Crump’s signature is followed by a list of fifty-two hosiers who signed an agree-
ment to pay their employees an advance of sixpence per pair of hose. When the
 Midlands Documents v 75

two addresses are considered together, as their original proximity to each other
requires, the tension between publicity and anonymity simultaneously comple-
ments and displaces the eponymy typical of the pieces signed ‘‘Ludd,’’ usually
as a defender of ‘‘the Trade.’’ The tension further reflects the dilemma that the
hosiers and the authorities must have faced: with whom were they to negotiate?
Officials sought, above all, to preserve the peace, and the ‘‘classic’’ model involved
a process of negotiation and compromise.10 Typically, the magistrates and landed
gentlemen would bargain directly with persons who were known to them. In the
case of Nottingham Luddism, the ambiguity centering on naming and nameless-
ness cast an element of doubt into any negotiation. Officials and hosiers could
not be certain that any compromise with the named members of the trade could
satisfy the demands of the unnamed members. The unsigned ‘‘Address from the
Framework-Knitters’’ must surely have complicated matters even more by in-
sinuating a link between the signed ‘‘Address of the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers’’
immediately below it in the Review and the anonymous or eponymous Luddite
threats circulated throughout the region at the time.

Nottingham Review, 29 November 1811, printed on the front page. (The same documents
appeared in the Nottingham Journal but not in such a prominent position.) A copy of the
Review was forwarded to the Home Office, where it appears in H. O. 42/117.

v v v

ADDRESS
OF THE PLAIN SILK STOCKING-MAKERS
to
THE GENTLEMEN HOSIERS OF NOTTINGHAM,
w h o h av e ag r e e d t o g i v e
An advance of Sixpence per Pair
for t h e m a k i ng of b l ac k s i l k h o s e .

GENTLEMEN,—Gratitude is an Attribute imprinted upon the Human Heart

by Deity himself; and for us not to acknowledge your Favor on the present occa-
sion, would render us unworthy of your future regard, and justly expose us to
the scorn of every honest and humane Man, who might be made acquainted with
your present attention to our interest. It is therefore with peculiar satisfaction
that we return you our Thanks for your ready condescension in attending to the
solicitations of those Persons that waited upon you, on our behalf, to obtain the
76 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

advance above specified. Indeed, whoever contemplates for a moment the present
situation of the Stocking-Makers, with the alarming price of every necessary of
life staring them in the face, will sympathize with their sufferings, and the suf-
ferings of the Families, and will readily join with them in giving Thanks to those
of their Employers, who attend to the amelioration of their piteous Condition.
Gentlemen,
Believe me your very humble and obedient Servant,
WILLIAM CRUMP, Secretary,
In behalf of the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers.
Nottingham, Nov. 27, 1811.
N. B. The following is a List of those Gentlemen Hosiers,
who have Signed the above Advance:— 11

Lawson and Sons Kewney and Richardson

J. and I. Lawson Wm. Howitt
Brocksopp and Parker Berridge and Tarratt
E. Chatteris For L. B. Mason, W. Smith
Thos. Kelk J. Rawson
Beardsmore and Sons For Berridge and James, Rich.
T. Galloway Shaw
W. Meats and Sons Radford and Stones
Barwick and Christian R. Hopper
N. and J. Cox and Co. Thos. Jackson
Simon Skidmore Turner and Smith
For Mr. Eaton, Rich. Satter- Geo. Carey
thwaite Edmund Wright and Co.
Child, Cosens, and Co. Strahan, Theaker and Co.
Saml. Clark J. Billins
Scorer and Acomb G. L. Cox and Son
James and Neal W. Walker
Saml. Barlow Morley, Wilson, and Morley
G. and S. Nichols Holmes, Edenborough,
Geo. Gibson and Son & Stenson
Hancock and Wakefield Trentham, Trentham, and
Hall, Northage, and Hardwick Martin
Wilks and Armfield G. and J. Ray
 Midlands Documents v 77

Geo. Pickering James Pritt and Co.

G. and J. Mills R. and S. Cheetham
Pope and Co. Green and Gill
J. Lightfoot Dove, Gill, and Co.
Thos. Jerram Richd. Smith and Co.

A Pledge of the same nature has been given by several other Hosiers, whose
Names are not annexed.

M4 v 28 November 1811: ‘‘An Address from the Framework-Knitters to the

Gentlemen Hosiers of the Town of Nottingham’’

Nottingham Review, 29 November 1811, printed on the front page.

v v v

AN ADDRESS
FROM THE FRAMEWORK-KNITTERS
to the
GENTLEMEN HOSIERS
of
THE TOWN OF NOTTINGHAM.

GENTLEMEN,—At a time like the present, so big with Calamity and Distress,
we think it right to solicit your Advice, Aid, and Direction, as we know no Reason
why our Business, which is looked upon as the staple Trade, and principal Sup-
port of the Community at large, should be exposed to so many Evils, without any
suitable means of defence; or if any, why not brought forward into exercise. As
we have nothing in view but a reciprocal Advantage in the Trade, both for our-
selves and you, and a mutual good Understanding in all our Actions, we solicit
your Advice, Aid, Direction, and Support, in this time of our Calamity and Dis-
tress, and we think we have a humble Claim upon you for it. On account of the
great rise of all the Necessaries of Life, a Man that has full employ, with all his
industry, and a Woman, with all her care and economy, can by no means support
a Family with any degree of Comfort. If this is the Case (which it really is) how
deplorable must the situation of those be, that have but a small portion of Em-
ploy, and at very low Rates; but still worse, what must the situation of those be
78 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

that have none at all, which is the Case with I n c a l c u l a b le Nu m be rs at this

time.–Destitute of all the Comforts of Life, our only acquaintance is pinching
Poverty and pining Want. We wish to live peaceably and honestly by our Labour,
and to train up our Children in the paths of virtue and rectitude, but we cannot
accomplish our wishes. Our Children, instead of being trained up by a regular
course of Education, for social life, virtuous employments, and all the recipro-
cal advantages of mutual enjoyment, are scarce one remove from the Brute, are
left to all the dangerous Evils attendant on an uncultivated Mind, and often fall
dreadful Victims to that guilt, which Ignorance is the parent of. But, Gentle-
men, we forbear, as we think it would be insulting both to your judgments and
feelings, were we to attempt a description of all our Calamities, which you so
well know, and which we so much experience. Our request, Gentlemen, is that
you will favor us with your best Advice, respecting as Address to Parliament, for
the better Regulation of our Trade, and means of defence against future Imposi-
tions. Being well assured that the most suitable means lie in the compass of your
breasts, we wish to pay all deference to your superior judgments, and are now
waiting for your decision, which we hope you will favor us with as soon as pos-
sible; that if it meets your views, the Business may be conducted peaceably and
in good order, to our mutual Comfort and Advantage.
November 28, 1811.

M5 v 16 December 1811: Proclamation, ‘‘Ned Lud Gives Notic, to the

Coperation,’’ Nottingham

Although some letters merely hint at violence, most Luddite threats were ex-
aggerated; however, especially in Nottinghamshire, the exaggerations were more
often than not rhetorical responses intended to counter some official action. For
example, the regent’s offer of a reward of fifty pounds begat a parodic Luddite
reply—a reward of fifty bullets for any informer (Rutland to Ryder, 5 January
1812, H. O. 42/119). On 11 December 1811 a committee consisting of public offi-
cials and large manufacturers was formed by the Nottingham town corporation,
thereby politicizing the conflict. The committee was to operate in secret to quell
the risings and had two thousand pounds at its disposal.12 In December 1811, while
the stockingers were seeking a negotiated settlement with the manufacturers, the
government dispatched troops to Nottingham at the urging of members of the
 Midlands Documents v 79

newly formed ‘‘Corporation Committee,’’ as it was called. The notice here urges
the Corporation Committee to call a meeting to pursue negotiations, which had
been the aim of the earlier open letters published by stockingers in the December
1811 Nottingham newspapers, but the arrival of soldiers changed the bargaining
position of the framework knitters. The Luddite response was to recognize the
fact of politicization on the local or civic level and to exaggerate their own power,
thereby seeking to force negotiations. This is the first Luddite document that
threatens violence on a civic scale as a demonstration of Luddite power and de-
termination. In fact, by the end of the letter, the threat of violence intensifies and
broadens through defiance of a national institution, the military, and through
the closing, ‘‘no King.’’
The document is undated in Russell and has no accompanying information
about the recipient, but it certainly is the letter described in a reward notice in
the Nottingham Review, 27 December 1811: ‘‘Resolved Unanimously—That this
Corporation do agree to pay a Sum not exceeding £500 . . . to any Person or
Persons, who may give such Information of the Authors, Writers, Publishers, or
Senders of . . . a wicked and inflammatory Paper, addressed by way of Notice to
the Corporation, under the fictitious Name of Ned Lud, delivered at the Police
Office on the Evening of the 16th of December Instant . . .’’ 13

Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ Facsimile D, facing page 61.

v v v

Ned Lud Gives Notic, to the

Coperation,
if the Coperation does not take means to Call A
Meeting with the Hoseiars about the prices Being
Droped Ned will asemble 20000 Menn together in a few Days
and will Destroy the town in Spite of the Soldiers
no King

M6 v 20 December 1811: Address of the Plain Silk Hands of Derby

Two weeks after the open letters from the hosiers and the stockingers ap-
peared in the Nottingham Review, the Plain Silk Hands of Derby published in the
Review their own open letter. The biblical epigraph comes from Luke 10:7, in a
80 v writings of the luddites

passage in which Jesus instructs his followers on disseminating the Gospel, com-
paring their work to a harvest. Among other things, Jesus tells his followers that
he sends them forth ‘‘as lambs among wolves’’ (Luke 10:3) and that they should
undertake their work with an attitude of peace (Luke 10:5), but the passage also
contains a threat against those who refuse the missionaries’ overtures: ‘‘But into
whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not. . . . it shall be more tolerable
in that day for Sodom, than for that city’’ (Luke 10:10–12). Given the double
message of the biblical passage, the epigraph imparts to the address a tone that
is dynamic, moving from overtures of peace to the threat of violence.

Nottingham Review, 20 December 1811.

v v v

‘‘The Labourer is worthy of his Hire.’’

At a General Meeting of Plain Silk Framework-knitters, held at the Fox and
Owl Inn, Derby, December 9th, 1811, to take into consideration the increasing
Grievances under which they labour, it was unanimously Resolved, that every
means in their power should be employed to stop the progress of future Imposi-
tions upon their Manufacture, and that a Statement of their Case be once more
submitted to their Employers, with an application for immediate Redress.
Gentlemen Hosiers,
GALLED by the pressure of unprecedented times, we cannot any longer re-
main indifferent to our common interest as men. As a body of ingenious artizans,
employed on materials of great value; pent up in a close shop fourteen or sixteen
hours a day; (a confinement prejudicial to many constitutions), having under our
constant care machine confessedly difficult, from the construction of its prin-
ciples, to preserve in good condition, and allowed to be one of the first produc-
tions of British genius; devoting our time and abilities alone, to adorn the rich
and great, we conceive ourselves entitled to a higher station in society; and that,
in point of emolument, we ought to rank with mechanics of the first eminence.
If the position be admitted that one calling is more respectable than another,
surely the making of Silk Stockings is an employment, both in point of value and
elegance of the article, highly respectable; and considering our manufacture is
consumed alone by the opulent, it ought to produce a competence adequate to
the just wants of our families.
About thirty years ago, a Silk Stocking-maker obtained a decent subsistence;
but since that time we have had to contend with two great drawbacks upon our
 Midlands Documents v 81

necessary comforts, the one is imposition upon our manufacture, the other a
tripled augmentation in the price of nearly every article we consume. That has
crept upon us by a slow and imperceptible motion; this by bold and rapid strides;
each at once aiming the blow that has laid us prostrate beneath every other me-
chanic in this part of the empire.
To prove that we have imposition upon our manufacture, we must advert to
its originally established order, that has, till now, stood inviolate for nearly two
centuries. By its established order, we mean the gauges of our frames: by these
alone we ascertain the quality of a silk stocking, and in proportion to the number
of gauges, our wages have been regulated for nearly two hundred years; these
always remaining sacred between the employer and his workmen. In most articles
of plain silk, one shilling for two extra gauges was generally given; that is to say,
from a 24 to a 26 gauge, one shilling extra; from a 26 to a 28 gauge, one shilling
extra, and so on in proportion. Is it not an imposition then to be compelled to
make 24 work on a 26 gauge, for the price of a 24 gauge? Is it not a still greater
imposition to be compelled to make 24 work on a 27 or 28 gauge, without a re-
muneration? As the price stands at present, we are losing from nine-pence to one
shilling and nine-pence per pair, the quality of the work being nearly equal to the
gauge. That these impositions exist we presume no Hosier will take upon him
to deny; neither do we pretend to charge any individual amongst them as being
the author of them. We are at a loss to know where to fix the stigma (too much
blame being due to ourselves for not watching better over the trade) as each striv-
ing to manufacture on the lowest terms, makes us little better than mere engines
to support a jealous competition in the market. The average earnings of plain
silk hands are indeed too well known to you, to be a very small pittance for the
maintenance of a wife and two or three children; they do not exceed 10s. 6d. per
week: if some average 13s. per week, this will do very little for a family. Three
shillings at least must go for house-rent and taxes—one shilling for coal—one
shilling and sixpence for soap and candles, for himself and family; and if he has
a wife and three children he must have one stone and a half of flour, which is at
least six shillings more; here we see the poor fellow has left three shillings and
sixpence to provide all other necessaries of life.
Is it not very discouraging to us to know that the shoe-maker has doubled his
wages within the last twenty years, that the tailor has done nearly the same, and
the labourer who had about that time six shillings per week has now eighteen shil-
lings? Whenever any other class of mechanics turn out for an advance of wages,
82 v writings of the luddites

so far as we are concerned in the consumption of their particular manufacture,

it has a direct tendency to diminish our’s; while at the same time the price of our
labour, to our great mortification, is fatally doomed to be stationary. If a me-
chanic in any branch of business either increases his hours of labour, or takes a
piece of work extra to what he has been accustomed to do, justice, reason, and
honor, demand an adequate remuneration. But alas! how far different this with
a Silk Stocking-maker! Instead of our wages increasing with the price of provi-
sion (which ought to be the case under every civil government) we are generally
making stockings one shilling under their real quality. The time is now come
when it is impossible for us to go any longer in a contented condition, under
present circumstances. The imperious dictates of human nature impel us to raise
up a manly voice in our own behalf: governed by every principle of right towards
you, acknowledging that due deference to your superior station, yet loudly call-
ing your attention to our present case. Much encouraged by the late address to
the trade, from the Gentlemen Hosiers in Nottingham, we avail ourselves of this
auspicious moment, fully believing that you see the necessity of an amelioration
of our wretched condition. Hedged in by a combination act, we cannot say to
you as a public body, that we demand an advance of wages, but we can say that
j u s t i c e de m a n d s that we should receive a remuneration for extra labour:
this is all we want, and until it is obtained, nothing but complaints will be found
to exist amongst us.
It cannot reasonably be expected that we shall obtain a full remuneration for
the impositions on our manufacture AT ONCE; probably this will be a work of
some time: therefore we have fixed upon SIXPENCE per pair on all sorts of silk
hose; at the same time observing that we consider this a very paltry consideration
indeed, compared with the alarming high price of provisions, and the repeated
advances all other mechanics have received in their wages. This partial remunera-
tion for extra labour, as we may justly call it, we have every reason to believe may
on your part with great ease be ceded; knowing some little of men and things,
we certainly conclude that not one pair less of silk stockings will be worn. If a
poor man is obliged now in give three shillings and sixpence more for a pair of
shoes than he did in time past, is it unreasonableness that a gentleman out of his
fortune should give sixpence extra for a pair of silk stockings, when at the same
time there is a shilling extra in labour upon them? Instead of complaining, we
might suppose he would rather say, ‘Let the ingenious live.’
During the last twenty years, while provision has been so rapidly advancing,
 Midlands Documents v 83

we have seen it our duty frequently to petition you for an advance in wages. In
the year 1805, we attained twopence per pair: although you certainly granted us a
favor, we were very much disgusted with the smallness of the advance. You told us
if you raised the price of our labour, (and you always tell us so) the French would
undersell us in the market. Considering the high repute of British manufacture,
we have reason to hope this would not be the case; an allowed preference always
being given to it. And we observe that a branch of commerce that must be spun
out of our very bowels, to support a competition with the trash produced by the
French manufacture, rather than its being an ornament to our national glory, is
a curse to us as individuals; and makes us regret the day that ever doomed us to
be Plain Silk Stocking-makers.
Gentlemen, there is every reason in the world to prove that a remuneration
ought and must take place. Several Hosiers in this town have openly avowed its
necessity. The high price of provision is on our side, reason, honer, morality,
philanthropy, necessity, justice, your own interest, as being accountable to the
Almighty, the practicability of the case, the combination act, and the general
sufferage of mankind; all declare that we ought to be remunerated for extra
labour.
Gentlemen, being invited by some of you to state our grievances, we have
used great plainness on the subject; well knowing that this will prvail, when acts
of violence would render us detestable to mankind.
In order to prevent any future imposition on our manufacture, we have drawn
up the following Statement, by which we mean to abide.
RESOLVED—That all Hose shall be marked with the Figures in the Welt according
to what they are.

Women’s Men’s | Price of Women’s. Price Men’s.

Jacks. Jacks. | S. D. S. D.

 . . .  . . .  |     
 . . .  . . .  |    
 . . .  . . . 
 |   

 . . . 
 . . .  | 
  
 . . .  . . .  |     
 . . .  . . .  |     
 . . .  . . .   |    

24 narrowed down 1 plain, 14 jacks in women’s, 16 in men’s, 4 bindings in in

women’s heels, 5 in men’s, 5 bindings in in women’s bottoms, 6 in men’s.
84 v writings of the luddites

26 narrowed down 1 plain, 15 jacks in women’s, 17 in men’s, 5 bindings in in

women’s heels, 6 in men’s, 6 bindings in in women’s bottoms, 7 in men’s.
28 narrowed down 2 plain, 17 jacks in women’s, 19 in men’s, 6 bindings in in
women’s heels, 7 in men’s, 7 bindings in in women’s bottoms, 8 in men’s.
30 narrowed down 2 plain, 19 jacks in women’s, 21 in men’s, 7 bindings in in
women’s heels, 8 in men’s, 8 bindings in in women’s bottoms, 9 in men’s.
32 narrowed down 2 plain, 21 jacks in women’s, 23 in men’s, 8 bindings in in
women’s heels, 9 in men’s, 9 bindings in in women’s bottoms, 10 in men’s.
34 narrowed down 2 plain, 23 jacks in women’s, 25 in men’s, 9 bindings in in
women’s heels, 10 in men’s, 10 bindings in in women’s bottoms, 11 in men’s.
36 narrowed down 2 plain, 25 jacks in women’s, 27 in men’s, 10 bindings in in
women’s heels, 11 in men’s, 1 bindings in in women’s bottoms, 12 in men’s.
24 and 26 half size, 4 jacks--28 and upwards 6 jacks.
Any alteration in the above width to be paid for accordingly.
We expect and trust the above remuneration for extra labour, together with
these regulations, take place on the 1st of January, 1812.
From the Derby Committee of Plain Silk Hands.

M7 v 21 December 1811: Letter from ‘‘Ned Lud’’ at Nottingham to the

Corporation Committee at Nottingham

Like the preceding ‘‘Ned Lud Gives Notic’’ paper, this letter addresses the
activities of the Corporation Committee in Nottingham. And, like other letters
written later, it links the Corporation Committee with Spencer Perceval, indi-
cating that the Nottinghamshire Luddites had begun to envision a connection,
or at least an operational affinity, between the local authorities and those in Lon-
don. The predominant focus by the Luddite writers on the Nottingham Cor-
poration Committee suggests that, despite mention of national political figures,
the increasing political consciousness remained local in nature, in contrast to the
heightened concern with national policy exhibited by the Yorkshire and, to an
even greater degree, Northwestern Luddites, as well as in later letters from the
Midlands.

Transcript 3 in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ 61.

v v v
 Midlands Documents v 85

Gentlemen
I prosum you are desireus of A sitiation hin the fugoffis 14 and you may
Rest ashured nothing shall be wonting hon My part to procure you the sitia-
tions you Apply for but I doubt I shall not be able to provide for you all in
the fugoffice, as som of you willnot alltogather be wiling To stop there hon
A Count of the dangeours Desorder you seem to Laber hunder, it aperes from
the simtoms of youre desorder that another full moon or two will make som
of you fit objects for the Hous in snenton Fields, but if it shud plese devin
provedenc to render any of you unfit to discharg the dutys Which Mr. Cold-
ham has imposed hon youre Commitey befor the 12th of february 1812 I will
get Docr. Willis 15 to atend hon you but At the A bove date Mr. Willis will be
wanted at Saint Lukes 16 as it may be Expected he wil have Ocation to meet
King Percevell and the rest of youre Coleges there.
I am yours faithfuly
Ned Lud 
Nottingham
December the 21 1811

M8 v 23 December 1811: Posted proclamation signed ‘‘By order of

King Ludd,’’ Nottingham

This signed proclamation appears in the Home Office Papers, with no enclos-
ing letter, and as Russell’s Transcript 2. Russell remarks, ‘‘No date but published
23 Decr. 1811.’’ That date is provided in the version in the Home Office Papers in
the handwriting of a Home Office clerk, although the document itself appears
not to be a clerk’s copy. Thomis, too, provides a date of 23 December 1811.17 The
date follows two official actions, both of which were announced in the Notting-
ham Journal, 28 December 1811, several days after their being introduced. One
was an offer by the prince regent of rewards and pardons for persons giving in-
formation against the machine breakers. The other was a decision by the Not-
tingham mayor and council to form a Corporation Committee, funded with two
thousand pounds and appointed the task of quelling the Luddite ‘‘outrages.’’

H. O. 42/118; Transcript 2 in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ 60. It is reproduced in Malcolm

Thomis, Luddism in Nottinghamshire (London: Phillimore, 1972), 18.
86 v writings of the luddites

v v v

〈Home Office version〉

I do hereby discharge, all manner of Persons, who has been, employ’d by me,
in giveing any information, of breaking Frames, to the Town Clerk, or to the
Corporation Silley Committee—any Person found out, in so doing, or attempt-
ing to give out any information, will be Punish’d with death, or any Constable
found out making any enquiries, so has to hurt the Cause of Ned, or any of his
army, D E A T H (by order of King Lud)

〈Russell version〉
Ned Ludd
Proclamation
I do hereby discharge all manner of Persons, who has been employed by me
in giving any information of breaking frames to the Town Clerk or to the Cor-
poration Silley Committee, any person found out in so doing or attempting to
give any information, will be punished with death or any Constable found out
making inquiries so as to hurt the cause of Ned or any of his Army, Death
By order of
King Ludd 18
(with the Prince & 2
Thousand Pounds 2 Hundred Pounds Reward.
at their Ace.)

M9 v 27 December 1811: Address of the Framework Knitters of Melbourne

One week after the publication of the address of the Plain Silk Hands of Derby,
the Framework Knitters of Melbourne published a similar address to the gentle-
men hosiers, reminding them of earlier wage and rate agreements.

Nottingham Review, 27 December 1811.

v v v

Melbourne, December 23, 1811.

THE Framework-Knitters of this peaceable and hitherto undisturbed Town,
were very much rejoiced to hear that the Gentlemen Hosiers were taking into
their consideration to redress the Grievances the Workmen labour under; and to
 Midlands Documents v 87

establish a respectable, regular, and permanent Price, for the making of the dif-
ferent Articles belonging to that extensive and respectable Branch of ENGLISH
COMMERCE: In consequence of which, the Framework-Knitters of this Town
thought it indispensably necessary to hold a Meeting, for the purpose of stating
the Prices they wish to have for the different Sorts of Work that are making at this
Place. And it is hoped that the Gentlemen Hosiers will not think the Statement
unreasonable, as we do not wish for any addition to the Price that was settled
by One Hundred and Thirty-nine honorable Hosiers, on the 7th of May, 1805,
and published in the Nottingham Review, on the 6th of December, 1811. And as
there are different Sorts of Work making in this Neighbourhood at the present
Time, not known at the above Date of 1805, it has been thought necessary to
state a Price to those Sorts of Work, and it is hoped that the Gentlemen Hosiers
will readily agree to the Statement, when it is considered that it is Sixpence per
Yard lower than it was Two Years ago, in the Derby Ribbed Double-looped Piece
Work.

THE STATEMENT IS AS FOLLOWS:

DERBY RIBBED DOUBLE-LOOPED CORD.
 Gauge . . . . . . . . . s. d.
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s. d.
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s. d.
GERMAN RIBS.
 Gauge . . . . . . . . . . s. d.
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s. d.
BERLIN PIECES.
White Worsted . . . . . . s. d. per Yard.
Light Drab . . . . . . . . s. d.
Dark Drab . . . . . . . . . s. d.
Dark Blue . . . . . . . . . s. d.

The Journeyman’s Price for making the Berlin Pieces, at this place, is 1s. 6d.
per Yard, as the Yard in taken in and measured at the Warehouse; and the whole
of the extra Price we have, from the Warehouse, for Colours.

M10 v 1 January 1812: Posted proclamation titled ‘‘By the Framework Knitters,
A Declaration’’

After a December busy with anonymous and open letters and proclamations,
a ‘‘Declaration . . . was stuck up at Radford on y first of Jany 1812.’’ The most re-
88 v writings of the luddites

markable feature of the proclamation is its appeal to the authority of Charles II.
It is interesting that the writer of the proclamation appeals to the authority of
a monarch at roughly the same time that the great reformer, John Cartwright,
writing to the Nottingham Review (17 January 1812), urges workers to conceive of
making their own laws: ‘‘With regard to those who trade or who toil for wealth,
of for subsistence, from the highest merchant down to him who works the loom,
you cannot but have observed how little, while at their ease, they are disposed to
recollect that they have ‘‘any thing to do with the LAWS but to obey them.’’ Cart-
wright observes that if ‘‘they themselves would have made the LAWS, this would
have prevented the calamity [of low wages and high prices].’’
In contrast to Cartwright’s argument for self-determination and electoral re-
form, the declaration merely summons a limited power granted to the stocking-
ers by a monarch of a deposed line. Cartwright grasped the limitations of a royal
indulgence. He even professes a suspicion of Magna Carta in a letter published
in the Nottingham Review, 27 December 1811:

That charter only scorched arbitrary power, but did not put an end to it.
Tyranny again soon reared its head, vexing and pillaging the people, and but
too often shedding their blood. . . . When, however, the people became once
more unanimous, the asserter of divine right thought it time to flee. . . . The
people then having elected another King, peacably obtained the Bill of Rights.
But by the oversight of some, and the trickery of others, this charter again
was lamentably defective.

Despite Cartwright’s warning about royally granted charters and dispensations,

addressed specifically to the frame wreckers of Nottinghamshire, the Luddites
continued not only to break the frames but also to appeal to the Framework Knit-
ters Charter granted by Charles II, as later Midlands documents show.19
Considered in the larger discursive context existing in Nottingham at the time
and the Luddite propensity for rhetorical appropriation and bricolage, the Ludd-
ites’ appeal to a royal discourse is reasonable. The Nottingham authorities but-
tressed their own local notices with associated royal discourses. For example, in
the Nottingham Review, 27 December 1811, the mayor and the common council
published their resolutions immediately beside the prince regent’s proclamation
and reward notice, evidently hoping that some of the regent’s cache would carry
over from one column to the adjacent one.
 Midlands Documents v 89

Sent to the Home Office by Robert Baker, probably on 3 February 1812, labeled ‘‘A True
Copy.’’ That version now appears in the Nottinghamshire Archives M 429, pp. 31–32, which
is my source. A copy taken by a Home Office clerk was cataloged in H. O. 42/119. As Ham-
mond and Hammond note, the ‘‘Declaration’’ ‘‘received the official endorsement: ‘This
letter cannot be answered’.’’ 20 The heavily emended H. O. 42/119 version of the ‘‘Dec-
laration’’ has also been transcribed with further emendations in David C. Douglas, ed.,
English Historical Documents, 12 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 11:531.

v v v

〈Nottinghamshire Archives version〉

By the Frameworck Knitters

A+Declaration.

Whereas by the Charter, granted by our late Sovereign Lord Charles the Sea-
cond by the Grace of God of Great Brittain France and Ireland the Frame Worck
Knitters are Impowre’d to breake and Distroy all Frames or Engines that fabri-
cate Articles in a fraudilent and Deceitfull manner and to distroy all Frameworck
Knitters Goods Whatsoever that are so made—And Whereas a number of De-
ceitfull Unprinciped and Interguing Persons did Attain An Act to be passed in
the twenty Eight Year of our preasent Sovereign Lord George the third Whereby
it was enacted that Persons, Entring by Force into any house Shop or Place to
Breake or Distroy frames should be Adjudged Guilty of Feloney, and as we are
fully Convinced that such Act was Obtain’d in the most Fraudilent Manner Inter-
esting and Electionering manner and that the Honourable Parliment of Great
Brittain was deceived the Motives and Intentions of the Persons Obtained such
Act we therefore the frame worck knitters do hereby declare the aforesaid Act to
be null and void to all Intents and Purposses, Whatsoever as by the passing of this
Act Vilinous and Impassing persons Are Enable to make Fraudilent and Deceit-
full Manifactory’s to the discreadit and utter ruin of Our Trade. And Wheareas
wee declare that the afore Mentioned charter is as much in force as tho no such
Act had been passed and we do hereby declare to all Hosiers lace Manufactirou’s
and properieters of frames that we will break and distroy all manner of frames
Whatsoever that make the Following spurious Articles and all Frames Whatso-
ever that do not pay the regular prises heretofore Agree’d to by the Masters and
Worckman all point nett frames making single press and frames not working by
the rack and rent and not paying the price regulated in 1810 Warp frames work-
ing single yarn or to cource all, Not working by the rack not paying the rent
90 v w r i t i n g s o f t h e l u d d i t e s

And prises regulated in 1809 Wereas all plain Silk frames not making worck ac-
cording to the Gage, Frames not making the work according to Quallity whereas
all frames of whatsoever discription the worckmen of which Are not paid in the
current Coin of the realm will Invarioably be distroy’d Whearas it as been repre-
sented to Frame worck Knitters that Gangs of Bandittys have Infested various
parts of the Country under pretence of Being Complyed of Breaking of frames
and hath Committed divers Robbereys uppon any friends and Neighbours I Do
hereby offer a reward of 1000 pound to any Pirson that will give any Information
at my Office I have I have Got two Thousand pounds as Seacret money any Per-
son that will Give any Information of the Villiannary and False Rumers of the
Frame brakers, any one that will come forward may depend upon the Greatest
secresey and the same reward.
Given under my hand this first day of January in one
thousand Eight Hundred an Twelve
NED LUD’S OFFICE
God protect the Trade. Sherwood Forrest

〈Home Office version with Douglas’s emendations indicated in nn. 21-26〉

BY THE FRAMEWORK KNITTERS.

A Declaration.

Whereas by the charter granted by our late Sovereign Lord Charles the Sec-
ond 21 by the Grace of God [King] of Great Britain France and Ireland, the
Framework knitters are empowered to break and destroy all Frames and En-
gines that fabricate Articles in a fraudulent and deceitful manner and to de-
stroy all Framework knitters Goods whatsoever that are so made And Whereas a
number of deceitful unprincipled and intriguing persons did attain an Act to be
passed in the Twenty Eighth 22 Year of our present Sovereign Lord George the
Third 23 whereby it was enacted that persons entering by force into any House
Shop or Place to break or destroy Frames should be adjudged guilty of Felony
And as we are fully convinced that such Act was obtained in the most fraudu-
lent interested and Electioneering manner And that the Honorable the Parlia-
ment of Great Britain was deceived 24 the motives and intentions of the persons
who obtained such Act We therefore the Framework knitters do hereby declare
 Midlands Documents v 91

the aforesaid Act to be Null and Void to all intents and purposes whatsoever
As by the passing of this Act villainous and imposing persons are enabled to
make fraudulent and deceitful manufactures to the discredit and utter ruin of
our Trade. And Whereas we declare that the aforementioned charter is as much
in force as though no such Act had been passed. And We do hereby declare to
all Hosiers Lace Manufacturers and proprietors of Frames that We will break
and destroy all manner of Frames whatsoever that make the following spurious
Articles and all Frames whatsoever that do not pay the regular prices heretofore
agreed to 25 the Masters and Workmen - All point 26 Net Frames making single
press, and Frames not working by the rack and rent and not paying the price
regulated in 1810 - Warp Frames working single Yarn or two coarse hole - not
working by the rack, not paying the rent and prices regulated in 1809. Whereas
all plain Silk Frames not making Work according to the Gage - Frames not mark-
ing the Work according to quality Whereas all Frames of whatsoever description
the Workmen of whom are not paid in the Corrent Coin of the Realm will in-
variably be destroyed. Whereas it hath been represented to the Framework knit-
ters that Gangs of banditti have infested various parts of the Country under the
pretence of being employed in breaking of Frames and hath committed divers
Robberies upon our Friends and Neighbours I do hereby offer a reward of one
thousand pounds to any person that will give any Information at my Office. I
have Gave two thousand Pounds as secret money any person that will give any
Information of those villainous and false rumours of the Frame Breakers (any
one that will come forward may depend upon the greatest Secresy and the same
reward.
Given under my hand this 1st day of January 1812.
God protect the Trade. Ned Lud’s Office
Sherwood Forest.

M11 v [Before 5] January 1812: Solicitation letter from ‘‘Edward Lud’’ to

‘‘Gentlemen All,’’ Loughborough

Luddism was not an extortionist movement in the ordinary sense, but the
frame breakers did solicit subscriptions to support their efforts (and, later, they
collected arms from private homes). In the crime wave that accompanied Ludd-
92 v writings of the luddites

ism, some extortionist threats and thefts were attributed to machine breakers,
but they typically took care to police their own ranks.27
This note is a version of the letter referred to by stockingers William Daven-
port the Elder and William Brown, examined in Leicestershire regarding events
around Loughborough of 5 December 1811. The note ‘‘purported that the Stock-
ingers were to contribute towards the Support of Ned Lud’s Army who wod come
himself--This Examind understood that if he did not give something his Frame
wod be broken’’ (H. O. 42/119). The Davenport and Brown depositions were for-
warded by Lieutenant Colonel Rutland to the Home Office with his enclosing
letter, dated 5 January 1812.28
The words of the January 1812 Loughborough letter of solicitation transcribed
first were recollected by another examinant, Thomas Gilbert, before examiners
Richard Hardy and J. Dawson. A slightly different version of a solicitation note
appears next and was recollected by another deponent, John Frearson of Ibstock,
regarding events of 6 December 1811.

Gilbert version: H. O. 42/119. The letter has also been reproduced in a slightly different
version in Frank Darvall, Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England (1934;
reprint, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), 72. Frearson version: H. O. 42/119.

v v v

〈Gilbert version〉
Gentlemen All—Ned Lud’s Compliments unto you and hopes you will give a
trifle towards supporting his Army as he well understands the Art of breaking
obnoxious Frames: If you comply with this it will be well, if not, I shall call upon
you myself Edward Lud.

〈Freason version〉
[F]our Men came to his House one of which offered him a Paper the purport
of which was I Ned Lud to frameworkknitters all calling for Assistance which
this Examinant understood to mean Money threatening to break the obnoxious
frames that worked at an under price or he should pay them a visit with his Army
that the Paper with signed - Ned Lud - at the bottom.
 Midlands Documents v 93

M12 v 10 January 1812: ‘‘Address of the Plain Silk Hands, to the Gentlemen
Hosiers,’’ Nottingham

The 27 November 1811 open letter from the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers to
the Gentlemen Hosiers involved in the silk branch did not have the effect hoped
for by the members of the committee who wrote and published it in the Notting-
ham newspapers. Six weeks later, another address followed. Its economic analysis
is much more precise and explicit than any analysis that appears in anonymous
Luddite documents, but the themes and grievances are substantively the same.

Nottingham Review, 10 January 1812. It follows immediately a list of resolutions, nearly iden-
tical to the earlier demands of the lace workers, entered into on 15 December 1811 ‘‘At a
respectable and numerous Meeting of the LACE MANUFACTURERS of the Town of
Nottingham.’’ 29

v v v

THE ADDRESS
OF THE PLAIN SILK HANDS,
to the
GENTLEMEN HOSIERS,
c on c e r n e d
In the Manufacturing of Plain Silk Hose and Gloves.
GENTLEMEN—Urged by the pressure of the Times, and the Encouragement
of some of you, we beg leave to state the Grievances which many of us are labour-
ing under; at the same time hope and you will call a Meeting of yourselves, to take
into your most serious Consideration the great Evils of which we complain—
Evils not only grievous to ourselves, but highly injurious to the fair and upright
Hosier; a statement of plain Facts need but little glossary to explain them, as
the making what is termed inferior Work on fine gauged frames, has destroyed
the comforts of our Families, is a fact too well known to be denied. By making
such Work on those frames, we are compelled to have finer Silk, and then if set
on the regulated number of Jacks, the Hose become too Small for the Size in-
tended; to remedy this, we are ordered to widen our Frames by some four Jacks,
others eight, giving us 1d. for four, and 2d. for eight Jacks, as supposed Remu-
neration for extra labour. Here then let us examine the case as it really is, begin-
ning with Women’s 24 Work, which by your own Regulation, bearing Date the
94 v writings of the luddites

14th November, 1809, is to be set on 120 Jacks. This work made from too fine a
Gauge as above stated, if ordered to widen eight Jack, we receive 2d. extra, and
then become the exact number of Jacks, with the same sized Silk and Quality, in
every shape, (b u t pr i c e,) as for Women’s 26 Work, for which, when Chevened,
the difference between 24 and 26 Work, is 10d. per pair extra; here our loss is
8d. per Pair, and in finer Work still more; and permit us to say, that in the case
of Plain Silk Gloves, the Evil is not less grievous. Thus, while every Necessary
of Life has been advancing to a great Amount, and all other Manufacturers have
been raising their Wages, we are suffering a shameful Abatement.
Gentlemen, these Evils do exist, and loudly call for your interference. The
distressed State of many of our Families, compels us to call upon you to rescue
them from a State of little better than Starvation, well knowing without your aid,
all our efforts will prove unavailing.
If, at your Meeting, you will condescend to listen to our Proposals to remedy
the above Evils, by a Deputation from the Trade, or by Writing, we shall be ever
thankful, and pledge ourselves to cease complaining, if we do not prove the exis-
tence of these and other Impositions.
By Order of the Committee,
WM. LOCK, Chairman.
WM. CRUMP, Secretary.
Nottingham, January 10th, 1812.

M13 v [Before 14] January 1812: Posted proclamation by

‘‘Mr Pistol,’’ Nottingham

It has become a commonplace that the Nottinghamshire Luddites were less

concerned with the utilization of machines themselves (which had become part
of the trade in Elizabethan times and which had displaced the hand-knitting
trade) than with particular practices associated with wide-frame machines and
inferior knitting techniques. These objectionable practices included the employ-
ment of ‘‘colts,’’ that is, unapprenticed workers, and the manufacture of ‘‘cut ups,’’
hose that were knit on wide frames (previously used to make pantaloons, which
were no longer in fashion by 1811), cut, then sewn into stockings. These prac-
tices led to an abatement of wages, but just as important to the Nottinghamshire
framework knitters was the damage to the reputation of their trade.30
 Midlands Documents v 95

‘‘Mr Pistol,’’ the writer of this proclamation, makes no mention of the abate-
ment of ‘‘old prices’’ that we find raised in ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph,’’ another
Nottinghamshire document frequently cited by historians as a compendium of
Luddite grievances, but the writer does threaten persons who produce an inferior
and cheaper article made by a method called the single press or the two-course
hole. The proclamation makes use of the same formula, ‘‘I do hereby discharge,’’
as ‘‘King Lud’s’’ proclamation of 23 December 1811 in H. O. 42/118. It is the
‘‘paper which has been lately discovered posted up by the Framebreakers,’’ as it
was described by George Coldham in a 14 January 1812 enclosing letter to the
Home Office in H. O. 42/119.

H. O. 42/119; Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ Facsimile A.

v v v

I do hereby discharge all Persons what soever from takeing out work Called the
Single Preess, or the two Coarse [ole] ole 31 which is Condemn by Law, any Per-
sons Found so doing to the greatinjuries of our Trade such People so found
out shall be shot any Persons will bring me information of the offenders shall
receive a reward of one Guinea to be Paid be me, Mr Pistol
1812

M14 v [Before 27] January 1812: Song titled ‘‘General Ludd’s

Triumph,’’ Nottingham

Within their unique contexts, Luddite songs and poems performed special
functions, most of which are evident in the works themselves. Some are celebra-
tory or self-congratulatory. Others are inspirational, the literary equivalents of a
fortifying pint of ale before a raid or a meeting in the forest or on the moor, as we
know from Frank Peel’s historical accounts. Still others lament hardship. Often,
the functions are combined, as, for example, when the self-congratulation one
would expect to find in a text celebrating an early successful factory raid appears
in verses sung before a subsequent raid. In most instances, the verses operate
within predictable rhetorical forms that are broader than the Luddite culture;
nevertheless, the songs frequently reveal much about the values and strategies of
Luddism and its discursive culture.
Sometimes referred to as the Luddite anthem, ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’
96 v writings of the luddites

condenses almost all of the features of Luddite rhetoric into a few stanzas. It is so
important that Thomis departs from his chronological organization to include
the song as the first document in his collection of Nottingham texts, Luddism in
Nottinghamshire. Thomis, Thompson, Hammond and Hammond, and Sale fea-
ture it prominently in their historical treatments of Luddism. Given such atten-
tion to the song, it is especially appropriate to examine Luddite balladry in the
‘‘Triumph.’’
The appearances in the poems of the singular ‘‘General Ludd,’’ his various
lieutenants and secretaries, and the plural croppers in ‘‘The Croppers’ Song,’’
which follows, constitute an important step in the formation of a variable but
collective Luddite ‘‘identity.’’ The formation of a collective identity was a prob-
lem for workers from diverse trades, in diverse locations, working in small shops
employing only a few artisans. Both Thompson and Calhoun have attempted to
address the matter by placing Luddite activity, in different ways, within a pro-
gressive pattern of development of a class consciousness. I do not attempt such an
explanation. Instead, I remark on the rhetorical strategies and contexts of these
works in order to understand their significance to Luddism as a whole and within
the particular circumstances giving rise to each work (because Luddism was not
a monolithic, uniform movement across all of the textile-producing regions).
‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’ is a Nottinghamshire ballad, evidently composed
in January 1812 during the period of intense Midlands ludding, and reflective of
the ideals of the framework knitters who broke wide stocking frames. The specific
mention of personal property (‘‘wide frames’’) as a target for Ludd’s wrath sug-
gests an effort by the writer to distance Nottinghamshire Luddism from ordinary
constitutional or franchise politics. Constitutional reformers had been trying to
intervene in (or perhaps appropriate the momentum of ) Midlands Luddism; one
such attempt can be found in Major John Cartwright’s 27 December 1811 let-
ter to the Nottingham Review. An attempt to distinguish action against property
from political action also can be seen in another Nottinghamshire document,
‘‘Declaration; Extraordinary’’ presented earlier.
The focused, apolitical intentions of the writer of ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’
can also be understood in contrast to the intentions of Luddite writers in the
west of Yorkshire. West Riding Luddism seems to have embraced some measure
of political consciousness early in its development. Additionally, from the very
beginning, Yorkshire Luddites selected as targets for direct action not only per-
 Midlands Documents v 97

sonal property (shearing frames) but the bodies and homes of authorities and
factory owners to whom they attributed responsibility for the oppressive system.
Midlands Luddism saw one attempt at personal violence against a master.
For the most part, the ‘‘Triumph’’ is celebratory, fitting the rhetorical form
of the eulogy, but the form is certainly not pure. Eulogy typically employs hu-
mility tropes and ‘‘all sing his praises’’ topoi, but ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’ is
distinguished by its legitimation strategies. Attempts at legitimation are clearly
indicated by the discourse of law and ‘‘old prices’’—simultaneously legal, eco-
nomic, and moral codes, the violations of which by large hosiers have caused
suffering. Legitimation is connected to character, too. Ludd’s characteristic re-
straint and faith in the proper action and effects of the laws to mitigate suffering
must be set aside in the face of repeated and unrelieved abuses, punctuated by
the use of temporal-conditional markers such as ‘‘Till’’ and ‘‘Then.’’ Legitima-
tion is also tied to a popular, vaguely democratic sanction (‘‘unanimous vote of
the Trade’’).
By its ties to a popular ‘‘Trade’’ sanction, the strategy of legitimation has not
only an externally persuasive function but also a rhetorically centripetal func-
tion. Through a vote (that is, through the collective and concentrating action of
the diverse individuals working in separate shops but nevertheless constituting a
‘‘Trade’’), a necessary univocality is achieved and is described in the ‘‘Triumph’’
in terms that the people of the textile-producing region around Nottingham can
comprehend—an ancient ‘‘Trade’’ chartered by King Charles II. The appeal is
simultaneously antiquarian and popular, thereby differing little from the argu-
ments of the writers involved in the county associations during the 1770s and
1780s. Those writers had appealed to ‘‘Alfred’’ and to what they understood to
be popular, local systems of governance—juries, hundreds, and tithings. Signifi-
cantly, after a few months of the Regency, the Luddite appeal to Robin Hood,
too, recalls the outlaw’s purpose of defending both the people and the legal
monarch.
According to Palmer, the tune, ‘‘Poor Jack,’’ was composed by ‘‘the ultra-
patriotic Charles Dibdin’’ and was borrowed, ‘‘cheekily,’’ by the Luddite writer.32
It can be found in various abridged or emended forms in most of the histories of
Luddism. For example, Palmer’s version contains not only orthographic changes
but also some changes in word order, which make the piece sing less awkwardly
but which also change the flavor of the Luddite song.
98 v writings of the luddites

As is the case with most Luddite ballads, ascertaining an exact date of com-
position is difficult. The date of record in the Home Office Papers is given as
27 January 1812; however, that is the date on which Coldham and the special
magistrates, Conant and Baker, posted the ‘‘Statement of Outrages’’ to Lon-
don.33 Perhaps ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’ was sent to the Home Office with the
‘‘Statement.’’

H. O. 42/119. The song follows, in what appears to be Nottingham Town Clerk George
Coldham’s handwriting, a 27 January 1812 letter from Coldham to John Stevenson, Mayor
of Leicester.

v v v

General Ludd’s
Triumph

Tune ‘‘Poor Jack’’

1
Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood,
His feats I but little admire
I will sing the Atchievements of General Ludd
Now the Hero of Nottinghamshire
Brave Ludd was to measures of violence unused
Till his sufferings became so severe
That at last to defend his own Interest he rous’d
And for the great work did prepare

2
Now by force unsubdued, and by threats undismay’d
Death itself can’t his ardour repress
The presence of Armies can’t make him afraid
Nor impede his career of success
Whilst the news of his conquests is spread far and near
How his Enemies take the alarm
His courage, his fortitude, strikes them with fear
For they dread his Omnipotent Arm!
 Midlands Documents v 99

3
The guilty may fear, but no vengeance he aims
At [the] honest man’s life or Estate
His wrath is entirely confined to wide frames
And to those that old prices abate
These Engines of mischief were sentenced to die
By unanimous vote of the Trade
And Ludd who can all opposition defy
Was the grand Executioner made

4
And when in the work of destruction employed
He himself to no method confines
By fire, and by water he gets them destroyed
For the Elements aid his designs
Whether guarded by Soldiers along the Highway
Or closely secured in the room
He shivers them up both by night and by day
And nothing can soften their doom

5
He may censure great Ludd’s disrespect for the Laws
Who ne’er for a moment reflects
That foul Imposition alone was the cause
Which produced these unhappy effects
Let the haughty no longer the humble oppress
Then shall Ludd sheath his conquering Sword
His grievances instantly meet with redress
Then peace will be quickly restored

6
Let the wise and the great lend their aid and advice
Nor e’er their assistance withdraw
Till full fashioned work at the old fashion’d price 34
Is established by Custom and Law
100 v writings of the luddites

Then the Trade when this ardorus contest is o’er

Shall raise in full splendor it’s head
And colting, and cutting, and squaring no more 35
Shall deprive honest workmen of bread.

M15 v Late January or early February (?) 1812: Threatening letter signed
‘‘Remember Nedd Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Harvey,’’ Nottingham

Like the 8 November 1811 letter, this letter is quite specific in stating a griev-
ance and it refrains from making a direct personal threat (although, admittedly,
there is some ambiguity in the clause ‘‘we can break something better’’). These
characteristics, together with the absence of political rhetoric and some corre-
spondence to a frame-breaking episode outlined below, suggest that the letter
was written during January or February 1812, before Midlands Luddism began
to respond to the complicity of the government with the manufacturers. Mr.
Harvey has not yet been identified, but he could possibly be the ‘‘Wolf ’’ Harvey
described by Gravener Henson or, more likely, Joseph Harvey, mentioned by
William Felkin.36 Both were Nottingham men involved in lace manufacture, the
industry in which use of the single press or the two-course hole would have been
an issue. The Nottingham Review reports that early in the morning of 21 Febru-
ary 1812, several men broke into the home of ‘‘Mr. Harvey, West-street, Broad-
lane’’ in Nottingham and ‘‘demolished five warp lace-frames, which were em-
ployed in making two-course-hole net,’’ and which belonged to him. Evidently,
Mr. Harvey had some foreknowledge of an imminent attack, perhaps by this very
letter; the Review reports that ‘‘Mr. H. had two loaded pistols and a blunder-
buss in his house.’’ 37 Attacks upon offensive lace frames had occurred earlier, too.
Thomis notes that on 12 January 1812 eight frames were broken in Nottingham
for making single-press lace.38

H. O. 42/119; Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ Facsimile B. The versions appear in different hand-
writing, but I have not been able to determine which is the original.

v v v

Mr Harvey
This is to inform you that if you do make any more two course Hole,39 you
will have all your Frames broken and your Goods too, though you may think
 Midlands Documents v 101

you have made your doom just I shall know how to break your frames, we will
not suffer you to win the Trade will die 40 first, if we cant do it just to night we
will break them yet, and if we cant break them we can break something better
and we will do it too in spite of the Devil
Remember Nedd Ludd

M16 v 7 February 1812: Letter from ‘‘General Lud’’ to ‘‘Unknown

Stranger,’’ Clifton

In a section of local news including statistics on the numbers of working fami-

lies on parish relief and information on the trial of William Barnes for breaking
frames, the Nottingham Review of 7 February 1812 published a letter, purporting
to be from ‘‘General Ludd,’’ that had enclosed returned items stolen by men who
accompanied Luddites on a raid at Clifton. It is not known to whom the letter
was addressed or what became of the original.

Nottingham Review, 7 February 1812.41

v v v

L e t t e r fro m Lu d d.—The following is a literal copy of a letter stated

to have accompanied the returned articles, which had been stolen at the time
when the frames were broken at Clifton.
Unknown Stranger I have intrusted thees Articles into your Care and I do
insist that you will see that they are Restored to their respective oners it is
with extream Regrat that I inforn yow hou thay Came into my hans when I
came out with my men their weir sum joind us that I Never had ad with me
before and it wear these Villinds that plundred but ass we wear goin out of
Clifton one of my Men came and told me that he Beleivd that those Men ad
got somethinck that they had no Buisiness with I theirfore gave horders that
thay should be searchd and what we found on them we left the things at the
Lown End and I hope that the oners has got agen we were gust agoen to have
hang’d one of the Villends when we weir inforned that the Solders weir at
hand and we thort it Right to Retreat.
N. B. The Men that had the things weir entire strangers to my horders or
they Never dworst not have tuch’d one thinck but they have been punished for
their vileny for one of them have been hangd for 3 Menet and then Let down
102 v writings of the luddites

agane I ham a friend of the pore and Distrest and a enemy to the opressers
thron (signed) GENERAL LUD

M17 v 11 February 1812: Advertisement for meeting of framework knitters, by

Gravener Henson, Nottingham

There are few extant advertisements for Luddite meetings, perhaps due to
their secretive nature, although a Luddite ‘‘ticket’’ preserved in the Home Office
Papers and reproduced in Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class might
be an exception, depending on how such tickets were distributed.42 The en-
crypted note preserved with its key in H. O. 42/127 (transcribed later) is an even
more obvious exception. At least one advertisement for a peaceful meeting of
Nottingham stockingers has been preserved. The advertisement was circulated
during a period of relative calm, as Home Office Agent Robert Baker noted in a
letter to the Home Office from Nottingham on 13 February 1812: ‘‘The total ces-
sation of framebreaking for some days past still happily continues.’’ Such lawful
advertisements tended to appear during periods of calm. In contrast, Luddite let-
ters and proclamations were circulated during periods of unrest, suggesting that
the two discourses (Luddite and lawful) alternated in occurrence. I include this
peaceful advertisement not only for comparison against Luddite texts but also to
entertain the authorial possibilities implied by the alternation of discourses.

H. O. 42/120, an enclosure in a letter from Baker and Conant to the Home Office, 16 Feb-
ruary 1812. It is also reproduced in Thomis, Nottinghamshire 41.

v v v

To the
FRAMEWORK KNITTERS
of
NOTTINGHAM, THE COUNTY THEREOF
and the
TOWNS AND VILLAGES ADJACENT
666

The troubled State to which the above Places are reduced, by the pressure of
the Times and the operations of the Frame-Breakers, having at length excited
 Midlands Documents v 103

the Attention of the Legislature; and as many Members thereof have expressed
a desire to obtain every possible Information as to the probably Cause of these
Disturbances, it has been thought prudent by many of the Workmen, that they,
and their Fellow-Workmen at large, should contribute all their power toward
furnishing such Information.
Accordingly a few of them held a Select Meeting on Tuesday last, to take the
Measure into Consideration; when it was Resolved, that the Workmen in every
Town and Village in the Neighbourhood should be solicited to send Two cred-
itable Persons to a Meeting, to be held at the Sign of the Sir Isaac Newton, in
Glasshouse-lane, in this Town, on Monday next, at Twelve o’Clock precisely, for
the purpose of communicating the best Intelligence in their Power to such Meet-
ing, that such Intelligence may be communicated to Lord Holland, Recorder
of the Town, to the Members of the Town, the Members of the County, and
Mr. Whitbread.43

G. HENSON
Secretary to the Meeting
Nottingham, Feb. 11, 1812

M18 v 13 February 1812: Address ‘‘To the Gentlemen Hosiers Concerned in

the Manufacturing of Plain Silk Work,’’ Nottingham

Nearly two months after the November 1811 publication of the open letter
from the Plain Silk Stocking-Makers, a second newspaper address appeared, con-
veying disappointment at the failure to persuade a sufficient number of hosiers
to accept a proposal for an advance of wages and gratitude to those hosiers who
had accepted the proposal.

Nottingham Review, 14 February 1812.

v v v

to the
GENTLEMEN HOSIERS
c on c e r n e d
in the manufacturing of plain silk work.
GENTLEMEN–Though disappointed in what we conceived to be our REA-
104 v writings of the luddites

SONABLE REQUEST of an ADVANCE ON OUR PRESENT PRICES, and

which to your Honor we have to notice, has not been rejected as unreasonable,
but from the present Circumstances of Trade not permitting it, we are compelled
to submit to; at the same time we are not convinced the Reason assigned is con-
clusive, because though the Avenues of Commerce are mostly shut against us,
yet in those that are open, we conceive there is not National Competition, but as
Persons in our contracted Spheres, and consequent contracted Views, may not
be able to perceive the immediate Effects of such an Advance as prayed for, we
the more chearfully acquiesce, in hope a Time may speedily arrive that shall be
more favorable to our Claims, when we shall not fail again to wait upon you, in
confident hope we shall not then wait upon you in vain; for, Gentlemen, we can-
not for a Moment relinquish those Claims to an Advance, while the exigencies
of the Times so forcibly impel us to urge them.
But we receive with the utmost Gratitude the Signatures of those Gentlemen
who have favored us with the Adoption of the Regulations presented to them by
the Committee, bearing Date the 22d of January, 1812, and now hope they will
adopt those Measures best calculated to carry them into effect, with the least in-
convenience to themselves, and to those Workmen immediately subject to the
Changes unavoidable to their adoption.
The Committee contemplating those inconveniences, humbly propose, in-
stead of the 14th Instant, the Date agreed to, that the 28th Instant be substituted
for the full Establishment of them. A list of the Names of those Gentlemen who
have thus favored us, is hereto annexed, and we hope and trust those Gentlemen
that have not yet acceeded to the Regulations, will, upon mature Deliberation,
generously afford us their Names.
The Names of the Gentlemen who have signed for the Adoption of the Regu-
lations above referred to:–

Messrs. Brocksopp & Parker Wm. Eyre

Wm. Chamberlin J. Beardmore & Sons
Hall, Northage & Hardwick G. & S. Nicholls
Child, Cosens & Co. Thomas Kelk
Hancock & Wakefield G. & J. Ray
T. Galloway John Harris
Holmes, Edenborough & Stenson Abijah Bond
T. Richards Barwick & Christian
 Midlands Documents v 105

G. & J. Mills H. & J. Cocks & Co.

G. Pickering Samuel Barlow
Wm. Meats & Sons Radford & Stones
Wm. Thorne Strahan, Theaker & Co.
Thos. Jackson Edmund Wright & Co.
Richard Ragg Samuel Clark
Scorer & Acomb George Collishaw
Pope & Co. George Hovey
T. Dufty & Sons Turner & Smith
James & Neale G. L. Cocks & Son
Allen & Phillips Kewney & Richardson
R. & T. Frost & Co. Thomas Jerram
Dove, Gill & Co. Brough, Cape & Robinson
Morley, Wilson & Morley Renshaw & Wood
Joshua Smith Geo. Gibson & Son
Braithwaite & Sons 44

Several Houses refused their Signatures, but pledged their Word for the
Adoption of the Regulations, if they became general. Some also refused, that are
now manufacturing according to the Statements. Answers could not be obtained
from some Houses, their Principals being residents in London.
Those Gentlemen that shall have the goodness to acceed, subsequent to this
Publication, will be pleased to send their names to the Printer, and they shall
appear in a future Paper.
From the Committee of Plain Silk Hands,
WILLIAM POCK.
JOHN PRIEST.
JOHN WARD.
THOMAS MARSTON.
JOSEPH MIDDLETON.
WILLIAM MIDDLETON.
WILLIAM CRUMP, S e c r e ta ry.
Nottingham, February 13th, 1812.
106 v writings of the luddites

M19 v 16 February 1812: Letter from ‘‘Joe Firebrand’’ at ‘‘Robin Hoods Cave’’
to ‘‘Mr. Trevit Biddles Bowler’’ at Nottingham

Many documents reveal not only specific Luddite complaints but also the
Luddites’ values and their identification of the good of the trade with the public
good. This is not quite what Craig Calhoun means when he argues that Luddism,
like other worker movements, ‘‘grew directly out of local community roots.’’ 45
The Company of Framework Knitters was a national entity, with a network span-
ning the Midlands, London, Scotland, and Gloucestershire. Rather than con-
ceptualizing their grievances as growing out of primary community concerns,
the framework knitters insisted that what was good for the trade was good for
the community. The trade itself was primary.
This letter is addressed to specific manufacturers with an invitation that it be
shown to other offending masters. It is among the first of the Nottinghamshire
documents to threaten personal violence, but even the threatened violence is to
be wrought with care not to harm the innocent. (A similar care is displayed in a
21 April 1812 letter addressed to Mr. Garside of Stockport, reproduced later with
other documents from the Manchester region.) The writer also takes care to cast
the threatened arson as a legally justified, even juridical, action, foregrounding
the reconsideration by including both the rejected and the preferred phrasing
(‘‘revenge or rather punishment’’) and locating the threat squarely within the
legal discourse that typifies other Nottinghamshire Luddite proclamations and
letters.

Transcript 1 in Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ 59.

v v v

Robin Hoods Cave,

Feby. 16.
To Mr. Trevit Biddles Bowler and all
others concerned in similar practices.
We are much concerned to find that you and your neighbours Biddles and
Bowler continue to oppose the public good by working those bad articles Sin-
gle Press & 2 Course Warp-------
Now do you think that we who have encountered such difficulties & haz-
 Midlands Documents v 107

arded our lives for the good of the Trade are to be opposed & our past efforts
made of no effect by your mean obstinacy no it shall not be so you may think
that because your frames are secured by the presence of so large a civil & mili-
tary force you have nothing to fear but can defy us with impunity but you
must understand there are more methods of revenge than frame-breaking to
be resorted to when that is not practicable! 46 for our past labours shall not be
in vain. In order that it may not be the case it is thought proper to inform you
what will be done to such of you that persist in making the aforementioned
Articles.
This information is designed for your good that no Children may perish
which if they do blame your own obstinacy not us: as we have at all times mani-
fested a disposition to spare life we wished still to show the same especially
where Innocent Blood is concerned. You may think we shall not be able to
fire your houses but the means which will be used will be so effectual that the
flame will rise to the highest room in the house in a moment, the composi-
tion to be used is Spirits of Turpentine Tar & Powdered Gunpowder mixed
together a Proper Quantity of this mixture powered in at the bottom of the
door & lighted by the application of a bit of Touchpaper will do the business
instantly. But there are many other modes of revenge or rather punishment to
be inflicted on the obstinate equally injurious to Life which will be used where
this is not practicable--to prevent any of which evils take the timely warning
as 14 days will be allowed to finish Warps &c., before execution--Mr. Trevit
you may get in a mender, go to the Warehouse when others do not & give a
charge of secrecy to your men but it will not do for do how you will we shall
be sure to get to know how you act in this matter. This warning is intended
for all making the same kind of work.
Joe Firebrand 47
Secretary.

M20 v 17 February 1812: Address ‘‘To the Framework-Knitters of the British

Empire,’’ Nottingham

Early in 1812, one week after the publication in the Nottingham Review of the
open letter ‘‘To the Gentlemen Hosiers Concerned in the Manufacturing of
Plain Silk Hose,’’ the Review carried a copy of an address from the United Com-
108 v writings of the luddites

mittee of Framework-Knitters ‘‘To the Framework-Knitters of the British Em-

pire.’’ The precise similarity in the nature of demands between this public, above-
board document and Luddite texts indicates the extent to which Luddism and
the United Committee shared much of the same discourse. One notable simi-
larity is that between the open letter’s resolution ‘‘that the Nobility, the Gentry,
the Manufacturers and Tradesmen of the Counties of Nottingham, Derby, and
Leicester, be solicited to contribute their Aid to the above’’ and the lines from
‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’ requesting that the great lend their aid and advice.
This open letter, perhaps more than any other documents except the framework
knitters’ petition for parliamentary relief, gives a rich exposition of some of the
grievances that the Luddite writers usually touch on in a more abbreviated form.
It also exemplifies the trade’s trend toward nationalizing their concerns.

Nottingham Review, 21 February 1812

v v v

TO THE FRAMEWORK-KNITTERS
of
THE BRITISH EMPIRE.
THE United Committee of Framework-Knitters, in conformity with the Reso-
lutions of a General Aggregate Meeting held at Sir Isaac Newton’s in this Town,
on Monday, February 17th, 1812, consisting of One Hundred and Six Deputies,
(Seventy-six of whom were from the Towns and Villages within Sixteen Miles of
Nottingham,) beg leave to present to the whole Trade of Framework-Knitters,
the following RESOLUTIONS agreed therein:–
R e s o lv e d–That it is the Opinion of this Meeting, that the War, in which
we are so fatally engaged, is the principal Cause of the Calamities with which the
Framework-Knitters are so heavily oppressed.
R e s o lv e d–That for want of the Public being guaranteed by Legislative
Protection against the fraudulent and deceptive Arts, practiced by disreputable
Manufacturers, the Credit of several Branches of our Trade, hath been almost
destroyed; and, that when any Branch of National Manufacture is essentially in-
jured, the Public Revenues must feel a Shock!
R e s o lv e d–That Cut-up Goods (except Breeches and Waistcoat Pieces)
wrought in the Plain or Ribbed Branches of our Trade, are reducing those exten-
sive and valuable Branches to the lowest ebb of Degradation; and, if persisted in,
 Midlands Documents v 109

will inevitably throw those lucrative Parts of British Manufacture into the Hands
of Foreign Artisans.
R e s o lv e d–That Plain and Ribbed Stockings, or Gloves, made of whatsoever
material, ought to have their denominative Marks, regulated by the Gauge of the
Frame, on which they are wrought, and the Sizes and Qualities by the Number
of Jacks, to prevent both the Public and the Workmen from being defrauded.
R e s o lv e d–That every Species of Net, wrought upon any Principle upon
a Machine, ought to be paid for by the R ac k or C ou n t, to prevent Imposi-
tions, of the most distressing nature, upon the Workmen; which every honorable
Manufacturer is ashamed of, and which, in the end, are beneficial to none; except
while these Impositions are a S e c r e t.
R e s o lv e d–That the making of Single Press Cotton Net, upon Point Frames,
or Warp Two-course-hole Net, on Warp Frames, or the making of Net on any
Principle of Single Cotton Yarn, is considered highly detrimental to the Lace
Trade, and dangerous to the future existence of the British Cotton Lace Manu-
facture; and that is highly desirable, that a Legislative Prohibition should be
obtained, against the making of such deceptive Articles. But, if unfortunately,
the Legislature should think it improper to prohibit the manufacturing of any
Article, however deceptive, yet this Meeting are fully of Opinion, that no kind
of Net, wrought with a Machine, should be suffered to be sold without a Stamp
being affixed on it, denominative of its real Quality, under a penalty proportional
to the magnitude of the Offence.
R e s o lv e d–That the practice lately pursued by some Manufacturers of pay-
ing their Workmen in Goods, is void of every honorable principle, moral, local,
political and divine; because, by it, misery the most unbounded is inflicted upon
those unfortunate Workmen and their pining Families, who are subject to its
baneful operations: many of them having been filched of their hard Earnings,
full 50 per Cent, by this vile and unlawful practice.
R e s o lv e d–That Parliament be applied to, as soon as possible, to obtain a
Bill for a Redress of the above Grievances; and to establish the Propositions con-
tained in the foregoing Resolutions.
R e s o lv e d–That a Committee of Seven Persons be appointed to draw up a
Statement of Grievances of every respective Branch of our Trade; and to carry
the foregoing Resolutions into effect.
R e s o lv e d–That the whole Trade in the United Empire be solicited to com-
110 v writings of the luddites

municate every Information in their power, and to send Subscriptions to the Sir
Isaac Newton, Glasshouse Lane, Nottingham, to enable the said Committee to
carry the above Resolutions into execution.
R e s o lv e d–That the Nobility, the Gentry, the Manufacturers and Trades-
men of the Counties of Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester, be solicited to con-
tribute their Aid to the above.
R e s o lv e d–That these foregoing Resolutions be inserted to the Nottingham
and London Papers.
(Signed, by Order of the Committee,)
JOSEPH HERBERT, Chairman.
GRAVENER HENSON, Secretary.
WILLIAM PAGE, Treasurer.
The Committee beg leave to recommend the practice of colting to a legal deci-
sion on the Law of the 5th Eliz. Cap. 4, Sec. 31, which enacts, That every Master,
who shall employ any Workman, in any Craft or Occupation, who has not served
an Apprenticeship of Seven Years, shall forfeit Forty Shillings for every Month
he employs such Workman.
N. B. The Committee beg leave to state, that the P r o p r i e t o r of the Nottingham
Journal, h a s refused t o i n s e rt t h e s e R e s o lu t ion s, consequently they
can only appear in the NOTTINGHAM REVIEW.

M21 v 19 February 1812: Letter from James Richardson at Nottingham to James

Kennedy at Selkirk

Letters sent out of Nottingham in the early months of 1812 indicate some cor-
respondence with textile workers in other parts of Britain. One such letter was
intercepted and sent to the Home Office by the sheriff of Selkirkshire. Although
the letter makes no threats and is not anonymous, it does reveal attempts by arti-
sans of the stocking trade to foster a network of sympathy, political action, and
financial support. Such attempts were construed by the authorities to be part
of a large stockinger campaign that included and was epitomized by machine
breaking.

H. O. 42/122. It appears as a copy included in correspondence to Beckett from the sher-

iff of Selkirkshire. The Sheriff begins his own message, ‘‘Sir—I am ordered to transmit
 Midlands Documents v 111

to you an extract of a letter received from Nottingham.’’ The letter is also reproduced in
A. Aspinall, Early English Trade Unions: Documents from the Home Office Papers in the Public
Record Office (London: Batchworth Press, 1949), 124–25.

v v v

Mr. James Kennedy, Stocking Maker, Selkirk.

Nottingham, 19 February, 1812
Sir—I am directed by the committee of framework knitters to inform you that
on Monday 17th instant there was a meeting of the trade of the Counties of
Nottingham and Derby to take into consideration the propriety of petitioning
Parliament for a redress of grievances; it was carried that application should
be made to Parliament for a Bill for the better regulation of the trade—that
a subscription should be entered into to defray the expense, and information
and aid should be solicited from the most distant places and that the whole
should be solicited to make a common cause, &c., &c. Signed, G. Henson.48
It would also appear that they labour under great difficulties by being paid
their wages with goods, and by introducing fine cotton much beyond the size,
adds considerably to their distress. A general meeting was held here on the 2nd
instant. It was resolved to collect 2s. 6d. each for their interest to be raised in
three months. We hope that on receiving this letter that you will call a meet-
ing of your brethren within your bounds, and have the goodness to give us an
account of your proceedings. Mr. John Aitkin, stocking maker, Kent Street,
Gallowgate, is appointed collector. You will please address your letters to him.
I am, Sir, for the Committee,
Your obedient servant,
James Richardson.

Selkirk, 12 March 1812.

The committee appointed by the stocking makers of Selkirk having met, they
unanimously adopted the following Resolutions:
1st. That although the evils arising from the general stagnation of the trade
of the country has as yet been but little felt by us, yet that we deeply feel for the
distress of the great majority of our brethren who have been involved in these
calamities, and that we will cordially join in co-operation with the great body of
the trade in any measures which they may deem proper to pursue for attempting
to remedy the evils under which they labour.
112 v writings of the luddites

2nd. That for this purpose we agree to enter into a subscription of 2s. 6d. each
besides expenses, to [be] 49 raised in three months, which money is to be placed
in the hands of a general collector, and to be at the disposal of a general meeting
of the subscribers.
3rd. That we earnestly request the whole of the journeymen in Selkirk and
Galashiels to subscribe the above Resolutions and to concur in any other mea-
sures which may ultimately be deemed necessary for furthering the common
cause.

M22 v 22 February 1812: Letter from ‘‘Genl C Ludd’’ at ‘‘Shirewood Camp’’ to

Spencer Perceval at London

Following the creation of the Nottingham Corporation Committee and the

increased involvement of the national government in suppressing the risings, in-
cluding the introduction of a parliamentary bill to make frame breaking a capital
offense and the sending of London police magistrates Conant and Baker and
more than three thousand soldiers into the area, Nottinghamshire Luddism be-
came more thoroughly political and manifested an awareness of injustice perpe-
trated on a national rather than merely local scale. This February 1812 letter to
Spencer Perceval, then prime minister, exemplifies the new tendency.

H. O. 42/120. It has been reprinted in Malcolm Thomis, The Luddites: Machine-Breaking

in Regency England (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1970), 118, and Thomis, Notting-
hamshire 43.

v v v

Spencer Perceval Esq Shirewood Camp. Feb 22 1812

Sir
The first & most important part of my Duty is [to] inform you & I re-
quest [you] do the same to all [your] Colleagues in office, also the Regent;
that in consequence of the great sufferings of the Poor &-whose grievances
seem not to be taken into the least consideration, by Government. I shall be
under the necessity of again calling into action (not to destroy, many more
frames) ie. but ’-----------my brave Sons of Shirewood, who are determind
& sworn to be true & faithful avengers of their & Countrys wrongs. I have
waited patiently to see if any measure were likely to [be] adopted by Parliamt.
 Midlands Documents v 113

to alleviate distress in any shape whatever; but that hand of conciliation is

shut & my poor suffering country is left without a ray of hope: The Bill for
Punish.g with death. has only to be viewd. with contempt & opposd. by mea-
sure equally strong; & the Gentlemen (who framd. it will have to repent the
act: for if one man’s life is Sacrificed,! blood for !blood. Should you be calld
upon you can [not] say I have not given you notice of de---
I have the honor to be
Genl C Ludd 50

M23 v March 1812: Letter ‘‘From head Quarters Genaral Lud’’ to George
Rowbottom at Beaverlee

Most Luddite letters consist simply of handwritten text, sometimes with elab-
orate underlines and flourishes. Occasionally, letters contain some hand-drawn
seals. This letter addressed ‘‘For George Rowbottom of Beaverlee near East-
wood/ Nottinghamshire/ with speed’’ is one of the few letters that includes an
illustration. The letter appears in facsimile immediately following the transcrip-
tion.

H. O. 42/122, enclosed with General Hawker’s 1 April 1812 report to the Home Office.

v v v

From head Quarters Genaral Lud

George Rowbottom this is to inform you that their is not a man in the town
of arnold bulwell Hucknall nor basford that takes work out unless it is full
price full fashion and proper price and size and this is to give you Notice that
if you bring or give any more work out without it is full fashion full price
and proper size you shall work this frame 〈a sketch of a gallows appears here〉
with a rope around your neck so shall all men that bring work out under price
and I desire will let your town and country round you know that they may
not do the like so fail not at your peril for this frame works all full price and
fashion
114 v writings of the luddites

Letter of March 1812 ‘‘From head Quarters Genaral Lud’’ to George Rowbottom at
Beaverlee, H. O. 42/122

M24 v 2 March 1812: Poem by Lord Byron, ‘‘An Ode to the Framers of the
Frame Bill,’’ London and Nottingham

The 6 March 1812 issue of the Nottingham Review contains three interesting
items of verse. The first is a poem titled ‘‘Industry Distressed,’’ which includes a
jab at Ned Ludd. The poem represents not only one volley in the poetry wars that
found a field in the pages of the Review but also expresses, from an anti-Luddite
perspective, some of the same grievances of which the Luddites complained.51
The same issue of the Review also contains ‘‘An Abstract of The Frame-Breaking
Prevention Bill, Now Pending In Parliament’’ and, immediately beneath it, Lord
Byron’s ‘‘An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill,’’ copied from the Morning
Chronicle, 2 March 1812, and lacking the author’s name. Even though it is not a
Luddite document in the strict sense, I reproduce it because of its topicality and
because Charles Sutton, the Review editor, evidently saw it as a significant part
 Midlands Documents v 115

of the larger discourse relevant to Luddism, fit to appear in the same issue as the
verse attack on Ned Ludd.

Nottingham Review, 6 March 1812.

v v v

AN ODE
t o t h e fr a m e rs of t h e fr a m e b i l l .
[From the Morning Chronicle.]

Oh! well done Lord El—n! and better done R—er! 52

Britannia must prosper with Counsels like yours;
Hawkesbury, Harrowby, helps you to guide her,
Whose remedy only must kill ere it cures!

Those villains, the Weavers, are all grown refractory,

Asking some succour for charity’s sake;
So hang them in clusters, round each Manufactory,
That will at once put an end to mistake.*

The rascals, perhaps, may betake them to robbing,

The dogs to be sure have got nothing to eat–
So if we can hang them for breaking a bobbin,
’Twill save all the Government’s money and meat.

Men are more easily made than Machinery,

Stockings will fetch higher than lives;
Gibbets on Sherwood will heighten the scenery,
Shewing how Commerce, how Liberty thrives.

Justice is now in pursuit of the wretches,

Grenadiers, Volunteers, Bow-Street Police,
Twenty-two regiments, a score of Jack Ketches,
Three of the Quorum, and two of the Peace.

Some Lords to be sure, would have summon’d the Judges,

To take their opinion, but that they ne’er shall;
For Liverpool such a concession begrudges,
So now they’re condemned by no Judges at all.
116 v writings of the luddites

Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking,

When famine appeals, and when poverty groans;
That life should be valued at less than a stocking,
And breaking of frames, lead to breaking of bones.

If it should prove so, I trust by this token,

(And who will refuse to partake in the hope,)
That the  of the fools, may be first to be broken,
Who when ask’d for a remedy, sent down a rope.

* Lord L on Thursday night said, the Riots at Nottingham arose from

a Mistake.

M25 v 6 March 1812: Letter from Thomas Latham at Nottingham to the Mayor
of Tewkesbury

The framework knitters’ recognition of the increasing politicization of the

conflict resulted, on the one hand, in the creation of a militantly political Luddite
discourse and, on the other hand, an intensification of efforts to use legal means
to bring grievances to light. Henson’s committee is one example of the latter.
This letter, signed by a colleague of Henson, was sent to the mayor of Tewkes-
bury, protesting his decree prohibiting a meeting of framework knitters in that
Gloucestershire town, long a center for the manufacture of cotton hose.53 It at-
tempts to engage the mayor on legal grounds that he would be likely to embrace.
Although it is not a Luddite letter, its legal language is worth comparing with
Luddite documents that employ a similar language.
Despite the appeal to law, the letter was thought to be threatening enough
that it was forwarded to the Home Office on 9 March 1812.

H. O. 42/122. An original draft of the letter appears in the Nottinghamshire Archives CA

3984, I, 22, and that version has been transcribed in the Records of the Borough of Nottingham
(Nottingham: Nottingham City Council, 1952), 8:139–40. Substantively, the versions are
identical.

v v v
 Midlands Documents v 117

Nottingham 6th March ’12

Sir,
The Committee of the United Branches of Framework-knitters at Nottm
with great surprise recd a letter of the 2d from a person in the Town over which
you hold jurisdiction stating that you had prohibited the framework-knitters
in your Town from meeting to discuss the nature of their Grievances and to
prepare a petition to Parliament thereon. You no doubt had you reasons for
so doing; but whether they were sane, or otherwise, is not material because
they were both unconstitutional and unjust, as well as extremely dangerous
to the liberties of the subject.
Know you not, Sir, that the Act, commonly called the Gagging Act, is long
since dead of its own natural Death; Therefore your opinion as a Magistrate is
of no avail respecting the holding of a popular meeting. But even were that not
the case, is it an act of policy on the part of a Magistrate to prohibit men from
meeting in a peacable manner, to state their grievances; when, by preventing
them from venting their plaints in a constitutional way, they may be driven
to the commission of crimes for the purpose of exercising their vengeance,
when they cannot exercise their rights. How different were your conduct on
the occasion alluded to, to that shewn by the Magistrates of Hatton Garden,
London, on a similar occasion—they, when informed of the desire of the Lon-
don stocking makers to hold a meeting, immediately afforded the men every
facility in their power for the accomplishment of the design—They sent an
officer to attend the meeting, and presented the resolutions agreed upon at
such meeting to the Secretary of State, along with a copy of the propositions
sent from the Nottingham Committee. This was a measure consistent with
the wishes of every honest man. Then compare this conduct with your own;
and, if you are an Englishman, your punishment will be sentimentally com-
plete.
Sir, you may perhaps conceal this letter from all eyes but your own; but
that will avail you nothing; for other means, which you to your own confu-
sion, will hereafter be made accquainted with, will be resorted to, to make
its contents public. The men of Nottingham are accquainted with the laws
of their Country; and, in common with every honest man, condemn the out-
rageous conduct of a few misguided individuals in their neighbourhood; and
they know, that the proper means to prevent those outrages are for those in
authority to act directly contrary to the manner in which you have acted.
118 v writings of the luddites

Sir, the Nottingham Committee will again call upon their Tewkesbury
friends to have a meeting; the postmaster may again open the letter directed
to them;54 and you may again exert an unconstitutional authority; but if you
do, legal means will be resorted to, to exhibit your conduct in proper colours
to the public.
by order of the Committee,
Thos. Latham secty
Mayor of Tewkesbury
Committee Rooms
Newton’s head
Glass house Lane

M26 v 11 March 1812: Poem by ‘‘A Poor Stockinger,’’ titled

‘‘Poetry,’’ Nottingham

The poem mentioned previously and reproduced in the note 51, ‘‘Industry
Distressed,’’ was answered two weeks after its publication in the Review by ‘‘Po-
etry’’ written by ‘‘A POOR STOCKINGER.’’ Compared with some of the verses
that made their way into the Nottingham papers, this poem is rather atypical,
having a consistent meter, quotations from Alexander Pope and Samuel Ruther-
ford, and a thoughtful analysis of the relationship between the wealthy and the
working poor.

Nottingham Review, 20 March 1812.

v v v

Poetry
The Stockinger lately so blest,
His household so comely and gay,
Contentment each night gave him rest,
How cheerful he work’d through the day;
His earnings commanded respect,
To church and to market he went;
The landlord’s accounts made correct,
He bow’d on receiving his rent.
 Midlands Documents v 119

But now we are dwelling with woe,

O, could I my fears but surmount;
The consequence who can foreknow?
Or suffering who can recount?
The warehouses still want demand,
The frames lie to rust on each floor;
The workman has ‘‘nothing in hand,’’ 55
The traddle he cannot tread more.

Ye Pow e rs, who govern events,

Your Orders in Council we feel;
Humanity surely laments,
Who call’d for the hemp or the steel? 56
When i n d u s t ry fails of support,
From home takes the poor-house in view,
And drove to the dernier resort,
Disorders may doubtless ensue.

Ye sage s our living to save,

Your joint mediation afford;
The thanks of the P u b l i c you’ll have,
Whil’st conscience presides at your board;
Consent, your arrangement may meet,
Success may the soldiers withdraw,
Whil’st angels your kindness shall greet,
For ‘‘order was heaven’s first law.’’ 57

Ye au t h or i t i e s, grant us your care,

O, exercise gently your rod;
Distress on distresses to spare,
Is worthy a K i ng or a G o d:
Ye B r i t on s at large through the land,
REPENT, and your war-whoop give o’er;
That rapine no more may withstand
The peace and content of the poor.
120 v writings of the luddites

Monopoly upheld by war,

The breath of sweet P e ac e will destroy;
The P le n t y shall soon re-appear,
And C o m m e rc e give labour employ:–
B r i t ta n i a still Peace can command,
In arts or in arms–great are w e:
Can make all the wor l d understand
That B r i t on s a r e b or n t o be fr e e.

Nottingham, March 11, 1812. A POOR STOCKINGER.

M27 v 16 March 1812: Letter signed ‘‘your for Genl Ludd’’ to

‘‘Mr Byrnny,’’ Nottingham

As the Nottingham officials, with the assistance of Conant and Baker, be-
came more effective at apprehending and prosecuting machine breakers, Luddite
writers saw the functions performed by members of juries as a type of collabo-
ration with an enemy. In this undated letter, the foreman of a Nottingham jury is
warned that he has been acting outside of the sanction thought by the Ludds to
be appropriate or dutiful given the community and its trade basis. The letter was
included in correspondence from Sir John Bayley, the judge presiding over the
March 1812 Nottingham assizes. Bayley’s 18 March 1812 correspondence includes
two of his own letters, ‘‘a note handed up to me by the Gaoler from [convicted
framebreaker William] Carnell, which shews that his spirit appears subdued,’’
and the threatening letter. Ironically, Bayley reports that a ‘‘Case upon [another]
threatening letter terminated in an Aquittal, upon a variance . . .’’ (18 March 1812,
H. O. 42/121).58
The letter is written in a large script, in wide columns, and with line-ending
dashes. It was forwarded to Secretary Ryder on 17 April 1812 with an enclosed
letter by the Duke of Portland (who evidently received it from Bayley).

H. O. 42/122. The letter has also been reprinted in facsimile in Thomis, Luddites 135, and
transcribed in Thomis, Nottinghamshire 54.

v v v
 Midlands Documents v 121

Mr Byrnny 59
late foreman of a jury held}
at Nottingham 16 March-12} 60
Sir,
by Genaral Ludds Express Express
Commands I am come to—
worksop to enquire of your Character
towards our cause and I am sory
to say I find it to correspond with
your conduct you latly shewed—
towards us, Remember the
time is fast aproaching when
men of your stamp will be—
brought to Repentance, you may
be called upon soon. Remember—
you are a marked man
your for Genl Ludd
a true man 61

M28 v 17 March 1812: Posted paper inscribed to ‘‘Mr lud,’’ Chesterfield

Derbyshire, a center for the silk manufacture, did not experience the same
degree of industrial violence that the other Midlands counties did; nevertheless,
there was machine breaking as well as a small amount of Luddite correspondence.
The Home Office Papers contain one of the rare instances of Derbyshire Ludd-
ite correspondence, this ‘‘Inflammatory paper . . . found in the Market place last
Tuesday Night’’ in Chesterfield. The open letter was forwarded to the Home
Office on 20 March 1812 by the mayor of Chesterfield, John Main.

H. O. 42/121.

v v v

Mr lud,
I Ham going to inform you that there is Six Thousand man Coming to
you in Apral and then We Will go and Blow Parlement house up and Blow
up all afour hus labrin Peple Cant Stand it No longer, dam all Such Roges as
122 v writings of the luddites

England governs but Never mind Nead lud When generel nody and is harmy
Comes We Will Soon bring about the greate Revelution then all these greate
mans heads gose of

Hear all Confution menchester and Derby and yourk and Chesterfield Shefild
Nottingham mansfield local is going to fling Doon there harmes 62

The Nation Will Never Sattel No more till these great heads is Cut of We
Will Nock doon the Presions and the Judge We Will murde whan he is aslepe.

M29 v 8 April 1812: Letter with poem by Thomas Large, Nottingham

A Nottingham stockinger, Thomas Large, seems to have been one of the most
literate and lively of the writers associated with the United Committee of Frame-
work Knitters, and internal evidence from the letters in which his verses appear
suggests that Large knew and might have had some connection to the Luddites,
whom he familiarly and affectionately calls ‘‘Sherwood Lads.’’ The letters and
verses can be found in the Framework Knitters’ Papers in the Nottinghamshire
Archives. Generally, Large seems to inscribe more of the combination of resent-
ment and humor that readers might expect from active Luddites than from the
other, more sober, more diplomatic operatives of the United Committee, such
as Thomas Latham. Large’s 26 April 1812 letter from Nottingham to Gravener
Henson, who was staying with ‘‘Mr Fryers, Tailor, London,’’ exemplifies that
combination of resentment and humor, most evident in his remarks comparing
the Framework Knitters to Colonel McMahon, secretary to the prince regent:

We have received a case upon colting, from our friends at Ashford in Watern,
Derbyshire which they had from Preston. Considering it might be usefull we
have got it reprinted with necessary alteration & I stuck up in the most con-
spicuous parts of the Town & Country and Copy of which we have sent you.
we are up to the ears in business and papers like poor Col M.Mahon only not
paid quite so well, unless it is this we are paid in the good wishes of the people
& the poor soul with the curses after taking their money! 63

Large’s humor did not go unnoticed by others who shared his labors. In a 4 May
1812 letter from Leicester to Large in London, Thomas Allsop, the leading voice
 Midlands Documents v 123

of the Committee of Framework Knitters in Leicester, addresses Large as ‘‘My

dear but funny friend’’ and commends his ‘‘Last Dying Speech and Confession
of Colting.’’ 64 Additional evidence that might link Large to the Luddites can be
found in a 30 April 1812 letter from Thomas Allsop of the committee at Leices-
ter to Large in Nottingham.65 Allsop questions the wisdom of the Nottingham
assailants (intended murderers) of William Trentham and their timing of the at-
tempt. Allsop’s letters can be understood as a register of working-class humor
and as evidence of Large’s possible connection to the Luddites. The combination
of humor, the mention of the attempted murder of Trentham, and the under-
stated disapproval of the timing rather than the morality of the attack suggests
that writer and recipient were at the least sympathetic to the attackers.
Large’s own verses appear in the letters that he wrote during his travels on
committee business between Nottingham, Leicester, and London. In some in-
stances, the verses comment upon the letters. The first letter was written to
Thomas Latham in Nottingham shortly after Large’s arrival in Leicester to so-
licit interest in the work of the Nottingham committee to petition Parliament.

Nottinghamshire Archives CA 3984, I, 44; Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 8:141–42.

v v v

Thos Latham
Sir Isaac Newtons
Glasshouse Lane
Nottm

April 8 1812 Leicester

Gent
This place is a thousand times Worse, than we expected to find it, there
is not half a dozen good fellows in the Town those principally are composed
of Sherwood Lads - If i had not been assisted by a fellow prentice, and some
of his acquaintence we should never have got a meeting, and even then, I was
compelled to pay the cryer, out of my pocket, the meeting did not exeed 100
men—there is 2300 frames in town. With much persuasion we raised a com-
mittee, they promise to do their best, and damned all the rest,—They have
met this morning, and seem much heartyer in the Business, than Last Night.
They can’t promise much money, but will do what they can for us. The Com-
mittee give us such a bad account of Hinkly, we think it prudent not to throw
124 v writings of the luddites

away time and expence after it, so have Resolved to Return by Sileby, Sison,
Mountsorrel &c for we are told, they have £50 Left as a fund, Remaing at the
Conclusion of the charter concern.
if we get but £45 of this fifty It will be better than nothing,—we also under-
stand by a person just arrived from Melbourn, they are Surprised at not hear-
ing from us, for the Letters We sent, have not been made public, And they
wish to Contribute their mite to ours

Of all the places e’er my Eyes did see

Oh! Leicester, Leicester, none e’er equaled thee
They can’t step forward, don’t possess the means
Slaves in every sense, even Beans
Once their food, and filld the Lads with courage
Are Substituted by bad water porrage
Here sock, and sandals, cut from top to Bottom
I’ll bring a sample, for by GOD! I’ve got ’em

Your fellow labourer and friend

Thos Large.

M30 v [Mid to late] April 1812: Letter from ‘‘W Balfour, Captain of Division,’’ at
Nottingham to William Trentham at Nottingham

As Hammond and Hammond indicate in The Skilled Labourer, very little

deadly violence in Nottinghamshire was directed by the Luddites at persons but
rather at machines. One important exception, they point out, was the ‘‘attempted
assassination’’ of Nottingham hosier William Trentham, in April 1812. Ham-
mond and Hammond speculate that the attempt was an act of ‘‘private ven-
geance.’’ 66
Hammond and Hammond have been criticized for being ‘‘moved by a power-
ful disposition to push violence to the periphery of trade union history.’’ 67 Such
a disposition might have been at work in their speculation on the place of this
letter. The distinction between private and group vengeance is, on careful con-
sideration, more difficult to maintain than Hammond and Hammond imagine.
Based on relationships between apprentices and freemen and masters, work in
 Midlands Documents v 125

the stocking trade was a personal as well as a collective matter, and violations
of the traditions of the ‘‘moral economy’’ described so well by Thompson mer-
ited both personal and collective senses of injustice. ‘‘Joe Firebrand’’ recognizes
the blurred line between (personal) revenge and (collective) punishment in his
letter to Mssrs. Trevit, Biddles, Bowler, already transcribed. Furthermore, Ham-
mond and Hammond’s distinction assumes a fairly ordinary understanding of
collectivity as tending toward labor organization—an assumption deriving, per-
haps, from their trade-unionist sympathies. Certainly, Luddism was more orga-
nized than earlier spates of machine breaking, but it remained a phenomenon, as
Thomis demonstrates, characterized not by a central organizing committee but
by a more flexible and variable structure that responded as needed in order to
correct violations of the implicit as well as the explicit codes of the moral econ-
omy. This threatening letter to Trentham appears to have been written in the ad
hoc vein, prior to his attempted murder on 27 April 1812; however, evidence con-
tained in the correspondence between Thomas Large and Thomas Allsop sug-
gests that the attempt was neither unexpected nor ad hoc (see Allsop’s 30 April
1812 letter, Nottinghamshire Archives CA 3984, I, 74.)
The letter to Trentham is signed ‘‘W Balfour, Captain of Division,’’ an obvi-
ous pseudonym, but the nearly unreadable handwriting in the signature and clos-
ing differs from the handwriting in the body of the letter. The letter appears to
be an original rather than a copy, as no Home Office clerk’s writing matches that
in the letter.

H. O. 42/120. The letter has been reproduced in J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond,
The Skilled Labourer, 1760–1832 (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 270–71.

v v v

Sir,
I have received instructions from the Captain from his Head Quarters at
Grinds Booth in which he orders me to represent [to] you the conduct of a
Person of the name of Haywood who takes chevining 68 from your Warehouse.
This woman gives her Girls but half a Crown a Week tho’ they chevin six pair
of Hose a Day for which they work a great number of Hours the Captain has
written himself to a Hosier of Nottin[gham] respecting this Woman and he
informs me that the result has been most satisfactory, the Captain desires me
to represent to you in the strongest terms his detestation and abhorrence of
your conduct if you are privy to this Womans transactions as you must be
126 v writings of the luddites

sensible that no human being capable of work can be maintained with 2/6 a
Week.
You must be sensible Sir that these unfortunate Girls are under very strong
temptations to turn prostitutes, from their extreme poverty.
The Captain authorises me to say that these People being defenceless he
conceives them to be more immediately under his protection as his believes
their Wages are the lowest in England He hopes you will endeavour to allevi-
ate their misfortunes by giving the employ to each of these Individuals at an
equitable Price.
Should you neglect to redress the grievance complain’d of I am commanded
by the Captain to acquaint you, and I do hereby acquaint you, that however
unwilling yet our Duty to the cause will compells us to attack you on your
Property wherever you may be found
For this Purpose the Sections 11= 13= and 14 are put under my command
and I shall not fail of doing my Duty to my Captain and my Frend
Sign’d W. Balfour
Captain of Division
Four oClock in the
Afternoun [illegible]
[illegible]
Patrina 69

M31 v 24 April 1812: Letter with poem by Thomas Large, Nottingham

After having journeyed to London as part of the committee’s delegation peti-

tioning for parliamentary relief, Large sent another poetical letter, this time to
Thomas Roper in Nottingham. Even more than the ‘‘Oh! Leicester’’ letter, the
following letter blends prose and verse, somber resentment, and humor. It also
a touch of toward
reveals bitterness racism Robert
against the Romani
Romanis, thestore owner
hosier whowhois theis the subject
subject of
of the
verse. It isItrare
the verse. amont
is rare textstexts
among by Midlands laborers
by Midlands for its
laborers foruse
itsofuse
parentheses; in
of parenthe-
contrast, documents
ses; in contrast, in the in
documents Home OfficeOffice
the Home Papers fromfrom
Papers Yorkshire and and
Yorkshire other re-
other
gions make more frequent use of parentheses.
regions make more frequent use of parentheses.

Manuscript: Nottinghamshire Archives, CA 3984, I, 64. Typescript: Records of the Borough

of Nottingham, 8:143–44.
 Midlands Documents v 127

v v v

Thos Roper
Newtons Head
Nottingham

April 24, 1812

Sir
While we was writing to you the other day Mr Toplas 70 was walking up
Fleet street, near Temple bar, and was knocked down by the pole of a coach,
as he was crossing the road, the horses trode upon his Breast and Leg—but
we hope he will be able to attend to Business this afternoon, tho Henson has
been to see how he is, and found him very very poorly, he cannot keep any-
thing on his stomach, at present. In the mean time Henson (while I am writing
this to you and to derby and Leicester and Godalming) has gone with two of
the London Committee to the Hatten garden Magistrates Latham is gone to
John Smith,71 and we are to have an interview with Mr Benson this afternoon.
Mr Toplas thinks he can travel by water, we wish if you think it prudent, for
you to have a general meeting of the Trade next Monday—and we will send
you all the information we can by that time (Monday night) We have engaged
the same Room, where the carpinter committee sat, when they brought on
the late Trial on the sistem of colting. We have had an opportunity of speak-
ing to them on the subject, they thought we possesed a fund on a permanent
principle to answer any demand, at any time, and if that had been the case,
would have Lent us two or three thousand pounds, (for there is £20,000 in
the fund belonging that Trade) but When they understood our Trade kept
no regular fund to support itself, Instead of Lending us money, Their noses
underwent a Mechanical turn upwards, and each saluted the other with a sig-
nificant stare, Ejaculating Lord bless us ! ! ! what fools ! ! ! they Richly deserve
all they put ! and ten times more ! ! ! We always thought stockeners a sett of
poor creatures ! Fellows as wanting of spirit, as their pockets are of money,
What would out Trade be, if we did not combine to gether? perhaps as poor
as you are, at this day, Look at other Trades ! they all combine, (the Spital-
feild weavers exepted, and what a Miserable condition are they in) see the
Tailers, shoemakers, Bookbinders, Gold beaters, printers, Bricklayers, Coat-
makers, Hatters Curriers, Masons, whitesmiths, none of these trades Receive
128 v writings of the luddites

Less than 30s/-a week, and from that to five guineas this is all done by com-
bination, without it their Trades would be as bad as yours, even govt. cannot
precent bad articles, if your hands are such fools to make them, these are the
arguments made use of by persons who know nothing of our Trade - how far
they are right I believe you can Judge
heris is a shopman, Romanis cheapside, has got such tales about Ned Ludd,
stuck in is window, and two stocking frames at work close to the shop door
a large drawer full of guineas, half guineas, and seven shilling pieces in the
window, all to attract notice, and he sells the damed’ist Rubbish of Framework
goods we ever saw in our Lives, he’s got Long armed Cotton gloves, selvages,
marked to sell at sixpence per pair, single press, cut up, &c, shot down at his
door, And shoveled in, the same as you shovel in coals at Nottm., his window
is also full of songs about the amazing cheapness of his goods considering the
price of Labour &c—

His mash, he sells for silk, and single press

For What it should be made, or rather Less,
And tells the Town, that he alone has gotton
Brown stockings, made of real india cotton
But when we Eyed them, soon we did disern
His india cotton, nought but single yarn
And others silks, this Roman doth declare
Are not his weight, by half an ounce a pair
Tho—what we saw, we viewed the window round
Would take full twenty pair to weight a pound
His pantaloons, what he calls double milled
A pound a pair, with twits, and burs and filld
And cotton Gloves, Long arms and Seemly fair
Hang in his window, marked sixpence a pair
Thus is this Villain, trading in the Trash
That was the cause of many a dreadful Smash
We hear he’s Likely, soon to be in the fleet
Pray god almighty send, that we may see it
Before we Leave this Town, for well we know
Goods Like his, has filld our Trade with Woe.
 Midlands Documents v 129

you will have the goodness to smiths anser to the circular Letter, and all
the things that have been wrote for before, we shall write again to morrow
yours
Thos Large.
Mr. Fryers Tailer No 10 Leigh Street
red Lyon Square London
Give my Wife 12 shillings Large

M32 v [Late] April 1812: Poem titled ‘‘Well Done, Ned Lud,’’ Nottingham
or Mansfield

By the spring 1812, even Nottinghamshire Luddism had assumed a militant

political flavor, and the Luddite writers took serious interest in national political
change. This Nottinghamshire poem reflects the new flavor in Midlands Ludd-
ism, which, it has been argued by Thompson and others, eventually concludes
with the Pentrich rising and the execution of its leader, the former Luddite cap-
tain, Jeremiah Brandreth.
The earliest version of the poem appears on one side of a folded document,
which apparently belonged to Charles Sutton. Sutton was the editor of the Not-
tingham Review, the radical newspaper sympathetic to the framework knitters’
grievances. The handwriting seems to be Sutton’s, based on a comparison with
other documents known to have been written by him. Most tellingly, his writing
is characterized by the frequent use of elision in a type of shorthand.72 On the
other side, in a different handwriting than the verses, is an address, ‘‘Mr Sutton /
Review Office/ Nottingham,’’ and, on the facing side under a date of 23 April
1812, a list of marriages, deaths, and prices at Mansfield market. At the bottom,
in the same hand as the lists and the address, is ‘‘Mansfield Apr 16, 1812 L S.’’ De-
spite efforts to find mention of the poem in Sutton’s other writings, there is no
indication that the document is anything other than a copy, so authorship is un-
certain, and it is clearly the best course to consider the document as anonymously
authored.

Nottinghamshire Archives M297. A transcription of the poem is followed by a facsimile

on page 131. A different version, from the Home Office Papers (H. O. 42/123), appears in
its entirety after this version (M33).

v v v
130 v writings of the luddites

Well dn, Ned Lud, your cause is good,

Mk Perceval your aim,
By the late Bill ’tis understood,
’Tis death to break a fram.

With dextrs skll the Hosiers kill,

For they are quite as bad,
To die you must by the late bill,
Go on my bonny lad

You may as well be hangd, for death

As brkng a machine,
So now my lad, your sword unsheath,
And make it sharp and keen.

We’re ready nw your cause to join,

Whenever you may call,
To make foul blood run fair and fine,
Of tyrants grt and small.
P.S. Deface this who dare,
Shall have tyrants fare,
For Ned’s Every where,
To both see and hear.

An enemie to Tyrants

M33 v [9] May 1812: Poem titled ‘‘Welcome Ned Ludd,’’ Nottingham

Another, later version of the preceding poem contains some material differ-
ences. The poem illustrates the difficulties in ascertaining a ‘‘correct’’ version of
Luddite texts that were copied by correspondents to the Home Office and by
Home Office clerks. Despite its later date and significant variants, this version has
been reprinted and commented on frequently—for example, in Thomis, Ludd-
ites 136, Thomis, Luddism in Nottinghamshire 55–56, Sale, Rebels against the Future
153, and Bailey, Luddite Rebellion 43.

H. O. 42/123. The poem appears in the handwriting of a Home Office clerk.

Poem titled ‘‘Well Done, Ned Lud,’’ Nottinghamshire Archives M297
132 v writings of the luddites

v v v

This paper was posted up in Nottingham on Saturday Morning

May 9th 1812

Welcome Ned Ludd, your case is good,

Make Perceval your aim;
For by this Bill, ’tis understood
Its death to break a Frame—

With dexterous skill, the Hosier’s kill

For they are quite as bad;
And die you must, by the late Bill-
Go on my bonny lad!—

You might as well be hung for death

As breaking a machine—
So now my Lad, your sword unsheath
And make it sharp and keen—

We are ready now your cause to join

Whenever you may call;
So make foul blood, run clear & fine
Of Tyrants great and small!—

with Mr Thomas PS.- Deface this who dare

〈Illegible〉 Courts They shall have Tyrants fare
SWood Street For Ned is every where
And can see and hear

M34 v 29 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘N. Ludd’’ mailed to Henry Wood, Leicester

The most famous incidents of machine breaking in Leicestershire took place

at Loughborough in 1816, but as early as 1812 Leicestershire Luddism produced
some letters that are not only interesting for the Luddite culture that they depict
but also for how they were handled by the recipients. One such letter, received
through the mail by Henry Wood of Leicester on 1 June 1812, appears on a re-
ward poster printed in Leicester, 3 June 1812. Like many of the threatening letters
 Midlands Documents v 133

from Nottinghamshire, the letter to Wood employs a juridical discourse much

as was found in magistrate’s warrants. Unlike other threats, this letter purports
merely to inform Wood of an irrevocable death sentence and does not offer a
chance for him to reform. Perhaps the letter’s most interesting feature is the new
calendar suggested in the date, ‘‘29 May year two’’ (1812, the second year of the
Luddite risings, which possibly imitates the French Revolutionary calendar).
The reward poster was sent to the Home Office. It was also forwarded to the
Home Office by Gratian Hart of Leicester, in his 4 June 1812 letter, as a ‘‘speci-
men’’ of threat passed about in Leicestershire.

H. O. 42/124. The entire reward poster is reproduced in facsimile on page 134.73

M35 v Late Spring or Summer 1812: Song titled ‘‘Hunting a Loaf,’’ Derbyshire

In his History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacturers, William

Felkin speculates that the primary causes of Luddism were hunger and misery.
He remarks that the winter of 1811–12 heard an incessant cry: ‘‘Give us work at
any price—half a loaf is better than no bread.’’ 74 Correspondents from all parts
of the Luddite regions writing regularly to the Home Office report a doubling
or even a tripling in the prices of oatmeal and potatoes (Fletcher letter, 6 May
1812, H. O. 40/1, and Maitland letter of the same date, H. O. 42/123).
‘‘Hunting a Loaf,’’ a Derbyshire ballad from the late spring or summer of 1812,
explicitly links Luddism to the economic distress felt by Britons in general, rather
than primarily to the clash between labor traditions and new technology. The
song is also much more politically charged than most of the Midlands documents
that were written before late spring of 1812 (and the assassination of Prime Min-
ister Perceval on 11 May 1812 by John Bellingham, the ‘‘Liverpool man’’ of the
song), placing blame for the distress squarely on the government. Even more re-
markable for a document originating in the Midlands are the indications within
the song of a self-conscious political discourse, one that is not only aware of
boundaries of acceptable speech but also deliberate in its attempts to direct that
speech along the paths of an audience’s sympathies. The writer distinguishes be-
tween ‘‘sedition’’ and complaint, appealing more to the image of the (less objec-
tionable) bread riot than to the more narrow (and perhaps less pathetic) notion
of defending ‘‘the trade.’’ Even the stylistic devices cater to audience expecta-
Reward poster containing 29 May 1812 letter from ‘‘N. Ludd’’ mailed to Henry Wood,
Leicester, H. O. 42/124
 Midlands Documents v 135

tions. The image of the ‘‘big loaf ’’ for a shilling was familiar and commonly used
by the disaffected and by reformers as an amalgam of the desire for prosperity
and for a political reform that would alleviate economic distresses.75 The highly
wrought internal rhyme forces a pause and thereby segments each line into more
manageable, oralized lengths—a technique typical not only of popular songs and
hymns but also of some of the schoolbooks of the time.

A printed sheet illustrated with a woodcut in the Broadsheet Collection, Derby Local
Studies Library, box 15. It has been reprinted with its tune and a great many emendations in
Roy Palmer, A Touch on the Times (Harmondsworth: Penguin Education, 1974), 289–90.76

v v v

HUNTING A
LOAF.

G o o d people I pray give ear unto what I say,

And pray do not call it sedition,
For these great men of late they have crack’d my pate,
I’m wounded in a woeful condition.77
Fal lal de ral, &c.
For Derby it’s true, and Nottingham too,
Poor men to the jail they’ve been taking,
They say that Ned Ludd as I understood,
A thousand wide frames has been breaking.
Fal lal, &c.
Now is it not bad there’s no work to be had,78
The poor to be starv’d in their station;
And if they do steal they’re strait sent to the jail,
And they’re hang’d by the laws of the nation.
Fal lal, &c.
Since this time last year I’ve been very queer,
And I’ve had a sad national cross;
I’ve been up and down, from town unto town,
With a shilling to buy a big loaf.
Fal lal, &c.
The first that I met was Sir Francis Burdett,
136 v writings of the luddites

He told me he’d been in the Tower;79

I told him my mind a big loaf was to find,
He said you must ask them in power.
Fal lal, &c.
Then I thought it was time to speak to the prime
Master Perceval would take my part,
But a Liverpool man soon ended the plan,
With a pistol he shot through his heart.
Fal lal, &c.
Then I thought he’d a chance on a rope for to dance,
Some people would think very pretty;
But he lost all his fun thro’ the country he’d run,
And he found it in fair London city.
Fal lal, &c.
Now ending my journey I’ll sit down with my friends,
And I’ll drink a good health to the poor;
With a glass of good ale I have told you my tale,
And I’ll look for a big loaf no more.
Fal lal, &c.

M36 v 4 June 1812: Letter from ‘‘L..’’ at Nottingham to the prince regent at
Carlton House

H. O. 42/124 contains many letters, written during the spring and summer of
1812, that threaten public officials. Several of them are addressed to the prince re-
gent from various parts of the country. Most of the letters express grievances, but
even the authors of those letters seem to be aware that their pleas will have little
effect on the regent. (The prince regent did have some well-wishers, although
much apparent well-wishing to public officials was ironic; see, for example, the
July 1812 letter from Daypool (Y17) among the Yorkshire documents.) Almost
all of the letters indicate popular disapproval of the regent’s style of living, and
many of those have religious moral and rhetorical underpinnings: one message
consisted of nothing more than a stamp of George III with the biblical passage on
the destruction of Sodom and the letters ‘‘a’’ and ‘‘n’’ written large in the margins.
 Midlands Documents v 137

Among the threats is a Luddite letter from Nottingham addressed to ‘‘His

Royal highness The Prince Regent Carlton House London/ Speed.’’ Despite sev-
eral grammatical problems, the skillful rhetorical balances in the letter—for ex-
ample, between God’s and Lud’s ‘‘eres’’ and between ‘‘extravegance’’ and ‘‘love’’
—are remarkable for a Luddite document. The posited connection between di-
vine and temporal justice typifies, in many ways, the later stages of frustrated
Nottinghamshire Luddism; however, the insistence on personal justice (that is,
against the regent’s person) wrought by the ‘‘avenger of blood’’ demonstrates
that the writer still envisions the possibility of action, even though that possi-
bility is rendered in the third person, Lud. The vision certainly is not as bold
or optimistic as earlier Luddite visions (such as we find in ‘‘General Ludd’s Tri-
umph’’) had been. Instead, the writer treats rebellious violence as a last resort of
men ‘‘whoes lives are not worth keeping in this wretched period of your Reign.’’
The repetition of ‘‘you’’ and ‘‘your’’ throughout imparts to the letter an accusing
tone much more pronounced than in many other letters, drawing attention to
the disparity between sovereignty (‘‘your Reign’’) and failed governance caused
by moral slackness (‘‘your Country’’ juxtaposed against ‘‘your extravegance’’).
That disparity is further punctuated by the closing: ‘‘one who wishes well/ To
his Country,’’ rather than to His Royal Highness.

H. O. 42/124. It is enclosed by a 4 June 1812 letter from Conant (by way of his colleague,
Baker). Conant says that the suspected writer ‘‘was laid hold of, and it was discovered that
he had loose in the breast of his Coat a sharp pointed knife fixed in a wooden handle ap-
parently new, near a foot long’’ (H. O. 42/124). No more is said about the writer in series
42, except that Conant judged him to be mad and noted that he laid a book—perhaps a
Bible—before the judge at his arraignment.

v v v

George
The cry of your sins, is gone into the Eres of the Lord of hostes. and the
day of repentance will shortly be gone by---.
The cry of your hard and unmoveable heart to the sufferings of your Poor
Starving Subjects is gone into the Eres of General Lud—
Four thousand of his bravest Men (whoes lives are not worth keeping in
this wretched period of your Reign) have sworn to revenge the wrongs of
their countrymen and their own, if you dont stand still, and think and act
differantly to what you have done—Was it ever known to your Country, (since
you have had the power of acting in its behalf ) that you have dropt a sentance,
138 v writings of the luddites

or done a single act which has worn the slightest appearance of Love to your
Country—O Shame think of your extravegance. Think of your example—
repent before the avenger of Blood put it out of your power—
Take the advice of one who wishes well
To his Country
L..
To The Prince Regiant
Nottm 4th June 1812

M37 v 7 June 1812: Letter from ‘‘Tho Jones’’ at Bristol to the prince regent
at London

Although the following letter, dated 7 June 1812 from Bristol, does not origi-
nate in one of the Luddite regions, it adheres to the pattern of some of the ironic
well-wisher letters from the Luddite regions to the regent and other authorities
and makes specific reference to the disturbances at Nottingham.80

H. O. 42/124. It appears without an enclosing letter among a number of letters threatening

the regent and cabinet ministers.

v v v

To His Royle Highness prince Regent London

June 7 1812
You Royle Highness
I have taking Liberty of writing thies few lines To awear you what may
happing to your Person and that in averry short time I am informed by sum
of the Rioters in Nottingham that if you donot InDever To make peace with
the Countrey and France or indever That Bread Shall Be Cheaper That thay
will Blow your Braines out. and what I can learn that thay are In wait for you
dayley
I remain your
Well whisher
Tho Jones Cabinet Maker
Bristol
 Midlands Documents v 139

M38 v 11 June 1812: Letter from ‘‘a poor woman’’ at ‘‘Lester’’ to James
Stevenson at Leicester

Enclosed with a 16 June 1812 letter from General Dyott in Lichfield to Gen-
eral Maitland is a 15 June letter from the mayor of Leicester, James Stevenson,
to Dyott, expressing the mayor’s concern about the spread of machine wreck-
ing into his town. Stevenson’s letter contains a transcription of an anonymous
letter that he had received, dated 11 June 1812. While the authorities believe the
letter to be genuine in its declared intentions, it is possible that the letter fol-
lows the rhetorical ‘‘good cop’’ form directed to offending recipients by Luddite
writers who attempt to convey a threat without appearing threatening, thereby
avoiding the consequences specified in the Black Act; perhaps the best example
is the April 1812 letter to Joseph Radcliffe from ‘‘Mr Love Good’’ in the Radcliffe
Papers 126/28, transcribed below.
I include all of Stevenson’s letter to show the reaction of the authorities.

H. O. 40/1/4.

v v v

Leicester, June 15th 1812

Sir,
I take the liberty of requesting that you will, if it be possible, increase the
force of this Garrison. I understand there are only about 158 Soldiers in the
place.
It is not possible, in the compass of letter, to explain to you all the rea-
sons which induce me to apprehend for the safety of the Town. I will state a
few, but beg you to give me credit for more. Letters threatening assassination
have been sent here to several persons. It is pretty clear that these have been
sent by the Committee of Frameworkknitters who have as complete an orga-
nization of the whole Body as you could have of a Regiment. The Leicester
Chronicle has been for some time employed in familiarizing and justifying
assassination. It has advertised a Subscription for Bellingham’s Widow. The
system of terror is here almost as complete as at Nottingham; and do not for-
get that the Press is here more devoted to Revolutionists than in any other
part of the Kingdom. I received by the Post lately the following letter:
140 v writings of the luddites

‘‘Sir, excues the libberty of a poor woman but

‘‘I am very sorry to inform you that their is moast
‘‘dreadful work carring on wich they say that things
‘‘is quite in their favor they did not think you
‘‘would have let the Sussix gon but Sir if it is
‘‘in your power you had much better get them to
‘‘return or some more boath for your sake and some
‘‘Hundreads wich is in great danger Sir rewards is of
‘‘no youse I should like to say a great deal but durst
‘‘not as I overheard last night but I beg you will be
‘‘as caushas as possable you can for they are in great
‘‘hopes to have it done in a very short time they say
‘‘know. so I conclued with wishing you all may be well
‘‘for their is too many Luds. Lester 11th June.’’

The letter wears all the appearance of being the genuine effusion of an hon-
est person of low condition. Since the receipt of this the keeper of the very
house in which the Committee of Frameworkknitters meet called privately on the
Chief Constable and told him he is very miserable—that there will certainly be
dreadful work and soon—that he has overheard some of the Frameworkknitters
talk of such things as make him shudder &c, the Chief Constable bid him keep
his ears open and inform him from time to time. Now, Sir, with a Committee
organized by Nottingham men, holding constant communication with them and
having very great correspondence in other places, headed by a clever man who
has threatened assassination, and assisted by a Press which justifies it, and which
is conducted by a man who has confessed privately that he should like a Revo-
lution, can you suppose that if there be a general rising there is any place where
more rigorous measures will take place on the part of the Insurgents than this?
I beg you to consider, Sir, that I can not state to you all that leads me to this ap-
prehension—much is derived from the general character of affairs—but if there
be ground for fear any where there is at Leicester. If a blow is struck any where
it will be here struck with relentless fury by the heads of the organization. It is
a art of Nottingham in its’ system. They are jointly soliciting a Bill.81 Delegates
from both places are together in London and others conferring here—continu-
ally—There is a perfect identity between them, and here the press is more in
their favor than at Nottingham or any where.
 Midlands Documents v 141

You may depend upon it that this Town would be the head quarters of the In-
surgents for a considerable district, and it ought, therefore, as I am persuaded
you will think, to have a force equal to the importance of it. It spreads over a
space larger than Nottingham. Many Inhabitants have expressed their surprize
to me that we have so few Troops in the Town. I know your readiness to listen
to my requests and I beg to assure you that I am,
Sir,
With much respect,
Your obliged humble
Servant,
Jms Stevenson, Mayor
l
Major Gen Dyott &c

M39 v 16 July 1812: Circular letter from ‘‘The C--m---tee’’

In a 28 July 1812 letter from Mansfield from one Stevens to Sidmouth comes
the following ‘‘circular,’’ which Stevens relates to papers from ‘‘the Arnold Com-
mittee’’ of framework knitters, the secretary of which is a man named Emerson.82
Stevens says, too, that ‘‘the Luddites were first organized by this Committee’’
(H. O. 42/125). The circular requests that responses be directed to a London
address. At about this time, several stockingers were in London attempting to
secure passage of a bill of relief for the trade. It might provide another piece
of evidence for communication between the lawful and Luddite factions. The
circular is printed in italic type.

H. O. 42/125.

v v v

Gentlemen,
AS our principal care is and has been, to give you every information, are
sorry you should have been so long without, the cause is, have waited in full
hopes that it would have been in our power ere this to have brought about a
reconciliation at least, a Meeting wi’h Employers, such is the case they appear
determined to encumber the Trade with so much expence that it may both
destroy our fortitude and finances; Gentlemen are proud to say, such cannot
take place, while such liberal exertions flow from Country as well as Town
142 v writings of the luddites

Friends, yet still from the length of time elapsed in our struggle it requires
every man’s utmost assistance, and in one very particular are well convinced
the Town is partially supplied with goods from the Country, either by direct
or indirect means, everything you can with propriety prevent that would in-
jure our cause, will redound not only to the general interest, but to your lasting
honour; our Prosecutors are seeking all means, not only disgraceful to them-
selves, but enough to despoil men’s minds to cause them to turn the Trade
into other Channels such is hoped men will not be driven to the greatest hon-
our and observance on the part of Journeymen, has through this contest been
observed, but the oppressive and abitrary will of Employers will not acknowl-
edge. Gentlemen we must pursue the same steady line of conduct which has
marked the past proceeding and doubt not from the general disposition of
men and circumstances our cause will ultimately succeed. Gentlemen we rely
on you every endeavours and are
Your devoted Servants,
London July 16th, 1812 The C--m---te.
P. S. As soon as read destroy. Some of our Communication has fallen into
London Masters hands. Direct as usual, No. 8, King-street, Drury-lane.

M40 v September 1812: Encrypted letter and key, ‘‘The Committee’’

A 20 September 1812 letter from James Stevens at Mansfield to Lord Sidmouth

(H. O. 42/127), discloses the means by which the Luddites’ communications with
other Luddites were encrypted. Stevens writes,

Several of the Luddite letters which I am in posession of have been unintelli-

gable until this week owing to the following ingenious plan—Their Letter
paper is all cut to one size, and every correspondent is in posession of what
the term a Key, a specimen of which I have enclosed—and which being placed
upon the letter shews at once what they wish to disclose—The remainder of
the letter is a Cloak in case it should fall into the Hands of the Police.

The key that Stevens describes is a piece of paper approximately three inches by
five inches with three parallel sections cut out. The four remaining strips hide
the ‘‘cloaking’’ lines, leaving only the essential information visible.

H. O. 42/127.
 Midlands Documents v 143

v v v

Sir,
The Committee
for the relief of the Poor
meet on Wednesday night at 8 ‘o’Clock
when the case of the woman who lives
on Bullwell Common—
will be taken into consideration
Bullwell Sep 13th 1812 yours &c

〈The key, when overlaid, reveals only the following three lines:〉

The Committee

meet on Wednesday night at 8 ‘o’Clock

on Bullwell Common—

M41 v May 1814: Letter from ‘‘William Trueman’’ to John Bullock

at Nottingham

The difficulty that Nottingham authorities had in acquiring copies of the rules
or constitution of the newly formed ‘‘Union Society’’ of framework knitters
dominates the letters circulating among Coldham, Allsop, and the Home Office
during 1813 and 1814. Hammond and Hammond direct readers to H. O. 42/137
and 42/139 for the society’s constitution.83 It is not possible to be certain whether
the organization of the society indicates a resurgence in Luddism, but the au-
thorities’ letters suggest that they believed that there was some sort of workers’
conspiracy to raise wages. Coldham even repeats the suspicion of his confiden-
tial source that John Blackner, writer for the Nottingham Review, ‘‘was one of the
Principals in the Union Society and that he had been engaged in the manage-
ment of the Attack made upon [Simon Orgill’s] property’’ (Coldham to Home
Office, 8 May 1814, H. O. 42/139; reproduced in Thomis, Nottinghamshire 71).
There are some clear indications, affirming Coldham’s paranoia, of a continu-
ous thread connecting some of the writing and frame breaking that took place in
Nottingham in 1814 to earlier Luddism. One such bit of evidence is a letter de-
144 v writings of the luddites

manding from John Bullock, a Bellar Gate master whose frames were destroyed
on 8 May 1814, a ‘‘subscription’’ payment, which Coldham assumes was intended
for the Union Society fund; however, nothing in the letter itself suggests that
the writer is acting on behalf of the society. The letter is signed ‘‘William True-
man Secretary,’’ but the name tells little about the agency of the writer. An 1812
letter addressed to Mr. Byrnny, a Nottingham jury foreman, closes, ‘‘your for
Genl Ludd/ a true man’’ (H. O. 42/122; see letter previously reproduced). Per-
haps variations on ‘‘Trueman’’ were formulaic Luddite closings, although ‘‘True-
man’’ was quite a common name among men employed in the stocking trade.
Whether the letter was pseudonymous or not, Coldham thought the letter to be
threatening enough to pass it along to the Home Office.

H. O. 42/139. The 1814 letter to Bullock is enclosed with Coldham’s 10 May 1814 letter to
the Home Office. The letter is also reproduced in Thomis, Nottinghamshire 77.

v v v

Sir,
This is to inform you that the masters pay their subscriptions the same as
their Journeymen and it is hoped that you will not be remiss to do so as the
rest of the masters in the branch—
Yours William Trueman Secretary.

M42 v 16 June 1814: Letter from S. Simpson at Nottingham to an unknown

recipient at Dumfries

In 1814 many hosiery workers suspected formerly to have been associated with
Nottingham Luddism in 1811–12 are mentioned in letters to the Home Office as
being members of ‘‘Societies’’ organizing the trade. Although the societies may
not be part of Luddism proper, they bear a relation to Luddism in more than a
shared membership, perhaps justifying the earlier suspicions of Leicester mayor
James Stevenson (see 11 June 1812 letter). As part of a larger movement, the soci-
eties continue the projects undertaken by the framework knitters, a course (more
resembling a cycle, really) including negotiation, frame breaking, negotiation,
parliamentary petition, and combination.
Public officials in the region believed that there was a connection between
the societies and Luddism. In a 20 February 1814 letter, Coldham writes to the
 Midlands Documents v 145

Home Office, ‘‘I imagine that these Societies have a main relation to and connec-
tion with the Frameworkknitters, and are the remnant of the System of Luddism
and the body of men who applied last year to Parliament’’; the letter appears
in H. O. 42/137 and in Thomis, Nottinghamshire 58–60. Less than two months
later, men broke into Thomas Morley’s shop and wrecked five frames owned by
or connected to Needham and Nixon, as reported in the Morley Deposition, in
H. O. 42/138, which has been reproduced in Thomis, Nottinghamshire 60. Cold-
ham suspects that the frame breakers struck at machines owned by Needham and
Nixon because ‘‘they have been one of the leading Houses, in refusing to advance
2d. a pair to a certain Description of the Workmen who have requested and de-
manded it of their masters. Their Frames have been broken to intimidate them
into a compliance with this demand.’’ The incident is reported in H. O. 42/138,
Coldham to Home Office, 7 April 1814, and the letter is reproduced in Thomis,
Nottinghamshire 62, although Thomis has the date as 1812.
In June 1814 the following letter from one framework knitter in Nottingham
to another in Dumfries describing a union of trade societies was acquired by
the procurator-fiscal of Dumfries, who passed it to Coldham, still town clerk of
Nottingham, who forwarded the letter to the Home Office on 11 August 1814.
Coldham’s letters from the late summer and early autumn of 1814 indicate an in-
crease not only in attempts at combination but also an increase in ludding. The
intercepted letter and a discussion of the labor climate around Nottingham at
the time appear in Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 232. I include the
letter as evidence of the labor climate in the last half of 1814, just prior to a period
of Luddism that began in September of that year.

H. O. 42/140.

v v v

Nottingham, June 16, 1814.

Sir,—Having seen a letter you have sent to your Brother Timothy explaining
the Disposition of the Trade of Dumfries to join their Friends in England in
uniting themselves under the Union, I feel it my Duty to give you every Infor-
mation on the Subject. You will see by the Articles that the intent of the Insti-
tution is to unite every branch for the support of each other in times of Dis-
tress. The Institution has been found to be very beneficial to every branch, as
we have all received a small advance on our work except the Plain Silk Hands,
which we are now contending for; We have had 300 hands out of employ for
146 v writings of the luddites

more than six weeks because the Hosiers have not the honour to give a reason-
able advance. The Hosiers have formed a powerful Combination against us,
but this we have not cared for, we have persevered, and resolved to persever
until we accomplish the object in view which we hope is not far distant.
The Union is well-established in Nottingham, Derby and their Counties,
and is making very rapid progress throughout Leicestershire, London, Godal-
ming, Tewkesbury and Northamptonshire have all formed themselves, and
we have long wished to form an Interest in North Britain in order that the
principle may be diffused throughout the North; and we are happy to find
that Dumfries is anctious to set the example, and hope when you have formed
yourselves you will disseminate the principle through all Scotland, for depend
upon it if the Trade are united and true to their own Interest, we shall be able
to make our Trade as respectable as any other in the Kingdom and no longer be
designated by the application of ‘Stracking Stockingers.’ According to request
I have sent four Articles and sixty Diplomas that you may form yourselves as
soon as possible. . . . I hope you will excuse us not writing sooner as we are
now so throng, we have scarcely time to attend to anything but the Turn Out.
S. Simpson.
N.B.—Direct for me Newtons Head, Glasshouse Lane, Nottingham.

M43 v 31 August 1814: Letter from ‘‘A Priest’’ to the ‘‘Editor of the
Nottingham Gazette’’

During much of 1814, a running battle took place between Richard Eaton,
the Tory editor of the new Nottingham Gazette, and Charles Sutton, the radical
who published the Nottingham Review. Eaton and others (including, it appears, a
Mr. Tupman) established the Gazette nearly two years earlier in frustration over
the political perspectives that grounded the two existing Nottingham papers—
the Review and the Nottingham Journal, which identified itself and which typi-
cally is identified as a conservative newspaper. Malcolm Thomis notes Eaton’s
‘‘hostility to suffering mechanics.’’ 84 The battle between Eaton and Sutton over
how best to handle working-class disaffection continued even after the decline of
the first period of Midlands Luddism, especially during the late summer of 1814,
in series of articles in which Eaton advocated harsh measures. Pseudonymous
 Midlands Documents v 147

replies in the Review expressed sympathy for the Luddites and other workers in
language that ranged from indignant to highly satiric.
One satiric attack consisted of the double letter, transcribed here, that ap-
peared in the Nottingham Review, 9 September 1814. The writer obviously is well
educated and perhaps not a member of the framework knitting trade at all, but
the letter expresses many Midlands Luddite sentiments, including the desire to
maintain traditional, useful distinctions in society. (We find the same idea in
‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’ and other documents that call on the upper classes to
fulfill their paternalistic obligations toward the working poor.) Against these tra-
ditional notions, we find that the desire to level distinctions was not incompatible
with the new commercial conservatism of the gentlemen hosiers in Nottingham.
Magistracy and tradition were occasionally seen as impediments to the rise of
the large masters. The following letter does, however, move beyond the main-
stream of Midlands Luddism in its clearly implied sympathy for political reform
and its sense of the national scale of the Luddite rising.

Nottingham Review, 9 September 1814

v v v

LOST MANUSCRIPT!
To t h e E d i t or of t h e No t t i ng h a m R e v i e w.
S i r–Walking near the rock-holes in the park, early this morning, I picked
up the inclosed manuscript, which, as it was ‘‘unwafered and unsealed,’’ I had
the curiosity to open; and must confess, that the reading of it had such an
effect upon my risible faculties, as for a moment, to drive the morning devo-
tional thoughts from my mind. I found it addressed to the Editor of the Ga-
zette, and having heard that an advertisement had been posted up in different
parts of Nottingham, offering a reward for the recovery of a ‘‘Lost Manu-
script,’’ I thought the Editor might have lost it there a night or two before. Re-
flecting on the oddity of the circumstance, the words amor merctricor,85 mere-
trix inusia lues venerea came forcibly into my head. I determined, however, to
take the article to the office; but when I got there, the offered reward was re-
fused, because the author, I was told, had furnished another copy; I therefore
send it to you for the perusal of your readers.
Your’s, &c.
August 31, 1814. PETER COMIC.
148 v writings of the luddites

To t h e E d i t or of t h e No t t i ng h a m G a z e t t e .
Sir–Having been a constant reader of your luminous publication, permit
me to say, that I have perused the efforts of your transcending genius with ex-
tatic pleasure; and have viewed your matchless triumphs over the cold-water
Tory and Jacobin factions, that is over the readers of the Journal and Review,
with supreme delight. At a period when a Jacobinical war raged around the
kingdom, and a not less cruel, and still more dangerous one raged within,
which was carried on by mysterious gangs of depredators, called Luddites,
at this period you commenced your arduous labours. Your laudable and pro-
fessed object was, to crush the monster Bonaparte and his myrmydon fol-
lower, and all the Luddites, with the magic of your pen; and to convert
the cold-water Tories and Jacobins, into ranting true-blue Royalists; whilst
the incorrigible Burdett, Whitbread, Brougham, Cochrane, Cobbett, White,
Hunt, Drakard, Lovell, Cartwright, Wood, and Waithman, along with John
Smith, Lord Rancliffe, the Political Scribe, and the Rev. Editor, you were to
muzzle or confine in strong holds. And, worthy Sir, have you not succeeded?–
have you not driven Bonaparte to Elba, and his man-eating myrmydons into
the mouths of the Cossacks?–have you not proved this wife, the daughter
of the Apostolic Emperor, to be a prostitutum; and the wife of our immacu-
late Regent to belong to the Cyprian sisterhood?–nay, have you not driven
her into exile, as too dangerous an animal to remain on British soil?–have
you not laid every Luddite prostrate at your feet, and made them lick the
dust in sorrow and anguish?–have you not driven the cold-water Tories into
hiding places, with faces as long as a maypole?–have you not silenced the
Burdetts, Whitbreads, Broughams, Cobbetts, Whites, Hunts, Drakards, Lov-
ells, Woods, Waithmans, Smith, Rancliffes, Political Scribes, and Reverend
Editors, and driven the troublesome Cochrane into a dungeon–have you not
cleared the very Pig-styes of their filth, though you got a little soiled in the
operation?–have you not rendered an essential service to society, by discover-
ing and practising a new mode of chastisement in Sunday Schools for girls in their
teens, for which a saucy cobler was silly enough to threaten you with the ven-
geance of this lap stone and strap?–have you not almost ruined the Review,
by reducing its sale to Fifteen Hundred; while you have advanced the sale of
your self-instructing paper to three hundred, besides what you generously give
away?–and I need not say how fully and satisfactorily you have proved that
the Review has been the occasion of the premature death of all those unfor-
 Midlands Documents v 149

tunate men who have been hung at York, as well as of the rebellion in Ireland,
for to the R e v i e w may be attributed all that disaffection which now mani-
fests itself; and there can be no doubt that you will be able to prove, that the
differences between this country and America, have been owing to the filth
of the Review; and were you properly to trace cause and effect, there can be
no question but every moral and political evil would be found to have arisen
from this source.
But my principal object for troubling you with this letter, is to inform you,
that it is in the contemplation of the two Houses of Parliament, at the com-
mencement of their next Session, to vote public thanks to you for the many
and extraordinary services you have rendered this country and the world at
large, by your not less extraordinary publication, and, I have heard it whis-
pered too, in the higher circles, that the Regent intends devoting ten thou-
sand pounds out of his savings, to the erecting a statue to commemorate your
virtues in Westminster Abbey, for having driven away his wife.
There are some evil disposed persons that say, that you were the cause of
frame-breaking, by suggesting and putting in practice, a plan for reducing the
workmen’s prices, in your capacity as a hosier, in 1811.–This, I hope, is all sheer
gammon and malice; otherwise the blood of a Horsefall, a Trentham, and the
seventeen men hung at York, with a long catalogue of other crimes, you will
have to expiate, either in this world, or the next. There are persons, likewise,
who maintain that you wish to level all distinctions in society, and to create
a national convulsion, by driving the working class in acts of desperation for
want of food, hoping thereby to become a Robespierre or a Marat. But this
insinuation, also, I hope, you will be able to refute, or it shall be attempted to
be done by
Your humble servant,
A PRIEST.

M44 v 5 October 1814: Letter from ‘‘General Ludd’’ to ‘‘the Editor of the
Nottingham Review’’

In the Nottingham Gazette, 16 September 1814, Eaton had suggested that the
authorities offer a large reward of five thousand pounds for information lead-
ing to the detection of Luddites. The suggestion was attacked in a 20 September
150 v writings of the luddites

1814 letter from Southwell, signed ‘‘Vindex,’’ printed in the Nottingham Review,
7 October 1814:

But what will Englishmen feel when the dark veil of hypocrisy is torn off,
and the half-hidden detestable object presented in full view? that a fellow re-
nowned for his hostility towards the honest artizan, has, with the most un-
blushing impudence, proposed a scheme for giving a bribe sufficient to cause a
man to desert his native land, and to maintain him in a foreign clime:—this he
would offer to any person who possessed enough depravity of heart to accuse
any other person of the crime of Framebreaking.

In the Nottingham Review, 14 October 1814, a letter signed ‘‘General Ludd’’

appeared, partly in response to the Gazette proposal. L. Allsopp of Nottingham
reported the occurrence to Lord Sidmouth in a letter dated 18 October 1814
(H. O. 42/141). In the 21 October 1814 Review, the editor and publisher, Charles
Sutton, printed an expression of regret:

The Proprietor of the NOTTINGHAM REVIEW, is exceedingly sorry to

find that an article which appeared in his last Number has given disgust to
some of his friends, who have conceived it as having a tendency to encourage
the spirit of insubordination and outrage, which has been so long prevalent in
this neighbourhood, and which no man laments more than himself. He will
not multiply words upon the subject. He knows his own intentions, and he
knows that nothing could possibly be further from his thoughts, either in that
article or in any other, which at any time may have appeared in the Review.

Speculation that Sutton had some association with Luddism could be fueled by
the facts that Sutton sympathized with the motives of the disaffected framework
knitters and that a version of a seditious Luddite song, ‘‘Well Done, Ned Ludd,’’
appeared on a sheet of paper in Sutton’s possession and in his handwriting before
the song was posted in Nottingham on a handbill that was later sent to the Home
Office. It is quite clear from the letters that appear in the Review that Sutton
carried on a running battle with the editor of and contributors to the Nottingham
Gazette, a battle centered on the treatment of the framework knitters.

Nottingham Review, 14 October 1814

v v v
 Midlands Documents v 151

GENERAL LUDD

To t h e E d i t or of t h e No t t i ng h a m R e v i e w
Sir—I take the liberty of dropping you a few lines to inform you of the
good fortune of one of my sons, who is come to very high honor. You must
know that some time ago, owing to a little imprudent conduct, my eldest son,
Ne d, decamped, and enlisted into his Majesty’s service, and as he was notori-
ous for heroism and honorable enterprize, he was entrusted with a commission
to exercise his prowess against the Americans, and I am happy to say he has
acquitted himself in a way which will establish his fame to generations yet
unborn.86
I assure you, Mr. Editor, I scarcely know how to keep my feeling within
bounds, for while all our former and united efforts in breaking frames, &c,
were commented upon with some severity, and in a way which cast an odium
upon my character and that of my family, I now find the scales are turned, and
our enemies are converted into friends; they sing a new tune to an old song,
and the mighty deeds of my son are trumpeted forth in every loyal paper in the
kingdom. My son is not now confined to the breaking a few frames, having the
sanction of government, he can now not only wield his great hammer to break
printing presses and types, but he has a license to set fire to places and prop-
erty which he deems obnoxious, and now and then even a little private pillage is
winked at. Even the G a z e t t e E d i t or at Mr. Tupman’s who was formerly
one of my greatest enemies, and threatened to pursue both me and my family
to the uttermost, is now in my favor, and is become a patron, and an admirer
of my son, on account of his atchievments in Washington. There is one thing
though in the conduct of this Gentleman which has created me some little
uneasiness; a few weeks ago he strongly recommended to the magistrates to
offer a very large reward, to any person who would disclose our secret system
of operation in this neighbourhood: he went so far as to say 5000l. ought to be
offered; enough he said to enable the informer to live independent in another
country, intimating such a character would not be considered as a proper per-
son for the society of this country, and therefore he would emigrate to seek
other associates. I hope it is not true that this notorious Editor has any secrets
to disclose about me and my family, and that he is waiting for this large re-
ward to be offered, that he may avail himself of such an opportunity of making
152 v writings of the luddites

his fortune, and fleeing his country. Now, I really think, as my son is become
truly loyal, and is working for his country’s good, and all under the sanction
of the Crown, and as his atchievements have been of the first rate, ‘‘old griev-
ances ought not to be repeated;’’ though, bye the bye, I am of opinion that all
which I and my son have done in Nottingham and neighbourhood, is not half
so bad as what my son has done in America; but then you now he has supreme
orders, from indisputable authority, for his operations in America, and that
makes all the difference.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
GENERAL LUDD.
Ludd Hall, October 5, 1814.

M45 v 17 October 1814: Letter from ‘‘Ned Lud’’ at Basford to William Beer
at Derby

Luddite letters following the period of most intense activity (1811–12) are not
well represented in the Home Office Papers, even though authorities and Home
Office correspondents refer to threatening letters sent by Luddites in 1814 and
1816. One letter from the later periods of Midlands Luddism was enclosed in a
25 October 1814 letter from E. Ward at Derby to Lord Sidmouth. Ward says
that the letter, which bore a Derby postmark, was ‘‘received by Wm. Beer, the
officer commanding at the Depot yesterday evening about six o’clock’’ (Ward to
Sidmouth, 25 October 1814, H. O. 42/141).

H. O. 42/141.

v v v

Mr Bare
Depot
Derby

Sir,
We want som bal Cartrig an Sum Harms, You may expect us very soon
Ned Lud
Basford
Oct. 17—1814
 Midlands Documents v 153

M46 v 12 June 1816: Letter from ‘‘Edward Ludd’’ at Hinckley to ‘‘Needham and
Bray and Company’’ at Hinckley

By 1816 Midlands Luddism had shifted to Leicestershire. A 14 June 1816 letter

from J. Dyke and G. Mettam at Hinckley, Leicestershire, to the Home Office
encloses a copy of a threatening letter ‘‘sent to the firm of Messrs Needham &
Bray Hosiers in Hinckley’’ (Dyke and Mettam to Home Office, H. O. 42/151).
The location of Luddite activity might have shifted, but the discourse of Mid-
lands Luddism remained much the same as in the late months of 1811. In this case,
not only is the practice of abating wages just as objectionable as it was in Not-
tinghamshire in 1811, but also the letter to Needham and Bray follows a familiar
pattern of ascribing guilt to the offending recipient for a particular offensive em-
ployment practice and then offering the offender the opportunity to amend or
‘‘turn off.’’

H. O. 42/151.The copy of the Luddite letter follows the Dyke and Mettam letter.

v v v

To Needham and Bray & Co

I learn you hare 87 about to Bate your hands of their Prizes 88 this Week and
by that you hare guilty of death—and you may both—repare for that change
as you will not be suffered to live much longer if you purceed, sooner turn
off.—
From me
Edward
Ludd
Hinckley June 12th.—

M47 v 10 March 1817: Letter from Thomas Savidge in Leicester County Gaol to
his wife

The 28 June 1816 Luddite raid on John Heathcoat’s lace factory at Lough-
borough was the last great Luddite attack. Sixteen Luddites, led by James Towle,
a framework knitter from Basford, destroyed almost all of the more than fifty
154 v writings of the luddites

lace frames inside the factory. More than one hundred Luddite sympathizers kept
a watch out for the authorities and prevented interference with the destruction
within the factory. One watchman, John Asher, was shot and wounded. James
Towle was arrested, tried at Leicester, and executed at Leicester Gaol on 20 No-
vember 1816. He confessed his own guilt for the raid but did not name any of his
accomplices. In January 1817 John Blackburn, a knitter from Nottingham who
had been involved in the Loughborough raid, was arrested for poaching on Lord
Middleton’s estate. In order to secure immunity from prosecution, Blackburn
named several Luddites who participated in the Loughborough. Six of those were
convicted and executed on 17 April 1817. They included Thomas Savidge, John
Amos, John Crowder, Joshua Mitchell, William Towle, and William Withers,
whose letters appear hereafter.89
After the execution of the Loughborough Luddites, Nottingham Review editor
Charles Sutton published a brief account of the execution of some of the exe-
cuted men and their letters. In his introduction to the account and letters, Sutton
notes that after conviction the Luddites ‘‘betook themselves to serious reflection,
and to the use of those means best calculated to prepare them for their awful exit.
In this great work they were assisted by the Chaplain, and others, who laboured
to impress deeply on their minds, the necessity of true repentance.’’ 90 The let-
ters that they wrote to family members from Leicester Gaol are marked by the
reflection that Sutton mentions.
Despite their reflection, all of the writers of the letters persist in denying that
they committed the crime of which they were convicted—namely, the attempted
murder of John Asher, the watchguard at Heathcott’s factory. Nevertheless, most
confess to having participated in the Loughborough raid. That might seem to
indicate that the men’s letters are authentic and that they were not distorted or
fabricated by the chaplain of Leicester Gaol, who probably would have presented
to the world only the customary full confession, expression of regret, and warn-
ing to others not to fall into the company of wicked men.
The first letter in the collection is a letter from Thomas Savidge, a thirty-
six-year-old framework knitter, to his wife. (‘‘Savidge’’ is Sutton’s spelling; he is
called ‘‘Savage’’ in histories and other documents.) Savidge’s place in this volume
is not clear. Although he participated in the Loughborough raid, shortly after his
conviction he offered to provide samples of treasonable correspondence between
Major John Cartwright, Sir Charles Burdett, and Gravener Henson. Should a
 Midlands Documents v 155

volume of Luddite confessions and the information of spies and informers ever
be conceived, Savidge’s letters probably deserve a place in such a volume.
Sutton does not reveal how the personal letters of the convicted men came
into his hands. Opening letters of prisoners was practiced at other gaols, such as
York Castle and Chester Castle, but copies of the letters went no further than
the Home Office Secretary.

Charles Sutton, Some Particulars of the Conduct and of the Execution of Savidge and Others . . .
(Nottingham: Sutton and Son, 1817), 4.

v v v

Leicester County Gaol,

March 10, 1817.
My dear Wife,
I write these few lines to you, hoping they will find you in good health, and
my dear children. I am as well as can be expected in my situation; tell my dear
father he must do every thing in his power for me; I have had no attorney to
see me at present; what I have got to say will be to my attorney; so no more
at present from your loving and affectionate husband,
THOMAS SAVIDGE.

M48 v 2 April 1817: Letter to E. Ward, Derby

Perhaps the very last Luddite letter is one of those most suggestive of a con-
nection between Luddism and the more political movements, such as the Pent-
ridge rising of June 1817. In April 1817, shortly after the previous month’s march
into Derbyshire of the few remaining Blanketeers to make it beyond Leek in
Staffordshire, a threatening letter bearing a London postmark and dated 2 April
1817 was sent to the town clerk of Derby. The letter was forwarded to Sidmouth
on 8 April 1817 by the mayor of Derby, who wrote, ‘‘I consider it my duty to
communicate to your Lordship, the contents of a Letter which has been lately
addressed to Mr Ward, the Town-Clerk of Derby, from which it appears that a
desperate attempt is to be made by the Luddites, during the present month, in
some quarter’’ (Hope to Sidmouth, H. O. 40/5/2). The lateness of the document
and its appearance at the door of a Derby town clerk (Derby had never been the
site of much Luddism) suggest that Luddism might have served as a discourse of
156 v writings of the luddites

power appropriated by the writer of the letter, who might not have been a frame
breaker. (One wonders where the spy Oliver was at the time that the letter was
written.)

H. O. 40/5/2.

v v v

Mr E Ward
Town Clerk
Derby
Private

Stir not from Derby till the 22 April or else your life will suffer for your
rashness as the Luddites will lay wait for you. but after the 22 the last die will be
cast and either the Luddites or the Military will have the Command—despise
not this advice but keep this letter secret.
April 2

M49 v 6 April 1817: Letter from William Towle at Leicester County Gaol to
his father

William Towle, also known as Rodney, was the brother of James Towle, the
leader of the Luddite raided on Heathcoat’s factory at Loughborough. James
Towle was executed on 20 November 1816 for shooting at John Asher, Heath-
coat’s watchman, and confessed his own guilt but refused to name his accom-
plices. William Towle was convicted upon the evidence of John Blackburn and
William Burton and was executed on 17 April 1817, along with Thomas Savidge
and four others.
William Towle’s letter to his father resounds of penitence and caution to his
brother. Towle’s letter precedes a letter in a similarly cautionary vein, written by
Reverend E. T. Vaughan to Towle’s brother, but there is no firm evidence that
Vaughan wrote Towle’s letter or assisted him in its composition.

Charles Sutton, Four Additional Letters . . . (Nottingham: Sutton and Son, 1817), 1.

v v v
 Midlands Documents v 157

TO W. TOWLE’S FATHER.
DEAR HONORED FATHER,
I write these few lines in hopes they will find you, my dear sisters and
brother in good health, as for myself, I am as well as I can expect in my awful
situation. O that I had kept better company. My dear brother I hope you will
take warning by my untimely end, and attend the sabbath day, had I done so
this would not have been my fate—Could it have been so as my life could have
been spared, I would pay the duty I owe to my God. The Rev. Mr. Mitchell,
of Leicester, attends me and my fellow prisoners and prays with us every day,
that worthy Gentleman has made a deep impression on my mind, and I hope
with true repentance through the merits of our blessed Saviour to enter into
everlasting life. O in a few days I shall be no more. Farewell, farewell, adieu,
adieu, for ever in this world!
I remain your unfortunate Son,
W. TOWLE.
Condemned Cell, April 6, 1817.

M50 v 7 April 1817: Letter from Thomas Savidge at Leicester County Gaol to
his father

In a letter written ten days before the Leicester executions, Savidge denies
engaging in any bloodshed, particularly in the attempted murder of Nottingham
hosier William Trentham in April 1812. From a juridical perspective, Savidge’s
denial is immaterial because he could have hanged for frame breaking under the
1812 act of Parliament and for burglary under earlier statutes. From another per-
spective, Savidge’s letter is important because it indicates the Midlands Luddites’
preferences for nonviolent frame breaking—that is, riot that avoids bloodshed.

Sutton, Some Particulars 4–5.

v v v

Leicester County Gaol,

April 7, 1817.
Dear honoured Father,
I have just had my son with me, who has informed me of a circumstance
which has hurt my mind, to think that I should be thought guilty of such a
158 v writings of the luddites

crime. Mitchell I may call a stranger to me, as I did not know him at the time
Mr. Trentham was shot; and I declare, as a dying man, that I do not know
who shot him, nor ever did. I am as innocent of the crime as a child unborn;
and this I solemnly declare, that I never embrued my hands in the blood of
my fellow-creature, nor ever thought of committing such an act. I never was
a procurator to the Luddites in my life, and if I am so judged, I am judged
wrongfully. The men who were along with me, I had no acquaintance with at
all. I acknowledge being at Loughborough, and had the truth been spoken, it
would not have appeared so bad against me.
I remain your affectionate son,
THOMAS SAVIDGE.
Condemned Cell.

M51 v 8 April 1817: Letter from Thomas Savidge in Leicester County Gaol to
his wife and children

Sutton, Some Particulars 5–6.

v v v

Leicester County Prison

My dear Wife and Children,
I beg and pray of you, when you peruse these few lines, that they will be
some consolation to you, though I know not how to find words to express
myself to you. Let me intreat your not to lay my unfortunate end too close
to your heart, though I am sensible of your true affection for me; but let me
press this on your mind, consider that there are six dear children, besides being
pregnant again ! ! O let me intreat you again, my dear wife, don’t give way to
fretting, for the sake of my dear children. I need not say any thing more to
you, consider that I know your good heart; I need not tell you that duty you
have to perform; you know the duty of a wife and a mother, that you will bring
them up in a right way; this I do assure you, my heart is at rest about that.
Dear wife, let these few words comfort your heart. O what disgrace I have
brought upon my family. Pardon, pardon me for that distress I have brought
on you; I know I have robbed a virtuous wife of every comfort in this world,
but I know you will forgive me. I have one consolation impressed on my mind,
that with true repentance, through the merits of our blessed Saviour, I shall
 Midlands Documents v 159

enter to eternal life, where I hope to meet you and my dear children. My dear
wife, my fate is hard; but I assure you I am preparing my soul to meet that
God I have so offended. Dear wife, I feel much composed to meet my fate.
Give my love to your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, my love to
all my friends and relations. I have wrote a letter to my dear father, which I
hope he will let you see. My desire is to be fetched home to my father’s house,
unless you would desire I should be taken to you; but you have seen my friend
before you receive my letter. My desire is to be laid where you and my dear
children shall lie together; this is the desire of your loving and affectionate,
but dying husband. I shall now conclude;---may God give you strength, and
support you through all your trouble. I pray to God to give you health so as
to enable you to see my dear children brought up. Farewel! Farewel! my dear
wife and children, farewel! Adieu!
I remain your affectionate but unfortunate husband,
THOMAS SAVIDGE.
Condemned Cell, Tuesday, April 8th, about three o’clock in the afternoon.

M52 v 8 April 1817: Letter from Joshua Mitchell at Leicester County Gaol to
his brother

Another of the Loughborough Luddites executed at Leicester was an unmar-

ried framework knitter, twenty-year-old John Mitchell. Mitchell assumes in his
letter a greater tone of remorse than the other Loughborough convicts do, even
though the phrasing of all the letters is quite similar.

Sutton, Some Particulars 9.

v v v

Leicester County Gaol

My dear Brother,
I received your kind and welcome letter. I am sensible of my awful situa-
tion: had I took your advice, and followed your good example, this would not
have been my fate. I have just seen Mr. Burton, and he says the Rev. Mr. Hall
is out of town; there are three clergymen attend us every day, preparing our
souls for that awful sentence which the laws of our country has inflicted upon
us. Dear brother, give my humble and hearty thanks to Mr. Alderman Bar-
160 v writings of the luddites

ber and the Rev. Mr. Jarman, for their kind offer. Dear brother, I have one
consolation imprest upon my mind, with true repentance, through the merits
of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, I shall enter eternal life. Dear brother, I
hope your will remain a comforter to my dear mother, and God will reward
you. Dear brother, I should like to see you, and my dear sisters Elizabeth and
Melicent, and John Spears, and any of my relations that has a great desire to
see me. Dear brother, I expect I shall leave this vain world next Monday, in
hopes of finding eternal life through the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. Dear brother, I hope you will forgive me my trespasses against you,
and still remain praying for your unworthy brother,
JOSHUA MITCHELL.

N. B. I have heard that my dear mother wishes to see me; I think it would
be more than she could bear. Dear brother, I would have you tell her, there is
my two dear young brothers to bring up, and she must think of them; but I
shall leave it to you; dear brother, there is one consolation that we shall meet
again in heaven, with true repentance, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ.
Condemned Cell, Tuesday,
April 8th, 1817.

M53 v 8 April 1817: Letter from William Withers at Leicester County Gaol to
his wife

William Withers, a thirty-three-year-old husband and father of one, like most

of the Loughborough convicts, repented his actions and association with the
Luddites but denied being guilty of the crime for which he hanged.

Sutton, Some Particulars 11–12.

v v v

Leicester County Gaol

My Dear Wife,
These are the last few lines you will ever receive from your loving and af-
fectionate, but dying husband: pardon me for the distress I have brought upon
you, and my dear child. O how I reflect upon myself, to think I had no better
 Midlands Documents v 161

conduct. Oh! pardon me for the distress I have brought upon you, but I know
your good heart; you will forgive me. My dear, let me intreat you not to fret
after me. I hope, when it shall please the Lord to call you from hence, we
shall meet together in heaven, to part no more. Most of my time is spent in
prayer, and I hope, with true repentance, through the merits of our blessed
Savior, to enter into eternal life in Jesus Christ. I cannot die without making
one remark to you, it was nothing but distress that ever induced me to be at
Loughborough; I now repent, but, alas! it is too late. I received your letter and
my mother’s at one time. I forgive my enemies, though you are truly sensible
that Blackborne has been the ruin of me; I bear him no malice, I have freely
forgiven him.---There are Clergymen attend us, and are very kind to us; they
take great pains to prepare our souls for that awful moment when I must for-
feit my life to the laws of my country. My dear wife, my fate is very hard, for
I am going to die for a crime I never committed, nor intended. O my poor
dear mother, and my brothers and sisters, I know the Lord will protect you
all for ever. My dear friends will look at my dearest wife and sweetest child,
for if I had taken the advice of my dear wife, I should not have been in this
awful situation; but I assure you I am preparing my soul to meet my God on
that fatal day in which I am doomed to die.---Dear wife, I have one remark
to make; John Blackborne swore several things against me that I never did;
and I solemnly declare, as a dying man, that I never was in the factory, till
all the frames were destroyed. Dear wife, I should like to see as many of my
friends as can make it convenient to come. Give my love and duty to my poor,
dear mother; and I hope I shall meet her, and all my friends and relations in
heaven. I hope my tender mother will excuse me answering her letter, as the
principal part of my time is employed in preparing, by prayer, to meet the
Lord my God. Farewel, my friends! Farewel! Adieu!—I remain your loving
and affectionate, but unfortunate husband,
WILLIAM WITHERS.
Condemned Cell, April 8th, 1817,
11 o’clock in the morning.
This is my Confession.
162 v writings of the luddites

M54 v 10 April 1817: Letter from John Amos at Leicester County Gaol to
his wife

John Amos’s letter to his wife seven days prior to his execution echoes Thomas
Savidge’s letter to his wife two days earlier. The reasons for the similarities be-
tween these and other Loughborough Luddites’ letters are not clear. Perhaps the
prisoners received assistance from the chaplain in compositional as well as spiri-
tual matters, or perhaps they lifted passages from one of the convicts, or perhaps
they collaborated in writing the letters. Amos, like Savidge and Withers, denies
committing the crime for which he later hanged. This common feature suggests
that the chaplain, whose job it typically was to elicit a complete confession and
acceptance of the judicial determinations, might not have been consulted.
Amos’s denial continued to the moment of his death. An account in the 19
April 1817 Leicester Chronicle recalls that Amos addressed the crowd that had gath-
ered to watch the hanging: ‘‘Friends and Fellow-Countrymen—You now see six
young men going to suffer for a crime they are not guilty of . . . for the man who
committed the crime will soon be at large. I would have you take warning by our
fate, and be careful what company you keep.—Farewel!’’ 91 Amos was thirty years
old at the time of death and was the father of five children.

Sutton, Some Particulars 6–8.

v v v

Leicester County Gaol

Dear Wife,
I write these few lines to you, hoping they will find you in good health, as
they leave me in good health, considering the awful situation I am placed in,
bless the Lord for it.—Oh what disgrace I have brought on my family. O my
dear wife, pardon me for the distress which I have brought on you and my dear
children. O pray forgive me; I know I robbed a virtuous wife of every com-
fort in this world. My dear wife and children, and my dear father and mother,
is all that is dear in this world. I know not how to find words to express my-
self; but my dear wife, I know your heart, I know you’ll forgive me when you
read these few lines from a dying husband, who speaks the sentiments of his
heart; you know it was nothing but distress that induced me to go to Lough-
 Midlands Documents v 163

borough; O, I now entreat, but, alas! it is too late; but I have one consolation
impressed on my mind, that with true repentance, through the merits of our
Lord Jesus Christ, I shall enter into eternal life. Most of my time is spent in
prayer to God, to forgive my sins: I am sensible of my awful situation, with-
out true repentance I cannot be saved. There are nine of us who are likely to
forfeit our lives to the offended laws of our country. My dear wife, my fate is
very hard, for I am going to die for a crime which I never committed. I shall
make only one observation on the man that swore against me: Burton swore
that I was with him at the Peach Tree, in Nottingham, on the morning the
frames were broken at night; I do solemnly declare, as a dying man, that I
never was in the public house with that man in all my life, nor do I remember
that I ever saw him in all my life until I saw him at Squire Mundy’s. O my
poor dear father and mother, and my dear sister, I hope the Lord will protect
you; and I hope, dear friends, you will always look upon my dear wife and five
poor dear children, for if I had taken the advice of my wife, I should not have
been placed in this awful situation; bu I assure you, I am preparing my soul
to meet my God on that fatal day which I am doomed to die. My dear wife,
don’t give way to fretting, for the sake of my dear children: I need not say any
more to you on this subject, for I know your good heart, you will bring them
up in the right way. Let me assure you my mind is at rest. Dear wife, let these
few lines comfort you. I expect in a few days to meet the fate which the laws
of my country will inflict upon me. Give my love to my father and mother,
and my dear sister, and all my relations and friends; I hope we shall all meet
in heaven. Farewel my friends! farewel! adieu!
I remain,
Your affectionate and unfortunate husband,
JOHN AMOS.
N. B. I should wish my body to be interred in Nottingham, if my friends
can fetch me.
From the Condemned Cell,
April 10, 1817.
This is my Confession.
164 v writings of the luddites

M55 v [Before 17] April 1817: Verses titled ‘‘The Last Gift of John Amos.’’

Immediately following Amos’s letter is a poem, titled ‘‘The Last Gift of John
Amos’’ and addressed to his five children. The syntax, rhyme, and mixture of
metrical regularities and irregularities are typical of much Luddite and working-
class verse. Although the poem does not appear to imitate Methodist hymns,
Amos was quite familiar with hymns and might have been influenced by them,
particularly in matters of diction. The Leicester Chronicle, 19 April 1817, recounts
Amos’s leading the convicts and crowd in a John Wesley hymn, just prior to exe-
cution:

How sad our state by nature is!

Our sin, how deep it stains;
And S ata n binds our captive souls
Fast in his slavish chains.

But there’s a voice of Sovereign Grace

Sounds from the sacred word;
Oh! ye despairing sinners come,
And trust upon the Lord.

O may we hear th’ Almighty call,

And run to this relief!
We would believe thy promise Lord;
O help our unbelief!

To the blest fountain of thy blood,

Teach us, O Lord, to fly!
There may we wash our spotted souls
From sins of deepest dye!

Stretch out thine arm, victorious King,

Our reigning sins subdue;
Drive the old dragon from his seat,
And form our souls anew.
 Midlands Documents v 165

Poor, guilty, weak, and helpless worms,

On thy kind arm we fall;
Be thou our strength our righteousness,
Our Je s u s and our all! 92

Sutton, Some Particulars 8. The poem immediately follows Amos’s letter to his wife.

v v v

THE LAST GIFT OF JOHN AMOS,

to his dear children.

Oh! my dear children, when this you see,

Pray serve your God, and think on me!
I’m torn from you, to an untimely end,
But on the Lord I do depend!
To serve him truly is my delight,
And to find mercy in his sight.
I hope, dear children, you will do the same,

And when you read this, think of his name,

And serve him truly in his sight,
He is our Saviour and delight;
I hope in heaven to meet you there,
Then death’s alarms we need not fear.
Farewel, vain world, I have done with you;
I have a better world in view!
To meet my Saviour, Christ our Lord,
Who better joys can me afford!

The above was written in the Testament, which had been given to him, by the
Rev. Mr. Mitchell, of Leicester.

M56 v 17 April 1817: Letter from John Crowder at Leicester County Gaol to
his wife

John Crowder was, at age forty, the oldest of the executed Loughborough
Luddites. A Nottingham stocking knitter, he was the father of five children. The
166 v writings of the luddites

tone of Crowder’s letter is especially bitter, and his grievances against the in-
formers Blackburn and Burton are not softened by any professions of his own
guilt at having participated in the attack.
In some other documents and histories, the name is rendered ‘‘Crowther.’’

Sutton, Some Particulars 10.

v v v

New Bridewell, Leicester, 8 o’clock, on the morning of our execution.

O my dearest and best of Wives,
When you receive this, I shall be no more in this world. But I die happy, in
the hope of a blessed Saviour. O what a comfortable thing it is to serve the Lord.
I still think my sentence very cruel and unjust, I may say murderous, for Black-
borne owned upon the trial he was the man that shot Asher, for which we suffer
for aiding and abetting. I was never in the factory at all; I was an outside sentinel,
forty or fifty yards from the factory at the time Asher was shot, therefore I could
not be assisting in the shooting of Asher, for I did not know he was shot until
we had got several miles from Loughborough, on our return home. Blackborne
and Burton swore that all the outside sentinels had pistols, which was false, for I
had none until it was nearly over, and that which I had then was not loaded, for
I threw stones at first.
My dearest wife, I most earnestly wish I had taken your advice, I should not
have come to this end. I feel quite calm and in good spirits. O trust in the Lord,
for he can strengthen us in the time of trouble: O trust in a blessed Saviour, for
he will give us rest. I could wish for John Rawson, John Roberts, and John Roper,
to be my bearers; dear wife, choose the other three thyself.
Pray remember my love to my mother and relations; remember my respects
to my neighbours, shopmates, and all inquiring friends. For ever adieu! Adieu! I
hope, dear wife, to meet you and my dear children and mother in heaven.
JOHN CROWDER.
 Northwestern documents

h e l u d d i t e d o c u m e n t s from the Northwest come from Man-

T chester and its environs, including Stockport, Macclesfield, Rochdale,
Wigan, Bolton, and other cotton towns. A couple of texts originated in Liver-
pool and Flintshire, Wales. No Luddite texts that I have found came out of the
other growing cotton centers of Preston and Blackburn. Most of the texts are
threatening letters, addresses, and copies of oaths forwarded to the Home Office
by Manchester magistrate Revered William Hay, Stockport solicitor John Lloyd,
and Bolton magistrate Colonel R. A. Fletcher. Not even the many spies who
worked for Colonel Fletcher seem to have found (or fabricated) Luddite writings.
They did, however, report a great many variations on oaths that were occasion-
ally described in the authorities’ letters as ‘‘horrid’’ and ‘‘sanguinary’’ but which
actually seem to have been fairly standard among disaffected groups of the time.
Most of the texts are preserved in the Home Office Papers in the Public Record
Office, Kew; only a few appear in regional collections.
Northwestern Luddism was not as tidy as its Midlands predecessor—that is,
it crossed boundaries between machine breaking, food rioting, and agitation for
political reform more easily and frequently than Midlands Luddism did. For this
reason, I have included in this section texts that may appear to be less related to
Luddism than the framework knitters’ committee papers that I included in the
section on Midlands Luddism. The texts give a sense of the discursive culture
into which Luddism was imported. Other texts from the culture, the Luddite
oaths, are widely available, of suspicious origin, and share most features. For these
reasons, I have chosen not to reproduce them here.
168 v writings of the luddites

N1 v February 1812: Letter to Mr. Kirkby, Ancoats

Most scholarly treatments of Luddism in the cotton districts concentrate on

the weavers, the most active Luddites in the region of Manchester and Stockport.
Letters complaining of hiring practices in the spinning trade, however, indicate
that labor dissatisfaction in the region was not limited to the weavers. Gener-
ally, spinners did not suffer to the same degree as other artisans in the textile
trades, largely because even the depressed weaving and knitting trades required
tremendous quantities of yarn and thread.1 Furthermore, the changes in spin-
ning—from outwork performed mostly by women to factory work performed
by men—were accompanied by an increase in wage rates. Such circumstances
caused the spinners, especially the mule spinners, to be considered an elite among
textile workers. Certainly, the cotton spinners did not participate in Luddite riots
in the same numbers as weavers did, but they nevertheless had clear grievances
about employment practices, primarily related to gender and wages.
Early in 1812 the owners of spinning mills received letters addressing their
practices of hiring women to replace more expensive male workers. A copy of
one such letter was forwarded to the Home Office by David Holt, who says in
his enclosing correspondence that the threatening letter had been received by
‘‘Porters.’’ The copy that Holt sent indicates that the largest Manchester spinning
concern, McConnel, Kennedy and Company, also received the same threat. This
letter contrasts greatly in tone with the other letters of complaint to McConnel
and Kennedy that follow.
The letter is undated but was enclosed in Holt’s 22 February 1812 letter from
Chorlton.

H. O. 42/120.

v v v

Mr Kirkby
Cotton Master at
Candis his factory
Ancoats
Sir,
We begin with the Language of the Prophets of old, in saying, that your
 Northwestern Documents v 169

Destruction is at Hand, and why? because we the Cotton Spinners of this

Town, have been the means of raising you from the Dunghill, to Indepen-
dency; & now you with others, have employed so many of the Female Sex,
that we, and our little ones, are starving for want of Bread; and if you are de-
termined to persevere, you may expect something destructive immediately—
So we conclude with a Reform or Death
The same has also been recd by
Mr Pollard
‘‘—Jas Kennedy
‘‘—McConnoll & Co

N2 v 8 April 1812: Poster titled ‘‘Now or Never,’’ Manchester

Even though Luddite meetings are reported as having taken place on Lan-
cashire moors in December 1811, and power looms in Stockport were attacked
in February and March 1812, as late as 25 March 1812, Manchester boroughreeve
Richard Wood, in a letter undersigned by two constables, was able to report per-
fect tranquillity in that vicinity:

We have observed with great regret in the London newspapers reports of seri-
ous disturbances among the Weavers & Mechanics in this town and neigh-
bourhood, which we are happy to be enabled to contradict. There is no foun-
dation for such reports, on the contrary, it is with pleasure we bear testimony
to the exemplary patience with which the working Classes have borne the
pressure of the present times.2

In less than two weeks after Wood’s report, Luddism erupted in the cotton dis-
tricts of Lancashire and Cheshire and continued throughout the spring. Machine
breaking around Manchester often coincided with food riots and other political
unrest. Thompson remarks that ‘‘when Luddism came to Lancashire it did not
move into a vacuum. There were already, in Manchester and the larger centres,
artisan unions, secret committees of the weavers, and some old and new groups
of Paineite Radicals, with an ebullient Irish fringe.’’ 3 Indeed, it is difficult to dis-
tinguish the various motivations. Perhaps this difficulty defines the special char-
acter of Lancashire Luddism and may explain why no major historical work has
170 v writings of the luddites

concentrated solely on Luddism in that vicinity, where attacks on steam looms,

food riots, and political reform blend almost seamlessly into each other.
One of the first episodes that the authorities associated with Luddism in Man-
chester was also tied to political reform—the riot at the Manchester Exchange.
A loyalist meeting to be held at the exchange had been called by 154 persons, de-
scribed by Manchester magistrate William Hay as ‘‘the respectable committee of
Gentlemen, who have sat in this town in aid of & for the information of the civil
power.’’ A group of reformers, led by a wealthy Unitarian named Ottiwell Wood,
opposed the meeting and published broadside addresses asking the public to at-
tend the loyalist meeting to voice its support for political reform. John Lloyd
reports to Undersecretary Beckett that ‘‘many quires’’ of the handbill were con-
fiscated from the main distributor in Stockport.4 Anticipating possible violence,
the boroughreeve, Richard Wood, withdrew his permission to hold the meeting
at the exchange, citing the inadequacy of the building’s stairs.
In the Home Office Papers, immediately following John Lloyd’s examina-
tions of the informers Whitehead, Taylor, and Yarwood, is the printed broad-
sheet address reproduced here. Hay, in an April 1812 letter, said that he believed
the broadsheets to have been commissioned by Ottiwell Wood, whom he de-
scribes as a ‘‘young man’’ not directly involved in ludding but sympathetic to the
protests of the weavers. The printer, J. Plant, is occasionally described as ‘‘sedi-
tious’’ in Hay’s other letters in H. O. 40/1. The slogan, ‘‘Now or Never,’’ was
carried about on a banner in a ‘‘rough parade’’ in Manchester on 8 April 1812
(which also saw the prince regent burned in effigy). Sale introduces the slogan
with the adjective ‘‘enigmatic’’; however, perusal of Hay’s letter and its enclo-
sure reduces the enigmatic character of the slogan.5 Regardless of whether it is
enigmatic or not, the slogan became popular even outside of Manchester, as its
appearance on a handwritten poster addressed to ‘‘Croppers’’ in the West Riding
during the second week of April testifies.6
The address itself is undated, and Hay provides no date for it; however, it
would have been written during the week before the Manchester Exchange riot,
8 April 1812.

H. O. 40/1/1. A Home Office clerk’s copy appears in H. O. 40/1/5. There is also a copy in
the Manchester Central Reference Library, Local Studies Division, Manchester.

v v v
 Northwestern Documents v 171

NOW
OR NEVER!

Those Inhabitants who do not wish for an Increase of Taxes and Poor Rates—
An Advance in the Price of Provisions—A Scarcity of Work, and a Reduction of
Wages, will not fail to go to the Meeting on Wednesday Morning next, at the
Exchange, and

Oppose the 154 Persons

Who have called you together; and you will then do right to express your Detes-
tation of the Conduct of those Men who have brought this Country to its present
distressed State, and are entailing Misery on Thousands of its industrious Me-
chanics.

Speak your Minds now!

Before it is too late; let not the Prince and the People be deceived, as to your
real Sentiments. Speak and act boldly and firmly, but above all, be PEACEABLE.

Reprinted by J. Plant, Manchester.

N3 v 19 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘General Justice’’ to Thomas

Garside, Stockport

On 14 April 1812, near the beginning of a week of riots in Stockport and its
environs, John Goodair’s power-loom mill at Edgeley was destroyed in a Ludd-
ite attack. A Stockport mill owner, Thomas Garside, was caught in the attack,
but his life was spared by the timely commands of one of the Luddite leaders.
The following letter to Garside arises from the context of that attack.7 The let-
ter is distinguished by its emphasis on duty; only a couple of Midlands letters
mention the word. The conflict between duty and justice perhaps necessitates
this letter’s informing Garside that his mill is offensive but cannot yet be fired
without harming innocent ‘‘Industrious masters’’ located in proximity to it.
The letter appears in two places. The first is the original manuscript; the sec-
ond, a copy by John Lloyd, is more legible than the original. I rely heavily upon
172 v writings of the luddites

Lloyd’s copy for making sense of words that are blurred in the original. It seems
likely that this is the ‘‘16 April 1812’’ letter threatening steams looms mentioned
by Frank Darvall.8

H. O. 40/1/1.

v v v

Stockport
21 April 1812
Mr. Garside
April 19th
Sir
We think it our Duty to inform you that We was Intent upon Seting fire
to your factory on Account of those Dressing Machines that was and still are
Within it. But We Consider that it would Be very Injurious to those Indus-
trious Masters that Occupy the Different parts of it therefore in justice to
humanity We think it our Bounin Duty to give you this Notice that is if you
doo not Cause those Dressing Machines to be Removed Within the Bounds
of Seven Days from the above Date your factory and all that it Contains Will
and Shall Surely Be Sit on fire Remember We have given you fare Warning
and if your factory is Burnd, it is your own falt: it is Not our Desire to doo
you the Least Injury But We are fully Determind to Destroy Both Dressing
Machines and Steam Looms Let Who Will be the Owners We Neither Re-
gard those that keeps them Nor the Army for We Will Conquer Both or Die
in the Conflict Remember, We have given you Both time and Warning and if
you pay no attention you Must abide by the Consiquence
41 Signd General Justice 9

N4 v 23 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘Thousands, upon thousands’’ to ‘‘Mess

McConnal & Kennady,’’ Manchester

As I mention earlier, historians of the Luddite risings have not paid much at-
tention to Luddism among the cotton spinners. Wages were not depressed to the
same degree as the weavers’ were, and demand for yarn continued through the
period. Nevertheless, there seems to have been more Luddite expression among
the Lancashire cotton spinners than scholars previously have thought. A 23 April
 Northwestern Documents v 173

1812 letter bearing a Manchester postmark and addressed to the McConnel and
Kennedy Company, the largest Manchester spinning concern, is one of a couple
of texts that utilize Luddite discourse in treating a question of gender and em-
ployment—specifically, the hiring of women for spinning work formerly per-
formed by men. It is also unusual for the deference shown to the addressees;
indeed, the threat is not even directed at McConnel and Kennedy but rather at
the women employees and the factory overseers. In its tone and style, it contrasts
with the earlier February 1812 letters to Mr. Kirkby, and to McConnel and Ken-
nedy. By several accounts (the previously mentioned letter to Kirkby excepted),
McConnel and Kennedy were conscientious employers, a fact that might explain
the absence of malice shown toward them in this letter. One piece of evidence
of their generosity toward employees is a 23 December 1812 letter of complaint
from Philips and Lee, proprietors of the Salford Cotton Mills. Philips and Lee
ask that, in the future, McConnel and Kennedy refrain from giving New Year’s
gifts to employees: ‘‘We find our Business considerably affected by the pernicious
tendency of the custom, and shall ourselves, from this time, decline the practice
of it’’ (McConnel and Kennedy Papers 2/1/18/4).

McConnel, Kennedy and Company Papers 2/1/18/1, John Rylands Library, Deansgate.

v v v

Mess McConnal & Kennady

Cotton Spinners
Manchester

April 1812
Gentlemen
This is to aquaint you that wee are determined to a man to put a stop 10 to
the Eregularities that is going on in the spinning branch, gentm, we wish to
Speake with respect to you because you have all ways Conducted your Selves
[to your spinners] with that sevility 11 and kindness which is a strong mark of
your good Sence and humain harts and Cold wish to Serve you to the best of
our power We only wish to have a liveing for our selvs and families with hard
working for wpe wish for peace and quietness but we can Not nor will not
bare owre distress any Longer our poor helpless Children have Hundreds of
time’s cryed unto us for bre[d]ds but a lass we had none to give them and we
think it quiet inconsistent with Our duty as men as husbands and as fathers
174 v writings of the luddites

to Suffer our Selves to be ruined 12 Any longer by a set of vagabond Strum-

pets and them Jibbet deserveing Raskals that is looking Over them, we will
lud them to thare Satisfaction we have laid out a plan for them and will not
rest till we have A Complished it we nither Care for (bona e Con bles
nor the whole pack of [the] poor grind ing 13 Curse.14 We will die by the sword
sooner than die as we do)
We sincearly hope Gentlemen that you will discharge the biches and take
men in to your Employ a gain or they must take what they get
We are Gentlemen
Your truly devoted
Servants thousands
Up on, thousands

N5 v 26 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘Falstaff’’ to Fire Office Agents, Wigan

Arson was the most common method of destroying power looms and dress-
ing machines in Lancashire and Cheshire. A Lancashire letter dated 26 April 1812
and addressed to a fire insurer in Wigan treats the economic distresses of workers
in that Lancashire spinning town, concentrating, as many Luddite letters do, on
the means of destroying the obnoxious machines. Like the letter to McConnel
and Kennedy, the letter makes an oblique threat against the power-loom owners.
The writer recognizes not only a larger financial system connecting the power-
loom owners with their insurers but also the possibility of fulfilling a reciprocated
potential in destroying by fire the steam looms that oppress and displace weavers
by the use fire to produce steam.

Copy in H. O. 40/2/3, Part 1. The copy does not seem to have been made by a Home Office
clerk.

v v v

Sirs,
I am ordered by General Ludds Command in Chief of the Army of Bread
Seekers &c &c &c
That shou’d you have any of the Persons Insured in your office not to Insure
them anymore (for the sake of your Employers) who keeps winding machines
or any other such like things in their Employment (For as it has pleased provi-
 Northwestern Documents v 175

dence to bless the British Isle with abundance of Fire it ill behoves Genm of
Proy to make use of it to take away the Work of the Poor and therefore their
Bread, and if such work continue to be done in Wigan and in the same way
the same providence has given the said General and his followers an Heart to
make use of the same means to find Work as such Vile Persons has taken to
take the Work from them (i. e. Fire) as it is thought better a few die than all
Perish—The Gl has perfect information of all in Wigan and viewed the prem-
ises this day in Person before his men set to work, Mesrs Pe - s - n Da - - l
Me - - lg Pin - - - g - - n B - a - - y 15 &c &c will be looked to in a short time
if continue in said way of Robbing the Poor of their Bread.
Given at Head Quarters at Westhoughton
This 26th Day of April 1812
Signed Falstaff Secy
(Circular)

Direction
To Fire Office Agents
Wigan—

N6 v 26 April 1812: Posted notice ‘‘To Whitefield Luddites’’

On the same Sunday that ‘‘Falstaff’’ wrote to the Fire Office Agents, a handbill
appeared in Prestwich calling on Luddites from the nearby Whitefield area to
join ‘‘the Northern National Army.’’ Like the Nottinghamshire document sent
from Mansfield by James Stevens to Lord Sidmouth along with a key to decipher
it (H. O. 42/127, reproduced earlier), this Lancashire notice also is said to have
a key. In the letter in which he had transcribed the brief notice, Hay describes
the circumstances surrounding it: ‘‘We are informed that the Head Quarters of
those who direct the revolutionary proceedings are at Manchester. The Confed-
eracy is called The Northern National Army. . . . A notice was yesterday stuck
up on paper on the Hearse House in Prestwich Church Yard. In words - it was
directed ‘To Whitefield Luddites’—and in figures 1. 2. 3. . . . By some key which
a respectable man was in possession of, the figures were decyphered. . . .’’ Unfor-
tunately, William Hay says very little that sheds light on the key, those persons
who might have possessed it, or the reasons that a solicitation and call to arms
176 v writings of the luddites

would be encrypted. Hay does not speculate on the significance of the seditious
handbill’s being posted in a churchyard on a Sunday.
The Whitefield notice and the existence of a key complicate my thesis that
Luddism provided a scheme by which the distressed populations of the Man-
chester area employed certain discourses and, in the process of employing those
discourses, constituted themselves as a community. The existence of a key entails
the prior existence of a discursive community whose members possess the key
and agree that certain communications will be encrypted. The complication in-
heres in the fact that no other documents reveal the discursive community among
the Whitefield or Prestwich Luddites. Perhaps because so many questions were
not answered by Hay’s letter, few scholars have attended to the notice. Malcolm
Thomis ignores the key altogether and makes little of the ‘‘Northern National
Army’’: ‘‘There is no ground for connecting this with machine breaking, except
the fact that the framers of the notice chose to use the term currently in vogue,
and there is no entry made by the ‘Northern National Army’ into the Luddite
story at any other point.’’ 16

H. O. 42/122. The notice was transcribed in Hay’s letter to Ryder, 27 April 1812.

v v v

To Whitefield Luddites—
You are hereby required to be ready on the shortest notice to join our army. fail
not at your peril. Amen.

N7 v Late April 1812: Posted address ‘‘To the inhabitants of this

Town,’’ Macclesfield

A handwritten address from Macclesfield, undated but evidently written in

late April 1812, was forwarded to Francis Freeling, postal surveyor for the Post
Office, by T. W. Jones of Macclesfield on 9 May 1812. Jones’s enclosing letter
details the context in which the address was composed:

On Wednesday morning last a Paper was found stuck up in a part of this Town
of an Inflammatory Nature threatening the lives of the Witnesses who gave
evidence before the Magistrates agst the three Rioters Committed to Chester
Gaol for Rioting at Macclesfield on on Monday 13 April last past adding that
 Northwestern Documents v 177

Mr Chas Wood was the Cause of the disturbance (which is not strictly true) by
Discharging his Men it contains 9 Articles on mode of destruction, & griev-
ances—adding that Knives and Razors in the ends of Sticks would be made use
of as Weapons of destruction agst those who’d dare to give further evidence
to the Conviction of the Rioters and a further desire that the Prince Regant
would change Ministers—the whole of which appears to have been writ by
some very illeterate Person & the whole of which I deem too insignificant to
notice. (H. O. 42/123)

H. O. 42/123.

v v v

To the inhabitants of this Town i under Stan the newspapers informs you that
General Lud is taken prisoner but i can contrdict that Satement for i have Just
recievd a Leter from him Which he informs that he as Taken a fresh plan which
is this no 1 Plan That the Shall be a List of those persons which is worst Against
the poor in evry Town and Vilage No 2 And that evry Poor Person whill Get
blunder b[u]shes Guns pistols axes forks riors rasors knives No 3 that you De-
vide youselvs And by And 3 by 3 And two And ind in Any rioting to Stick ther
horses in the neck No 4 And if any one is taken that man that Swears against him
must Be way Laid if it is for one or two years of weks or months And Shot by
the Law that we have made No 5 that i Shall take the Command in Person in a
Short time my Self when you have Got ready No 6 [I] understand by you you
have had 3 men Sent to Chester who was no way Concer[n]ed in rioting bu never
mind that i will come over after the Trial And if the Come to Any harm i whill
Put you in A way to Send them And All Such for Sworn Deivls to hell
No 7 that it is Agreedon to Shoot All masters that Puls Down wages or invents
things to hurt the Poor No 8 that if Price of wales whill not Change is ministers
he Shall Lose his head No 9 that we whill All be Good Subjects if the whil let us
have work to keep our por Starving hungry naked Cheldren And we Desire that
you whill Let Mr Devenport know that A hungry below whill not be keept Down
by the Sword And Chales wood that he as Been the Cause of a riot in maccles-
field with Droping poor mens wages And Saying that water Should Be as Dear
as milk And Speaking Against the School | And i have to Contradict A State-
ment which i read with Great indignation Concerning Stubbs in the macclesfield
Courier which was to this efect that Stubbs was one of the most Daring amongst
them All he might well for I never Saw A man Cut And knocked in sutch a maner
178 v writings of the luddites

in All my Life now I was behind that man All The way And i heard him [to ask]
Several persons to Give over flinging And the Person that flung that Stone was
betwixt him And me he made A bod resistance we alow And he was right for so
doing for the knocked him Down he Got A stone up for to fling but head not
time he was right to Stand in is hown Defence now if that [man] Comes to harm
besides is imprisoment Shall be Sto Broadhurst Tunstal Servant woman Shall be
Shot One time or another what must that poor man think to be towrn from his
Family for nothing Left & wife And 7 Small Children
thanks to Eaton [an] Daintry for the Goodness on the 13 of Aprall

N8 v 30 April 1812: Letter (‘‘A’’) to Mr. Simpson, Manchester

On 1 May 1812 William Hay forwarded to Home Office Secretary Richard

Ryder two anonymous threatening letters, each of which is overtly political in its
own way. The letters followed several Luddite actions during a turbulent April—
riots at the Manchester Exchange, food riots in Manchester and several of the
surrounding towns, and attacks on mills in Manchester, Stockport, Middleton,
and Westhoughton. Describing the two letters to Secretary Ryder, Hay writes,

I have the honor to enclose a letter received I believe this morning by Mr.
Simpson a young gentleman of property, who is the proprietor of consider-
able Cotton Works, & who has much to his honor taken an active part as a
Special Constable in patroling &c That letter is marked A - upon recollec-
tion it appeared to be written in the same hand as one received yesterday or
the day before by Mr. Milne. Mr. Milne is a Coroner for part of the Hundred
of Salford, is Clerk to some of the Magistrates at Manchester, & of course
has much business both at the Assizes & Sessions. That may explain some
of the allusions in the letter marked B - but the writer has made a mistake
for the Coroners inquest that met on the men who fell at Middleton was not
in the district of Mr. Milne, but of the other Coroner. (Hay to Ryder, 1 May
1812, H. O. 40/1/1)

The first enclosed letter, marked ‘‘A’’ and addressed to the Mr. Simpson de-
scribed in Hay’s enclosing letter, was signed ‘‘Eliza Ludd.’’ It is the only Luddite
document purporting to have been written by a woman. The letter’s exercise in
comparative political science is quite curious. The writer is careful to separate,
 Northwestern Documents v 179

in a manner reminiscent of Edmund Burke, ‘‘ministerial tyranny’’ from British

‘‘spirit’’ and is also careful to couch the threat of rebellion in patriotic, pro-
British, and implicitly anti-Gallic terms. Like many Manchester documents, the
letter expresses the writer’s opposition to the wars. The language of the letter
is every bit as interesting as its political theory. It swings from gracefully exe-
cuted allocution and acrolect (‘‘cannot such an action be accomplish’d here’’) to
a working-class dialect (‘‘his’’ for ‘‘is,’’ and inconsistently applied at that).
The first letter bears a very faint date in a clerk’s hand, which appears to be
‘‘April 30h.’’

H. O. 40/1/1 (copied in H. O. 40/1/5). The letter is enclosed in Hay’s correspondence

along with the letter to Mr. Milne and a printed broadsheet, titled ‘‘Second Letter/ Fellow
Weavers,’’ opposing the Luddites.

v v v

Sir,
Doubtless you are well acquainted with the Political History of America, if
so you must confess that, it was ministerial tyranny that gave rise to that glori-
ous spirit in which the British Colonies obtain’d their independance by force
of arms, at a period, when we was ten times as strong as now!—if bands of
husbandmen could do this, in spite of all the force our government was then
able to employ - cannot such an action be accomplish’d here, now the military
strength of the country is so reduced—Consider Sir, what a few troops there
is at present in England,—remember that none can be call’d home; because
that would relinquishing the little we have gain’d to the fury of the enemy—
little indeed to have coss’d so much money and such torrents of blood, yes
British blood!let me persuad you to quit your present post, lay by your
sword, and become a friend to the oppress’d—for curs’d his the man that even
lifts a straw against the sacred cause of Liberty.
Eliza Ludd—
Manchester

N9 v 30 April 1812: Letter (‘‘B’’) to Nathaniel Milne, Salford

The second letter, labeled ‘‘B,’’ seeks, like the Midlands letter to ‘‘Mr. Byrnny,’’
the Nottingham jury foreman, to intervene in the juridical process. Nathaniel
180 v writings of the luddites

Milne, Salford coroner and clerk to the Manchester magistrates, received the
letter shortly after the returning of a verdict of ‘‘justifiable homicide’’ in a case
involving Daniel Burton, owner of a steam-operated power-loom mill. Burton’s
power looms had displaced many weavers and reduced wages since their instal-
lation two years earlier. Several Luddites were killed in an April 1812 attack on
Burton’s Middleton mill.
The Middleton attack, the largest in the Manchester area, was a particularly
bloody event. Following a 19 April meeting on a Lancashire moor, at which Gen-
eral Ludd was represented by an effigy that was later carried into the attack,
perhaps more than two thousand people gathered around Burton’s mill in the
early afternoon of 20 April. Burton ordered his hands to fire upon the crowd,
which had begun to throw stones at the mill. In the musket discharges of the
first day, four or five people were killed and eighteen wounded. The next day,
21 April, seeking vengeance, Luddites and their sympathizers raided a militia
depot in Oldham and carried weapons back to Middleton. After the crowd at-
tacked outbuildings and burned the home of Burton’s son, Emmanuel, and the
homes of workers loyal to Burton, a troop of Scots Greys attacked the crowd,
killing at least another five people (Leeds Mercury, 25 April 1812; Manchester Mer-
cury, 28 April 1812; W. Chippindale to Col. Ralph Fletcher, 23 April 1812 letter,
H. O. 40/1/1; Darvall, Popular Disturbances 99; Thomis, Luddites 110; Sale, Rebels
against the Future 136–40). The coroner’s verdict, just days after the failed attack
on Rawfolds and the similar verdict in that case, prompted the letter to Milne,
the Salford coroner, who seems to have been an erroneous target of Luddite ven-
geance, as the enclosing letter from William Hay points out.

H. O. 40/1/1 (and is copied in H. O. 40/1/5). It is enclosed with the letter signed ‘‘Eliza
Ludd.’’

v v v

Sir,
This would be an error that our very blood could not expiate, if these lines
were stuff’d with nothing but mere malice and injustice; for conscious we are
you must at first think so: but if you will take a little advice from a few friends,
you will then immediately become an apostate to your principles—The Fable
of, ‘‘The Plague amongst the Beasts’’ 17 - is well worth a coroner’s reading–
Had some poor man murder’d two or three rich ones in cool blood, Nat.
Milnes would then have buss’d in the ears a ‘‘Packed Jury’’ loaded with conta-
 Northwestern Documents v 181

gion, these Words, ‘‘Willfull murder’’–instead of ‘‘Justifiable homicide’’: but

know thou cursed insinuator, if Burton’s infamous action was ‘‘justifiable’’, the
laws of Tyrants are reasons’ dictates—Beware, Beware! - a month’s bathing
in the Stygian Lake would not wash this sanguinary deed from our minds; it
but augments the heritable cause, that stirs us up to indignation–
Milnes if you really are not a Friend to the great Oppressors, forgive us
this–but if you are–‘‘the rest remains behind’’—
Ludd finis est.

N10 v 5 May 1812: Letter from Holywell, Flintshire, to Mr. Douglas and others
at Manchester

On 6 May 1812 William Hay forwarded copies of three Luddite documents

from northern Wales. One of the documents is a copy of a letter received on
5 May 1812 by ‘‘Mr. Douglas & some others’’ living ‘‘at or near Manchester.’’ It is
postmarked at Holywell, Flintshire, the site of a ‘‘very extensive cotton works’’
called ‘‘the Holywell Twist Company’’ owned by a partnership of Manchester
clothiers, ‘‘Douglas & some others,’’ living in Manchester and keeping a ware-
house there. In his accompanying correspondence, Hay observes that the wages
at Holywell were as high as at Manchester and that there had been no complaint
about wages by the ‘‘Welch’’ work force until the appearance of the letters. None
of the documents makes clear whether the Holywell Twist Company was a spin-
ning concern, as the name ‘‘Twist’’ would imply. If so, then perhaps the spinning
trade might have been more involved in Luddism than previously believed.
This anonymous letter is rare in that it contains some lines of verse (as does
the subsequent letter) but is typical for its numerical claims of wider popular sup-
port. The miners and colliers of the region actually did participate in machine
wrecking on occasion.18 The letter does, however, follow a typical Luddite pat-
tern of detailing distress, threatening destruction on more than one level, and
pointing to other Luddite attacks as cautionary examples. Like many other let-
ters from the Northwest, it manifests the writer’s awareness of economic matters
beyond the simple disbursement of higher wages. The writer actually confronts
capitalist motives (‘‘You had better be content with a moderate profit’’), though
without slipping entirely into the language of class resentment.
182 v writings of the luddites

H. O. 40/1/1. It was enclosed within a letter from William Robert Hay to Richard Ryder,
sent on 6 May 1812 from the Manchester Police Office.

v v v
r
S . If you do not advance the wages of all your workmen at Holywell, you shall
have all your mills burnt to the ground immediately. it is harder upon many
of us here than upon those who receive parish relief. we are starving by inches
by reason of our small wages & provisions so high. You had better be content
with a moderate profit, than have your mills destroyed. You know how it is
with Burton & Goodier & many others, it will be the same with you in a few
days, if you do not advance all hands.19 All the Miners and Colliers are ready
to join us. 3000 men can be collected in a few hours

The poor cry aloud for bread

Prince Regent shall lose his head
And all the rich who oppress the poor
In a little time shal be no more

Take care you be not in the number of the oppressors. we cannot wait but a
very few days, we are ready for blood or bread, anything is better than starving
by inches.

N11 v 5 May 1812: Letter to Mr. G. Platt, Holywell, Flintshire

Hay’s 6 May 1812 report to the Home Office contains other documents sent
by the same post and accompanying the Holywell letter to Douglas on 5 May
1812. The second document is a copy, sent to Douglas, of a letter ‘‘addressed to
Mr. G. Platt, who is one of the Principal servants at the before mentiond mill.’’
Hay notes that ‘‘All the papers &c are in the same handwriting.’’ Regarding the
verses at the end of the letter, Hay informs the Home Office that ‘‘a copy of these
lines in the same handwriting was taken from the window shutters of Mr. Jones
Junr. last week.’’ Hay does not specify whether Mr. Jones lived in Holywell or
Manchester.

H. O. 40/1/1.

v v v
 Northwestern Documents v 183

Sir,
We can not live with the wages we have. unless all hands are advanced the
mills shall be burned to the ground immediately. the miners & colliers are all
ready to join. 3000 men may be called to join us in a very short time. We can
also send for Bolton & Middleton mob to come. We have proper direction
to some of the leaders. letters have been received therefrom leatly. We are all
read for blood or bread. anything is better than starving by inches as we do,
rely upon it.

The poor cry aloud for bread

Prince Regent shall lose his head
And all the rich who oppress the poor
In a little time shall be no more
With deep regret, I write these things,
They’ll come to pass in spite of kings.

N12 v 5 May 1812: Handbill posted up at Holywell, Flintshire

The final document forwarded to Secretary Ryder in Hay’s 6 May 1812 let-
ter is ‘‘a copy of a Hand Bill taken from the wall of a house in Chapel Street
Holywell.’’ Hay added to the end of his letter, ‘‘Sr Thos Mostyn has notice of
the handbill.’’ The primary grievance of the writer of the letter is the increase in
food prices caused by a tripling of farmers’ rents by local landowners in Flint-
shire. Hay indicates that the handbill is written in the same hand as the previous
two documents from Holywell. Common authorship would suggest that Ludd-
ite writing in Holywell, like Manchester, blends a number of discourses—wage
complaints, opposition to machinery, distress caused by high food prices, and
frustration at the government.

H. O. 40/1/1.

v v v

Come brave boys, & make ready your arms, pikes & pitchforks to upset the rich
tyrants of the land who grind the face of the poor, such as Sr. Thos Mostyn,
Sir Pyerce, Pennant and many others too numerous to mention, have tribled the
rents of the farmers, the poor are the sufferers.
184 v writings of the luddites

N13 v 6 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Thomas Paine’’ to Richard Wood, Manchester

Some of the reformers in the Manchester area were eager to draw a distinc-
tion between themselves and the Luddites. In his 11 May 1812 correspondence to
Secretary Ryder at the Home Office, Hay enclosed a copy of a letter addressed to
‘‘Richard Wood/ Boroughreeve/ Manchester’’ with a Lancaster postmark. The
writer refers to the 8 April loyalist meeting at the Manchester Exchange, de-
scribed earlier in the headnote for the handbill titled ‘‘Now or Never.’’ Wood
had withdrawn his permission to hold the meeting at the exchange, arguing that
the anticipated crowds would have been too much for the building’s stairs.
Richard Wood was adamantly opposed to political and economic reform and
had said that Luddism was a part of ‘‘an insurrection against society . . . and of
this the Luddites were clearly guilty.’’ 20 By the standards of both the Luddites
and the reform movement, Wood and the committee members who engaged in
restoring civic order by suppressing riots against machines and high food prices
surely deserved punishment. Although the letter disavows ‘‘connection with ma-
chine breakers,’’ its expressed aims are similar, if not identical, to those of the
weavers engaged in Luddism in the Manchester region.
Paineite influences upon Luddism were significant in Lancashire and York-
shire. John Baines, a hatter from Halifax and one of the leading figures in
Luddism in the Huddersfield vicinity, is occasionally described as an old ‘‘Tom
Painer.’’ 21 Furthermore, Paine’s works were read widely among the weaver groups
who began to organize opposition to machinery in late eighteenth-century Lan-
cashire.
Interestingly, the use of the term ‘‘Hampdenites’’ foreshadows the growth of
Hampden clubs; such clubs, A. Temple Patterson has demonstrated, were inter-
twined with Luddism.22

H. O. 40/1/1.

v v v

Lancaster 6 May 1812

Richard Wood
You have been the cause of much bloodshed; you convened the people and
did not meet them: you are therefore marked for punishment. Your childish
 Northwestern Documents v 185

excuse of Stairs! You might have adjourned to the Square called St Anns or to
a field. The fact is; that there is a regular, general, progressive organisation
of the people going forward. They may be called Hamdenites, Sidneyites, or
Paineites. it has fallen to my lot to unite many thousands. WE for I speake
in the name of multitudes. I say we deny and disavow all, or any connection
with machine breakers, burners of factories, extorters of money, plunderers
of private property or assasans. We know that every machine for the abridg-
ment of human labour is a blessing to the great family of which we are a part.
We mean to begin at the Source of our grievances as it is of no use to peti-
tion, We mean to demand & command a redress of our grievances. We have
both the will & the power. What? must the industrious artisans or the humble
cultivators of the soil, be always robb’ed of the rewards of their labours? must
they be forever doom’d to behold their helpless infants unfed, uncloathed, un-
taught. in short deprived of every comfort that makes existance worth hold-
ing? must they see the Vultures of Oppressions legally robbing them to pay
Sinecures, make loans, to other nations virtual fleets & armies: To give ex-
travagant establishments to all the branches of what are called the Roya l
Fa m i ly, when other paupers are obliged to exist on 3 or 4 shillings p week?
no not long. Tell Mr Ottiwell Wood, that his character character has travelled
farther than his feet, that he is much esteemed & respected by our Society &
if ever we have an opportunity we will reward him, request him to accept our
best wishes for all his families Happiness & Comfort.
We mentioned you as being marked for punishment but as [we Beleive]
you had no evil intention you rather erred for want of fortitude & experience
than disrespect for the people; therefor your punishment shall be very easy it
shall be light.
There appeared among the 154 names to you requisition S o m e Hon e s t
L aw y e rs of which We have taken p a r t i c u l a r = n o t i c e. honest useful
upright Men. They shall be rewarded, Yes they deserve a recompence in pro-
portion to their utility!
For H a mpde n i t e s
Th o m a s Pa i n e
186 v writings of the luddites

N14 v 11 May 1812: Letter to the prince regent at London

The following letter addressed to the prince regent appears in the Home Of-
fice Papers located among other threatening letters and correspondence from the
Manchester region. The relationship of the writer to Luddism is unclear, but it
is safe to say that the writer is sympathetic to the Luddites’ aims and approves
their methods. Sympathy aside, ascertaining the geographical origin of the let-
ter is difficult because it appears with an indeterminate postmark and without
any enclosing correspondence. Evidence of a Manchester origin consists of the
writer’s calling the prince regent’s attention to ‘‘poor men that are in gaol,’’ a
reference to those persons awaiting trial at the May assizes in Chester and Lan-
cashire. There are, however, complicating features in the letter, one of which is
the mention of breaking frames. As one would expect, no documents from the
Manchester vicinity refer to the objects of Luddite violence in that region as
‘‘frames.’’ In May 1812 there was a small contingent of Nottingham framework
knitters in London petitioning Parliament for regulations advantageous to the
trade, and at least one of them—Thomas Large—might have been capable of
writing such a letter. Nevertheless, because of the allusion to the Chester and
Lancaster assizes and because much of the other correspondence in this section
of H. O. 42/123 originates in the Northwest, I include the letter in this section.

H. O. 42/123.

v v v

HRH The Prince Regent

Carlton House
London

Sir,
Although the Hand of justice is a little impaded by your unreasonable un-
just and unfeeling Officer’s in the Manufacture=ing Towns yet perhaps your
attention may soon be called another way The poor men that are in gaol (for
endeavouring to obtain a bit of bread to supply the craveings of nature) and
destin’d (perhaps) to Hang Yet if there be not an order Issued Immediately
for their release and some provision made for their Starving family’s there is a
 Northwestern Documents v 187

Most Powerful and Annimated body of Men in London who are determined
to Crush the Bones of their Oppressor’s as their Father’s and Brother’s did
the Frames
The Slighted English Servants

N15 v [12 May] 1812: Letter from ‘‘Luddites’’ at Manchester to Richard Ryder
at London

Following William Hay’s 14 May 1812 letter to the Home Office is a letter
addressed ‘‘The Right Hon. Richd Ryder/ 30 Great George Street / London.’’
Although dated 13 April 1812, the date makes no sense, given the reference to
Perceval’s death (‘‘you may Prepaire to go to the Divel to Bee Secraterry for Mr
Perceval theire’’). A date of 12 May, the day after Perceval’s assassination, would
be more likely. Furthermore, although the letter appears without enclosing cor-
respondence, it is found among letters from May 1812. The reference to Perce-
val’s death and the dates of surrounding letters are reasons enough, I believe, to
conclude that the date is either the result of an error by the writer or a Home
Office copying clerk’s mistake.

H. O. 42/123.

v v v

Honorable
Sir/
Every frame Breaking act you Make an amendment to only serves to
shorten your Days Theirfore you may Prepaire to go to the Divel to Bee
Secraterry for Mr Perceval theire for there are fire 23 Ships Making to saile by
land as well as by Warter that will not faile 24 to Destroy all the Obnoctious in
the both Houses as you have been at a great Deal of pains to Destroy Chiefe
part of the Country it is know your turn to fall The Remedy for you is Shor
Destruction Without Detection—prepaire for thy Departure and Recomend
the same to thy friends your Hbl sert &c
Manchester april 13th 1812} Luddites
188 v writings of the luddites

N16 v 23 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Ned Ludd’’ to Nicholas Vansittart at London

The new chancellor of the exchequer in the Lord Liverpool administration,

Nicholas Vansittart, had not been long in office before he received the follow-
ing letter from Manchester. Vansittart was no friend of the textile workers. In
1802, as a member of Parliament, he had introduced a petition from a number
of large clothiers seeking repeal of old statutes fixing apprenticeships (5 Eliza-
beth, cap. 4) and the number of looms that could be kept by one master (2 & 3
Philip and Mary, cap. 11). The process that he initiated led eventually to the re-
peal in 1809 of parts of the code that had protected woolen weavers for cen-
turies.25 Strangely enough, in June 1812 Vansittart supported some of the regu-
lations petitioned for by the United Committee of Framework Knitters, and he
actually wrote into the bill the clause prohibiting payment in goods.26 The bill,
of course, never passed.
The letter appears without an enclosing letter.

H. O. 42/123.

v v v

Mr Vansittart
Sir,
As you have now accepted the place of Chancellor of the Exchequer I hope
you will learn Wisdom from the fate of your predecessor,27 for if you be de-
termined to persevere in the iniquities & oppress the poor as he did depend
upon it you will share the same fate but I trust the Justness of his death have a
proper effect upon your conduct & 〈so〉 you will do all that lays in your power
to amend & note the injuries he has done otherwise you must take the con-
sequences—I just give you this Gentle hint if you dont profit by it it will be
your own fault or you will be watchd narrowly if an immideate amendment
be not made for the poor you may expect to hear from me again shortly
yours truly
Ned Ludd
May 23 1812
 Northwestern Documents v 189

N17 v 27 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Iulius - Lt. de Luddites’’ to ‘‘Rev d W. Blacow’’
at Liverpool

Near the end of May 1812, Reverend W. Blacow of St. Marks Church in Liver-
pool sent to the Home Office a copy of a Luddite letter that he had received and a
seditious posting. Blacow reports in his enclosing letter that the threatening let-
ter had been sent to him by the two-penny post some days shortly after a sermon
in which he professed his support of the government and denounced the Ludd-
ites and others among the disaffected. Little is known of any Luddite activity
in Liverpool, but there were disturbances in the vicinity, and the connection of
the port of Liverpool to Manchester’s cotton manufacture might perhaps sug-
gest some communication between the workers in the two cities. Without the
certainty of any actual connection, it is nevertheless possible to read the letter
as part of the more politically comprehensive idea of Luddism that typifies the
writings from Lancashire.

H. O. 42/123. The letter is enclosed by Blacow’s 27 May 1812 letter. The threatening letter
is a copy; Blacow’s verifications are reproduced at the bottom of the letter.28

v v v

Duke Street
Sir
It was with the greatest indignation and regret that I sat still, last Sunday,
to hear thee profane, the holy temple of the Lord with impious falsehood on
the subject of hellborn Percivall.. According to the opinions of our most emi-
nent divines, no man has any right to obtrude his own political opinions from
the pulpit to any congregation, and much less to back them with falsities - had
it been in any other place than the church my Pistol would have soon silenced
thy blasphemy.-however beware tho’ thou art spared for a time yet when that
time arrives, not even the Prince of Wickedness whom thou prays for, shall
afford thee protection: thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting,
and this is the call of a christian for thee to repent; I do understand thou hast
long been a disgrace to the holy order of Christianity.-and a most wily hypo-
crite, taking care to secure to thyself the places of two better men.-therefore
art thou worthy of dying with thy depraved master George the Prince whose
190 v writings of the luddites

body shall be sacrifised to the manes of the brave and patriotic Bellingham
and all those who have talk’d against him must repent and drop tears of their
hearts blood--for I will overturn, overturn,-overturn,-this is decreed,-
I am thine and his
eternal enemy
Iulius - Lt. de Luddites 29
Revd W. Blacow
St Marks-

The above is a true Copy of the original Letter of which the same purports
to be a copy the same having been carefully compared and examined with the
original by me.

In Faith and Testimony whereof I have

hereunto subscribed my name and affixed my
Seal as a public notary this 27th May 1812.
Archd Keightley 30 Public Notary Liverpool

N18 v 30 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘L[?] Teoxperorator’’ at Manchester

Among the letters sent to the prince regent from Lancashire during the spring
of 1812 is one bearing a 30 May 1812 postmark. The writer’s concerns are the eco-
nomic distresses caused by high food prices and the adverse effects on trade of
the Orders in Council. The signature is difficult to read. The ‘‘L’’ is certain, but is
followed by one or two unclear letters. The longer word could be ‘‘Teoxperoster’’
or ‘‘Teoxperorator.’’ I have been unable to determine the significance of the sig-
nature, except to note that ‘‘perorator’’ is one who makes highly formal speeches.
Like many threats to the regent, the letter was placed directly into the Home
Office Papers without enclosing correspondence.

H. O. 42/123.

v v v

Sir,
If you do not look into the affairs of the Country and rescind the orders in
council and make bread Cheap & dismiss your present ministers you may ex-
 Northwestern Documents v 191

pect the same fate as Percival we are a long suffering people--look at the af-
fairs at Nottingham Manchester - Chester - Liverpool the people are [in] a
starveing State you may try to stop them rioting—you may introduce foreign
soldiers--can they govern a starving people Take this hint - and reform
Your obedient servent
L〈illegible〉 Teoxperorator
I am not a Lunatic

N19 v 13 June 1812: Posted ‘‘Notice’’ signed ‘‘Guilty Death,’’ Chow Bent

In a 13 June 1812 letter to Major General Acland, preserved in H. O. 40/2/2,

Major Hankin writes, ‘‘Inclosed I have sent two Anonymous Papers the one stuck
up this morning at Chow Bent & the other brought from Wigan, they may or
may not be of consequence. I have thought it right to forward them for your in-
spection.’’ The papers to which Hankin refers are not included in the same box
with his letter. Rather, copies of two documents, grouped together, appear in
H. O. 40/2/4. The ‘‘Notice’’ here is marked as coming from Chow Bent. The
other paper grouped with the ‘‘Notice’’ is a ‘‘Constitution,’’ precisely similar to
that included in Hay’s letter from the Manchester Police Station; however, noth-
ing except the proximity to the ‘‘Notice’’ testifies to its being the other paper
referred to by Hankin.
The Home Office copy includes this footnote: ‘‘The above is the constables
name this was posted up the morning they were to suffer June 13th 1812 at Chow
bent.’’

H. O. 40/2/4.

v v v

No t i c e
Hereby given if these men be hanged Warburton &c may wake for fear for Death
will Soon apeear for Damnation Shall Seize upon your Bodies and Destruction
shall fall upon Effects and your Families Shall Com to Poverty and be Disdined
for ever, he that reads this let It Remain and Let the Country Judge there mis-
demainer
G u i lt y D e at h
192 v writings of the luddites

N20 v [Late] June 1812: Address posted in the neighborhood of Bolton

Perhaps the following address was the second anonymous paper accompany-
ing Hankin’s 13 June 1812 report to Acland, in H. O. 40/2/2. This address was
not grouped with the ‘‘Notice’’ or with Hankin’s letter. Unlike the ‘‘Notice,’’ this
address says nothing about the trials of Luddite prisoners but concentrates only
on food prices.
This address appears to be a copy.

H. O. 40/2/2.

v v v

‘‘No watch & ward or soldiers, &c and constables can put a stopt to us - but the
prices of bread and meal must fall or the regent - The general will watch the
shops’’
Wigan Saturday

N21 v Summer 1812: Letters to and from Lancaster Castle prisoners

This collection contains copies and extracts of a number of letters sent to

and written by Luddite prisoners who had been committed to Lancaster Castle.
Most of them were accused of administering unlawful oaths. Their letters were
opened, copied, and forwarded to the Home Office in August 1812.

H. O. 42/129.

v v v

To Simon Simons, Crown Side, Lancaster Castle, post paid.

Manchester June 29th, 1812.
Dear Friend,
I take the opportunity of writing a few Lines to you hoping they will find
you in good Health and Spirits as your Confinement will admit of. You desired
me to see my and your Friends, to send you a small sum of money to help you
out while you remained in that solitary Confinement. I have done all that lay
in my power for the support of you all. There is a subscription raised to carry
 Northwestern Documents v 193

on the Petitions to the Prince Regent and to the House of Commons and for
the relief and support of you and your Families and to make an able Defence
for you. There is another Committee formed to carry on the whole Business
whether Mr. N. will or not. I suppoe if he can find them and another Fleming
you will have Lancaster Castle filled with petitioners and your Friends. There
is four Counsel detaint for you all. Dear Friend, your Wife and Child is well
in good Health and gives their kindest Love for you. Your Wife has received
from the Spinners 8s/- the one week and 10s/- the other, and by you get this
Letter there will be 10s/- for you. There is two pounds sent for you and Wash-
ington, Thornaly and Woolling to be divided amongst you four whilst the
Committee is properly arranged. Dear Friend you asked me to see Thomas
Nevin, which I have done, and he said that he was very sorry for you and he
would see some of your Friends, but I have not seen him since. I shewed him
the Letter so I cannot give you an account of what he has done for you, but
by the time you writer to me again I shall be able to see him, and if he does
any thing for you I shall [–ard] the same to you without fail. so Dear Friend,
I have given you the particulars as they now stand, for I will give Flattery no
Countenance, shew Ignorance no Favor, afford Ambition no Encouragement,
and Pride Folly and Corruption with their hateful Train of Consequences will
at once disappear, which has preyed like the deadly Locust upon the Vitals of
the Country–has devoured the poor Man’s Means and swallowed up the hard
Earnings of honest Labor–which has blasted the Bud of Liberty and with its
deadly Poison would destroy the sacred Root. Give my best respects to all of
them and it is my earnest Wish that God may soon release out of the Hands
of bad men–so adieu John Marshall.–Please to direct for me near Mr Shaws
and Balers Factory, higher Ardwick. You are desired to remember William
Washington’s Wife to him.

30h June 1812. Extract of a Letter from Charles Smith, a prisoner, to James
Smith of Great Encoats Street Manchester. ‘‘I have an ardent desire for peace
without which the happiness, nay even the comforts of the poor Inhabitants of
these Kingdoms is irrecoverable, and I am firmly convinced with Thousands
of intelligent men that we have no opportunity of obtaining and perpetuating
that Blessing without a full radical complete reform in the House of Com-
mons, such a reform as shall make that House feel with and participate in the
Happiness or adversity of the people.’’
194 v writings of the luddites

N22 v 1810s: Song titled ‘‘The Hand-loom Weavers’ Lament,’’ Lancashire

The recurrent theme of ‘‘old prices’’ in ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’ and other
Luddite writings does not originate solely with the risings of 1811 but can be
traced back to at least two sources. It was inherited from previous textile workers
and developed just prior to Nottinghamshire Luddism among the weavers of
Lancashire, who earlier, in 1792, had taken violent action against the new Cart-
wright steam looms in Manchester. In the face of increasing mechanization,
wages (following prices) fell; in Bolton, average weekly earnings declined from
twenty-five shillings in 1800 to fourteen in 1811.31 Such circumstances gave rise
to the ‘‘Lament’’ and its wishing after ‘‘old prices.’’
The ‘‘Lament’’ provides an excellent example of the difficulty of dating popu-
lar verses. Palmer dates the ‘‘Lament’’ as nearly contemporary with ‘‘John o’
Grinfield,’’ although much of the decrease in wages came in the years of distress
following 1807, especially on the heels of the American Non-Intercourse Act and
the expansion and collapse in trade with South America, pointing to the possi-
bility that the song may have been composed initially in 1807 or after but during
the period of the wars against the French.32 If this date is accurate, then the song
might have evolved through the period of the Luddite risings, eventually being
emended, by the addition or revision of the sixth stanza, after the exile and death
of Napoleon. Such emendation and variation of songs was not at all unusual, as
the ‘‘John o’ Grinfield’’ series of songs bears witness. Such emendation would
also explain the contradictory evidence for dating within the song itself (‘‘When
the wars are at an end,’’ indicating a date before 1815, versus ‘‘Now Bonyparty’s
dead and gone,’’ suggesting a date of 1821 or after).
The song is unusual in that it has an identified author, John Grimshaw. Sung
to the tune of ‘‘A Hunting We Will Go,’’ it remained a favorite among the fac-
tory workers of the North through the years of Luddism, but more significant
is the fact that the themes and phrases from its early versions gave birth to new
songs, among them the ‘‘Triumph.’’

John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson’s Ballads and Songs of Lancashire: Ancient and Modern,
3rd ed. (London: Heywood, 1882), 193–95. A version that is missing the sixth stanza is in
the Broadsheets Collection, Derby Local Studies Library, box 15.
 Northwestern Documents v 195

v v v

You gentlemen and tradesmen, that ride about at will,

Look down on these poor people; it’s enough to make you crill;
Look down on these poor people, as you ride up and down,
I think there is a God above will bring your pride quite down.

Chorus
You tyrants of England, your race may soon be run,
You may be brought unto account for what you’ve sorely done.

You pull down our wages, shamefully to tell;

You go into the markets, and say you cannot sell;
And when that we do ask you when these bad times will mend,
You quickly give an answer, ‘‘When the wars are at an end.’’

When we look on our poor children, it grieves our hearts full sore,
Their clothing it is worn to rags, while we can get no more,
With little in their bellies, they to work must go,
Whilst yours do dress as manky as monkeys in a show.

You go to church on Sundays, I’m sure it’s nought but pride,

There can be no religion where humanity’s thrown aside;
If there be a place in heaven, as there is in the Exchange,
Our poor souls must not come near there; like lost sheep they must range.

With the choicest of strong dainties your tables overspread,

With good ale and strong brandy, to make your faces red;
You call’d a set of visitors—it is your whole delight—
And you lay your heads together to make our faces white.

You say that Bonyparty he’s been the spoil of all,

And that we have got reason to pray for his downfall;
Now Bonyparty’s dead and gone, and it is plainly shown
That we have bigger tyrants in Boneys of our own.

And now, my lads, for to conclude, it’s time to make an end;

Let’s see if we can form a plan that these bad times may mend;
Then give us our old prices, as we have had before,
And we can live in happiness, and rub off the old score.
196 v writings of the luddites

N23 v May 1816: Handbill poem titled ‘‘The Death of Calico Jack’’

One of the final documents from the Manchester region that was forwarded
to the Home Office by authorities who feared it to be part of a resurgence of
Luddism is a printed handbill in a comic vein, ‘‘The Death of Calico Jack; or the
Weavers Downfall.’’ The handbill does not use the name ‘‘Ludd’’ or convey any
direct threats to individuals, but its printing coincided with John Lloyd’s 13 May
1816 report to Undersecretary Beckett at the Home Office that ‘‘Ludditism’’ had
returned. It also fits into the shifting of artisan discontent in the region from an
active anger to a satirizing despair. From the internal evidence, it appears that
‘‘The Weavers Downfall’’ might have been composed by a minister (perhaps dis-
senting) or, less likely, by a schoolteacher (a profession not infrequently taken
up by some literate weavers who had been crippled or plagued by ill health).
The handbill was forwarded along with a weavers’ petition to Sidmouth at the
Home Office by Reverend Charles Prescott of Stockport as evidence of a resur-
gence of Luddism (21 May 1816, H. O. 42/150). Another copy, printed by ‘‘Roger-
son, Printer, Blackburn,’’ was sent to the Home Office by Colonel Fletcher of
Bolton (27 May 1816, H. O. 42/151). The first version is reproduced here.

H. O. 42/150.

v v v

The Death of Calico Jack; or the

WEAVERS DOWNFALL.

Bad markets . . . . Several tradesmen threatened with arrest, Oh! the effects of
high living. Curse upon lewd women, and fie upon the foreign Company, they
under sell us. For what reason? They have their goods made from good wool, we
have ours from waste. They have their yarn spun for little or nothing, so have we.
The merchants enjoy the juice of the grape, but we will be content with a little
malt liquour. Oh! St. David’s Day, be thou like the days of Job . . . . let no sun
shine upon it . . . . and let it be blotted out from the other days of the year, and
let every spinner and weaver of cotton tremble at the remembrance thereof, and
let love and friendship be united and dated from this day, and handed down to
the latest posterity. But find us the man whose foundation is not shaken at such
 Northwestern Documents v 197

unprecedented proceeding Quere, is this the way they mean to go to heaven? if

so, God enlighten their dark understandings.
Sunday. The prayer of the congregation are desired for the cotton trade and
let all the people say, Amen.
Tuesday. Dissected and examined by numbers of Anathamptists, and the Cot-
ton Trade found to be wilfully murdered by persons well known, viz. absolutely
choaked with waste.
Wednesday. The town in general disordered. The right honourable and most
ignoble Lord Strut, chief president of the company of starve beggars, seduced by
some means his fellow creatures to shut up their warehouses, workshops, &c. till
such times trade mends or work for whatever they please to give them. Agreed
nem con.
Thursday. The spinners and weavers agreed to weather out the storm, and
support themselves by other means.
Saturday. Wages paid, shops shut, & a general fast & mouring proclaimed.
Sunday. The spinners and weavers agreed, let us eat and drink to-day, for to-
morrow we die; and like the widow of Zarepah, die with a full stomach, flattering
themselves they will not be the worse received in Heaven.
Monday. The Military arrived, some say to quell a riot, sed fulsum est, take
nothing from nothing, and nothing remains: and every day since, the town has
been rigidly strict in abserving Mourning and fasting, (particularly the poor dis-
tressed Spinners and weavers)33 and will for a long time.
Go to, ye great men, mourn and weep, for the time cometh when you must
balance not only with your Merchants, but with one who will not take light gold,
bad bills, nor blank securities—’tis hard for a Camel to go through the eye of a
needle—when you die, which you certainly think you never must—you will not
be asked how much money you possessed here.
The Funeral will be solemnized; the Trade interred in Oliver Cromwell’s
Grave, near Lancashire Bridge, on Saturday by ten o’Clock
The Processiou 34 as follows: Evil to him who thinks on Evil, doodle doodle doo.

〈The next several lines appear in a smaller typescript and are divided into two
columns on the handbill, with the left-hand column appearing first.〉

To be extended full length upon the bottom of a Coach or Chariot of some

exalted Weaver or Barber, covered with a plaid Paul, to be 8 bearers.
198 v writings of the luddites

Major General Short Tongue

The Right Honorable Admiral Shifter,
Colonel Black Sam, and Captain Stewmug,
The Honorable Colonel Plowshare,
Captain Snuff,
And Brigadiers Shuffle and Cut, Esqrs.

To be drawn by thirty broken Tradesmen, in

〈The right-hand column begins.〉

Second Mourning,

The distressed Spinners with scarfs and cock-

ados of Waste Cotton, two and two.
Badgers, Butchers, Shopkeepers, Hucksters, and
Ale-sellers, in full mourning, two and two.

Carding Engine, Jenny makers, and Loom makers, Spinners and Weavers, Wives
and Children, two and two in ragged be-gowns, and old Shoes on. The Perpe-
trators of this Murder to be tarr’d and feathered.

〈In the same size of type as the text appearing in the columns, the following text
appears without columns.〉

A Funeral Sermon will be preached at the Tabernacle, from Isaiah xxiv. 10. 11.
‘‘The City of Confusion is broke down, Every House is shut up, that no Man
come in. There is a cry for Wine in the Streets, All joy is darkened, and the mirth
of the land is gone.’’ Aspinall. tvn
 Yorkshire documents

o r k s h i r e l u d d i s m evidently began with the 19 January 1812 firing

Y of a large Oatlands cloth-finishing mill owned by Oates, Woods, and Smith-
son. In their letter to the Home Office, the owners write that the fire was deliber-
ately set to destroy finishing machines—gig mills and shearing frames—that they
had only recently installed.1 Through the first half of 1812, croppers—the shear-
men whose job was to dress woolen cloth by manually shearing its nap, thereby
making a smoother article—continued to attack shops and large mills around
Leeds and Huddersfield where owners were using machinery to reduce wages
and bring under one roof the various processes involved in the manufacture of
woolen cloth.
The ludding croppers of Yorkshire’s West Riding did not produce as many
proclamations, open letters, or documents employing a legal style of discourse
as did the Midlands framework knitters. They did not write as many documents
that professed an affiliation with the parliamentary reform movement, indicated
an awareness of a larger economic reality, or aimed at constituting a collectivity
where one did not exist previously, as did many writers from Manchester and
its environs. Rather, we find that the Yorkshire Luddites wrote many threaten-
ing letters, some of them Jacobinical in tone, and that the writers of those let-
ters quickly recognized the complicity between manufacturers and local officials.
Their writing shifted from threats against the owners of shearing frames and gig
mills to threats against the authorities who counteracted what the Luddites be-
lieved to be a righteous cause. Besides their being more overtly, though locally,
political, the Yorkshire letters are also more personally violent than the Midlands
200 v writings of the luddites

and Manchester varieties. Even when the language turns toward the political, it
frequently retains a language of vengeance and moral indignation.
Most of the West Riding Luddite documents are found in the Home Office
Papers and the Papers of Sir Joseph Radcliffe, the Huddersfield magistrate most
active in quelling Luddism in that region. Several documents, particularly songs,
can be found in works by local historians and in works of historical fiction writ-
ten during the last half of the 1800s. Those works draw upon local lore and oral
reports of persons alive during the risings. Their authenticity has been called
into question by twentieth-century scholars, but most of the songs found in such
works seem to be consistent in style and content with others collected during the
period of Luddism.

Y1 v Pre-1812: Song titled ‘‘Horsfall’s Mill,’’ Huddersfield vicinity

Frank Peel’s works of oral and local history for the region around Hudders-
field preserve a few songs that were sung or composed during the Luddite ma-
chine breaking in that region. One of those songs celebrates the destruction by
fire of the dressing machines (both shearing frames and gig mills) at William
Horsfall’s Ottiwells Mill in 1803. Horsfall and his father were among the most
recalcitrant of mill owners in the vicinity of Huddersfield and were aggressive
in their introduction of dressing machines to the region’s woolen manufacture.2
Horsfall is perhaps most famous in his connection to one of the Huddersfield
Luddites, George Mellor. In one confrontation prior to the attack on Rawfolds
Mill, Horsfall struck Mellor across the face with a riding whip as Mellor com-
forted a poor woman whose infant had starved. Weeks later, Horsfall was shot
to death on Marsden Road after leaving the Warren House Inn. Mellor and two
Luddites were found guilty and hanged for the crime.3
‘‘Horsfall’s Mill’’ might have been composed earlier, in 1803, during the York-
shire croppers’ resistance to the use of shearing frames and gig mills in the first
years of the nineteenth century; nevertheless, it was sung during the Luddite ris-
ings and perhaps serves as the basis for a later, nearly identical Luddite song,
‘‘Forster’s Mill.’’ Lesley Kipling, the person probably most familiar with Ludd-
ite texts related to the region of Huddersfield, speculates that ‘‘Horsfall’s Mill’’
might have been composed sometime after the ‘‘Forster’s Mill’’ song.4
 Yorkshire Documents v 201

Frank Peel, Spen Valley: Past and Present (Heckmondwike: Senior and Company, 1893) 258–
59. It has been reproduced in Roy Palmer, The Sound of History: Songs and Social Comment
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 5.5

v v v

Come all you croppers, stout and bold,

Let your faith grow stronger still,
These cropping lads in the County of York,
Broke the shears at Horsfall’s Mill.
The broke the shears and the windows too,
Set fire to the tazzling mill;
They formed themselves all in a line,
Like soldiers at the drill.

The wind it blew, and the sparks they flew,

And awoke the town full soon.
People got up in the middle of the night,
And they ran by the light of the moon;
When these lads around the mill did stand,
And they all did vow and swear,
Neither blanket nor can, nor any such thing,
Should be of service there.

Y2 v February 1812: Song titled ‘‘The Cropper’s Song,’’ Huddersfield

Whereas Nottinghamshire Luddism comprised primarily workers in the hose

and lace trades, West Riding machine breaking was organized around the crop-
pers, the highly skilled artisans who finished woolen cloth using handheld shears,
four feet in length and weighing from forty to fifty pounds, to cut the nap from
the cloth. The croppers were held in high regard, not only among themselves,
but also by the working families in the textile communities. The following song
in praise of the croppers is attributed by Frank Peel to John Walker, who sang it
at a meeting of Huddersfield and Liversedge croppers at the Shears Inn, High-
town, in February 1812, not long before they ventured forth to Hartshead Moor,
where they destroyed shearing frames being transported by wagon to William
Cartwright’s factory, Rawfolds Mill.6
202 v writings of the luddites

The song is remarkably apolitical (that is, regarding national politics) for West
Riding Luddism. Its apolitical character reflects the primarily local concern of
the various movements in their early phases, a cross-cultural phenomenon that
has been analyzed by E. J. Hobsbawm in Primitive Rebels as ‘‘social banditry’’ or
‘‘Robin-Hoodism.’’ 7

Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, 3rd ed. (Brighouse: J. Hartler, 1895), 47–48, and
Peel, Spen Valley: Past and Present 242. The song has also been reproduced by Roy Palmer,
with his typical small variations in punctuation as well as some concatenation of lines
which Peel left apart, in The Sound of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988),
105–6.8

v v v

‘‘The Cropper’s Song’’

Come, cropper lads of high renown,

Who love to drink good ale that’s brown,
And strike each haughty tyrant down,
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke,
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!

What though the specials 9 still advance,

And soldiers nightly round us prance;
The cropper lads still lead the dance,
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!

And night by 10 night when all is still

And the moon is hid behind the hill,
We forward march to do our will
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
 Yorkshire Documents v 203

Oh, the cropper lads for me,

The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!

Great Enoch still shall lead the van.

Stop him who dare! stop him who can!
Press forward every gallant man
With hatchet, pike, and gun!
Oh, the cropper lads for me,
The gallant lads for me,
Who with lusty stroke
The shear frames broke,
The cropper lads for me!

Y3 v [February or March] Early 1812: Song titled ‘‘T’ Three Cropper Lads
o’ Honley’’

On 16 October 1880 a serialized story written exclusively for The Huddersfield

Weekly News began its run. The story, Daisy Baines, The Luddite’s Daughter (some-
times titled Daisy Baines, A Sad Story of Sad Times), contains accounts of most
of the major Luddite events in the West Riding. Like works by Peel and Sykes,
Daisy Baines draws a great deal upon local history and the reported memories of
person who lived during the time.
The following song, ‘‘T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley,’’ appears in the
story. The author of Daisy Baines claims that William Hall and a number of
other croppers sang the song in a public house at Honley shortly after the mur-
der of William Horsfall: ‘‘‘Horsman’s shot! Three cheers for t’ croppers; three
cheers for t’ Luds. I’ll sing t’ Croppers’ National Anthem. All join t’ chorus.’
Hall then sang the following song to a rollicking tune, the men joining in the
rowdy chorus. . . .’’ 11 Lesley Kipling notes that the song ‘‘refers to the old legend
that croppers, having died and gone to Hell, were so unruly that the Devil sent
them back.’’ 12 ‘‘Gairner,’’ in the first line, is the West Riding dialect pronuncia-
tion of ‘‘Garner.’’ There was a John Garner who had a cropping shop in Honley,
204 v writings of the luddites

which was attacked by Luddites on 11 March 1812.13 For these reasons, the song
is included in this collection.

Daisy Baines, serialized in Huddersfield Weekly News, 22 January 1881.

v v v

T’ Three Cropper Lads o’ Honley.

T’ three Honley lads o’ Gairner shop—

Sim, Rube, an’ Squentin Jimmy,
Ne’er cared a slart for coffee slop
If they could ha’ some Timmy;
They cropp’d, an’ swet, an’ swigg’d ther ale,
Wi’ gullets like a Greenland whale,
An’ seldom did owt else but sail
I’ Timmy—boout o’ t’ Tuesdays.

Hurrai! my lads fill up to t’ brim!

An’ drink whol booath yer leets ur dim
To Squentin Jimmy, Rube an’ Sim,
T’ three cropper lads o’ Honley.

One day theas cooanies wagg’d to t’ Thong,

As jolly as three hatters,
To rant an’ rooar i’ ale an’ song,
An’ other scram’lin’ matters;
But as they paddled wom at neet
Daan t’ Jagger Loin, they lost ther feet,
An rooagish Rube an’ Sim did leet
At top o’ Squentin Jimmy.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

They snarted, grooan’d, then cuddled up

Lawke suckin’ pigs together,
An’ wished ’at they’d a drop to sup
Fro’ th’ Upperthong or t’ Nether.
An’ sooin ther breeathin laad an’ deep,
Wi’ naah an’ then a grunt i’ th’ heap,
Denooated they wor gooin to sleep,
 Yorkshire Documents v 205

Sim, Rube, and Squentin Jimmy.

Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

An’ whol they snooz’d, fro’ th’ Owdfild Rigg,

Just like a rocket rooarin,
Owd Nick aleetin’, donced a jig
Araand t’ three doydies snooarin’,
An’ sayin’, ‘I have ye naah,’ he took
His watch-keigh fro’ his pocket-book,
An’ blew sich blasts at in a snook
Two div’ls coom like leetnin’.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

Th’ two flew away wi’ Rube an’ Sim,

An’ Satan tackled Jimmy,
As he wor th’ heaviest lump o’ limb,
An’ allus drank t’ mooast Timmy.
An’ in a twink theas chums i’ hell
Wor wakken’d wi’ a stawflin’ smell;
An’ wheer they wor they couldn’t tell
’Mang lost o’ rostin’ taties.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

T’ three skenn’d araand, all blazin’ shawn’d,

Yet ivv’ry think look’d glaamy,
An’ they wor twitched an’ short o’ waund,
Tho’ th’ haas wor flaysum raamy.
‘A quairt o’ ale!’ then Rube did blate,
Div’ls, grinnin, crush’d ther rost potate,
But nivver itched a peg to wait
O’ Sim, an’ Rube, an’ Jimmy.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

Ther dander rooas, ther blooid did boil,

n’ mad wi’ burnin’ throttles,
They baanced abaat an’ pois’d raand th’ hoil
Chairs, stooils, an’ pots, an’ bottles;
Whol t’ blackest fiend i’ hell turned whawte,
206 v writings of the luddites

An’ promis’d ’ em if they’d be quawte,

He’d try to get—at leeast he’d wrawte—
To Lookud for sum Timmy.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

They’d nother leeav, nor do na wark,

At fawrin’, shooilin’, wheelin’,
They sed, as long as they’d a spark
’At couldn’t get sum keelin’.
They play’d owd Harry wi’ Owd Nick,
An’ made his caancillors as sick,
’At they wor wanted off quick, slick,
To Heaven, or else to Honley.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

At last th’ Owd Lad his Cabinet

Call’d up, for its opinion
Ha’s best an’ sooinest he could get
T’ three aat o’ his dominion.
An’, what seem’d lawkliest not to fail,
I wor agreed to cooin a tale
At just th’ aatsawde a looad o’ ale
Wor stannin’ thear for haasin’.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

T’ wor done, an’ bang to t’ doorhoil rush’d,

Sim, Rube, an’ Squentin Jimmy;
An’ one another push’d an’ crush’d
To get t’ first seet o’ Timmy.
But sooin as they’d smell’d th’ air they fell
Daan fast asleep, an’ wi’ a yell
T’ div’ls switched ’em back ageean fro’ hell
To t’ Jagger Loin i’ Honley.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

T’ three thowt they’d had abaat a week

Teetooa i’ limbo smartin’;
 Yorkshire Documents v 207

But when they’d wakken’d, t’ factory reek

T’ same morn wor nobbut startin’.
Yet all sware ooaths befoore the’d goon
To t’ pleck ageean to suffer soon,
They’d see it damn’d fro’ top to toon—
An’ t’ div’ls didn’t want ’ em.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

Naah lads, as long as yo can sing,

An’ tak yer share o’ Timmy,
Let t’ Cooach an’ th’ Horses’ kitchen ring
O’ Sim, an’ Rube, an’ Jimmy;
For nivver did three lads befoore
Soon best Owd Nick o’ his own flooar’
An’ hadn’t he ’ lawd ’ em sat o’ t’ doore,
They’d sooin ha’ smash’d his kingdom.
Chorus—Hurrai! &c.

Y4 v [March] 1812: Address ‘‘To all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at
Large,’’ Leeds

The papers of the Leeds woolen manufacturer Benjamin Gott, one of the
largest of the clothiers and factory owners in the Yorkshire woolen industry, con-
tain two letters that reinforce a reader’s sense of the consciously political charac-
ter of West Riding Luddite writing after several weeks of attacks on factories and
shearing frames. By the spring of 1812, the West Riding Luddites had compre-
hended the complicity between the government and the factory industrialists.
Although the language violently reflected the comprehension of national com-
plicity, the circumstances of address and delivery remained local, even in this call
for mobilization, which addresses the textile workers of the region. Surprising
as it may seem, given the pride the croppers had for their trade and their spe-
cial place in the process of woolen manufacture, the croppers welcomed into the
Luddite ranks woolen weavers and members of other trades in the region. For
example, John Booth, the friend of the executed Huddersfield cropper George
Mellor, was a saddler’s apprentice in the Huddersfield region.
208 v writings of the luddites

Both letters appear in the same handwriting on a single sheet, apparently

Gott’s transcriptions. It is unclear whether the two letters came into Gott’s hands
at the same time. The dates suggest that they may have, although each letter
greets a different audience. The date ‘‘Before 9 March’’ apparently is Gott’s addi-
tion.

Leeds University Manuscripts 193, Gott Papers, vol. 3, 106 (first letter). The two letters
are also copied, with several emendations, in W. B. Crump, Leeds Woollen Industry (Leeds:
Thoresby Society, 1931), 229, where they are labeled 75a and 75b, referring to an older
cataloging system for the Gott Papers.

v v v

Before 9 March.
To all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at Large
Generous Countrymen.
You are requested to come forward with Arms and help the Redressers to
redress their Wrongs and shake off the hateful Yoke of a Silly Old Man, and
his Son more silly and their Rogueish Ministers, all Nobles and Tyrants must
be brought down. Come let us follow the Noble Example of the brave Citi-
zens of Paris who in the Sight of 30,000 Tyrant Redcoats brought A Tyrant to
the Ground. by so doing you will be best aiming at your own Interest. Above
40,000 Heroes are ready to break out, to crush the old Goverment 14 & estab-
lish a new one.
Apply to General Ludd Commander
of the Army of Redressers.

Y5 v 9 or 10 March 1812: Letter from ‘‘Ned Ludd Clerk’’ addressed ‘‘To Mr

Smith Shearing Frame Holder at Hill End Yorkshire,’’ Hill End near Leeds

The second Luddite letter in the Gott Papers is addressed to a ‘‘Mr. Smith.’’ To
my knowledge, no one has precisely identified ‘‘Mr. Smith.’’ Only two miles west
of Leeds is a locale called Hill End, very near Gotts Park, but no other documents
that I have found place a clothier named Smith in that area. Darvall identifies him
as a resident of Huddersfield.15 Thomis mentions one ‘‘Mr. Smith, of Snowgate-
head, near Holmfirth’’—more than twelve miles from Gott’s location at Leeds
and nearly six miles from Huddersfield—who ‘‘had all his dressing-frames and
 Yorkshire Documents v 209

shears broken’’ on 5 April 1812.16 The timing of the letter, only a month before
the attack near Holmfirth, suggests that Gott’s Mr. Smith and Thomis’s might
be the same.
Like many Yorkshire documents, the letter is militantly political, almost Jaco-
bin (but for some millenarian expressions and the nationalistic observations
about the ‘‘Hanover Tyrants’’). It is also remarkable for its exceedingly demo-
cratic tenor, for the democratic process it describes, and for the variety of dis-
course that it reveals to exist even in one region. In contrast, the General Ludd
of the 11 May 1812 letter to ‘‘Mr. Edward Ludd’’ (Radcliffe Papers 126/46) appears
at times to be much more authoritarian than the General portrayed in this letter,
who writes at the request of his men rather than authorizing a ‘‘Peter Plush, Sec-
retary’’ to write for him. The letter to Mr. Smith would imply that Ludd’s men
identify an injustice and represent it to the General, who conveys the grievance
to the offending Mr. Smith and, absent Smith’s compliance, delegates responsi-
bility for redress to a lieutenant. The ‘‘Commander of the Army of Redressers’’
is also aware of proportionality as a rhetorical tactic, as the choice of the word
‘‘Redressers’’ implies. The Luddites will respond with degrees of severity that are
tied directly to Smith’s actions. From a rhetorical standpoint, the letter is also
interesting for its implications to framing Luddism (as opposed to other out-
breaks of machine breaking) as a discursive phenomenon: General Ludd is an
author who gives utterance to the complaints of a collective body.

Leeds University Manuscripts 193, Gott Papers, vol. 3, 106. It, too, can be found with
several emendations in Crump, Leeds Woollen Industry 220–30 (labeled 75b), and in H. O.
40/1/1.

v v v
r
To M Smith Shearing Frame Holder at Hill End Yorkshire.
Sir
Information has just been given in that you are a holder of those detestable
Shearing Frames, and I was desired by my Men to write to you and give you
fair Warning to pull them down, and for that purpose I desire you will now
understand I am now writing to you. you will take Notice that if they are not
taken down by the end of next Week, I will detach one of my Lieutenants with
at least 300 Men to destroy them and furthermore take Notice that if you give
us the Trouble of coming so far we will increase your misfortune by burning
your Buildings down to Ashes and if you have Impudence to fire upon any
210 v writings of the luddites

of my Men, they have orders to murder you, & burn all your Housing, you
will have the Goodness to your Neighbours to inform them that the same fate
awaits them if their Frames are not speedily taken down as I understand their
are several in your Neighbourhood, Frame holders. And as the Views and In-
tentions of me and my Men have been much misrepresented 17 I will take this
opportunity of stating them, which I desire you will let all your Brethren in
Sin know of. I would have the Merchants, Master Dressers, the Goverment 18
& the public to know that the Grievances of such a Number of Men are not
to be made sport of for by the last Returns there were 2782 Sworn Heroes
bound in a Bond of Necessity either to redress their Grievances or gloriously
perish in the Attempt in the Army of Huddersfield alone, nearly double sworn
Men in Leeds.
By the latest Letters from our Correspondents we learn that the Manu-
facturers in the following Places are going to rise and join us in redressing
their Wrongs Viz. Machester, Wakefield Halifax, Bradford, Sheffield, Old-
ham, Rochdale and all the Cotton Country where the brave Mr Hanson 19 will
lead them on to Victory. the Weavers in Glasgow and many parts of Scot-
land will join us the Papists in Ireland are rising to a so that they are likely
to find the Soldiers something else to do than Idle in Huddersfield and then
Woe be to the places now guarded by them for we have come to the easier
Way of burning them to Ashes which will most assuredly be their Fate either
sooner or later. The immediate Cause of us beginning when we did was that
Rascally letter of the Prince Regents to Lords Grey & Grenville, which left
us no hopes of any Change for the better, by his falling in with that Damn’d
set of Rogues, Percival & Co to whom we attribute all the Miseries of our
Country. But we hope for assistance from the French Emperor in shaking off
the Yoke of the Rottenest, Wickedest and most Tyranious Government that
ever existed; then down come the Hanover Tyrants, and all our Tyrants from
the greatest to the smallest. and we will be governed by a just Republic, and
may the Almighty hasten those happy Times is the Wish and Prayer of Mil-
lions in this Land, but we won’t only pray but we will fight, the Redcoats shall
know that when the proper time comes We will never lay down our Arms.
The House of Commons passes an Act to put down all Machinery hurtful to
Commonality,20 and repeal that to hang Frame Breakers. But We. We petition
no more that won’t do fighting must.
 Yorkshire Documents v 211

Signed by the General of the Army of

Redressers
Ned Ludd Clerk
Redressers for ever Amen,
You may make this Public
March 9th or 10th

Y6 v [Before 15] March 1812: Letter to Frank Vickerman, Taylor Hill

near Huddersfield

The first large-scale Luddite operation in the West Riding was the 15 March
1812 attack on the guarded cloth-finishing shop of Frank Vickerman, a Taylor
Hill wool manufacturer. The raid, which was an especially daring and violent af-
fair, destroyed several of Vickerman’s shearing frames. The raid was preceded by
a threatening letter, thrown into Vickerman’s premises a couple of nights earlier.
Vickerman had been a member of the Committee of Merchants and Manufactur-
ers, established 23 February 1812 at Huddersfield to organize troops and coordi-
nate the activities of the Watch and Ward to suppress Luddite activities. After
assembling in Pricking Wood, the Luddites hit Vickerman’s shop before nine
o’clock in the evening, destroying ten frames, thirty shears, woven wool cloth, a
clock, and every window pane in the shop building.21

H. O. 42/121. The threatening letter is enclosed with the letter from magistrate Joseph
Radcliffe to the Home Office, 17 March 1812, reporting some of the details of the raid.

v v v

We give you Notice when the Shers is all Broken the Spinners shall be the next
if they be not taken down vick man tayler hill he has had is Garde but we will
pull all down som Night and kill him that Nave and Roag.22

Y7 v 20 March 1812: Letter from ‘‘Soliciter to General Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Ratcliffe’’

at ‘‘Millsbridge’’

One of the officials responsible for quelling the disturbances around Hudders-
field, Milnsbridge magistrate Joseph Radcliffe, compiled a large collection of let-
212 v writings of the luddites

ters pertaining to West Riding Luddism. The letters threatening Radcliffe him-
self are among the most interesting and numerous. The following letter seems
to have been the first Luddite threat received by Radcliffe; no threatening letters
bearing an earlier date appear in his collection. It is one of the most legible of
the Luddite texts and contains a rare Luddite footnote. The readable script en-
hances the tone of formality otherwise evident in the civil opening and closing,
as well as in the legalistic discourse. Not reproduced in the transcription here is
the flourish with which the writer underlines ‘‘March-20th 1812’’ and ‘‘Soliciter
to General Ludd.’’ The legal style of the letter is not typical of most Huddersfield
documents. It is interesting that this Yorkshire letter, atypical for its legalisms,
incorporates a rhetorical appeal to Nottingham, where Luddite texts abounded
in legalisms. Nottingham holds a certain fascination for the Luddite writers in
the Huddersfield area.23 It frequently is the basis of a rhetorical appeal, vaguely
temporal and numerical in its nature, harkening back to a recent past with a tra-
ditional grounding and speaking with a single, unified voice against the use of
particular machines. Although the handwriting appears to be the same on both
sides of the letter, the style changes. The second side is rougher, less literate,
with some misspellings—‘‘coutinance’’ and ‘‘Genearal.’’ The second side seems
to have been added in haste; the letters are not so finely drawn as on the first side
and the lines are more cramped.

Radcliffe Papers 126/27, West Yorkshire Archives Service, Leeds. Facsimiles of each side
of the letter follow on pages 214 and 215.

v v v

〈Side 1〉
For Mr Ratcliffe Esq
Millsbridge 24
Genl Ludd’s Solicitor March 20 1812

Jos Ratcliffe
Sir
Take notice that a Declaration was this Day filed against you in Ludds
Court at Nottingham, and unless you remain * neutral judgment will immedi-
ately be signd against you for Default, I shall thence summon a Jury for an
Inquiry of Damages take out Execution against both your Body and House,
 Yorkshire Documents v 213

and then you may Expect General Ludd, and his well organised Army to Levy
it with all Destruction possible
And I am Sir your-
Nottingham
March-20th 1812 Soliciter to General Ludd

* PS you have Sir rather taken an active part against the General but you are

quiet and may remain so if you chuse (and your Brother Justices also) for him,
but if you Either convict a [one], or coutinance the other Side as you have
Done (or any of you), you may Expect your House in Flames and, your-self
in Ashes in a few Days from your next move, for our Court is not Governd
by Terms 25 But Equity

〈Side 2〉

NB, In shewing the General the other Side for Inspection He orders me to
inform you the Cloth Dressers in the Huddersfield District as spent Seven
Thousand Pounds in petition Government to put Laws in force to stop
the Shearing Frames and Gig Mills to no purpose so they are trying this
method now, and he is informd how you are affraid it will be carried on to
another purpose but you need not be apprehensive of that, for as soon as
y e Obnoxious machienery is Stopd or Distroy d the Genearal and his Brave
Army will be Disbandd, and Return to their Employment, like other Liege
Subjects

Y8 v 8 April 1812: Letter from Leeds signed ‘‘I ham for lud and the poor’’ to
‘‘Mr Joseph Ratcliff, Milnsbridg’’

Previous commentators, relying upon a cataloger’s erroneous description,

have assumed that this letter was sent by ‘‘the poor,’’ congratulating Joseph Rad-
cliffe on his efforts to suppress the Luddites; however, reading the letter as con-
gratulatory would be a mistake, caused by misreading the nearly illegible second
half of the letter, wherein a clear threat is couched in the ironic language of con-
gratulation.
214 v writings of the luddites

Letter of 20 March 1812 from ‘‘Soliciter to General Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Ratcliffe’’ at

‘‘Millsbridge,’’ Radcliffe Papers 126/27, side 1

The fact that the letter is full of misspellings, grammatical errors, omissions,
and insertions explains some of the confusion. Indeed, as is the case with many
Luddite texts, the handwriting is bad but is made worse by bleeding through from
the other side of a transcription of a Luddite oath, in a hand belonging neither
to the writer of the note nor to Radcliffe.
 Yorkshire Documents v 215

Letter of 20 March 1812 from ‘‘Soliciter to General Ludd’’ to ‘‘Mr Ratcliffe’’ at

‘‘Millsbridge,’’ Radcliffe Papers 126/27, side 2

The date the note was received is added at the bottom in Radcliffe’s own hand
—12 April 1812.

Radcliffe Papers 126/1.

v v v
216 v writings of the luddites

Mr Joseph Ratcliff
Esquier Milns bridg
Near Hudersfield

Leeds 8 April
Sir,
I ham verrey Happey to Hear of your acktivety in taking of those people
Caulled luds for they Have been verrey troubbles Some of late you are verrey
acktive just ass as theare are maney
maney more
more sutch
sutchlike
likeSkindevils
Skundrils at present mak-
ing mutch to do about nothing
nothing but
but striving
striving to take poor people labor from
them i think
think the
the medalon soon
medson to be to be given
given to sutch
to sutch villons
villons as isyou
as you is a ledon
a ledon ball
ball with
with powder
powder that that will dist
will not not jest
dist soner
jest soner and beter
and beter
I ham for lud and
the poor.

Y9 v [Early] April 1812: Letter from ‘‘Mr Love Good’’ to Joseph Radcliffe at
Milnsbridge near Huddersfield

Two letters from the early spring of 1812 ‘‘indict’’ Thomas Atkinson, a mill
owner and brother-in-law of the Rawfolds mill owner, William Cartwright. The
first letter, which opens with the words ‘‘This comes from a friend’’ and which
is signed ‘‘Mr. Love Good,’’ is an example of the Luddite writers’ use of rhe-
torical duplicity. Aside from satisfying a writer’s possible desire for rhetorical
variety, the purposes for such a tactic are unclear. Perhaps by conveying a threat
indirectly, through ‘‘report,’’ the author’s actions might not be classified among
those prohibited under the eighteenth-century Black Act statutes and their judi-
cial interpretations that made sending anonymous threats a capital felony. In
any event, the tactic here is transparent, and the ‘‘friend’s’’ warning conveys few
particulars and no useful information. Another purpose might be to convey to
Radcliffe an understanding of some reasonableness and discrimination on the
part of the Luddites—that is, to demonstrate that their rage is selective rather
than indiscriminate. Such a purpose would be important given the bad press
that the Luddites had been receiving in the Leeds Mercury, which called them
‘‘depredators’’ and portrayed them as indiscriminate destroyers of shops and pri-
vate property.
 Yorkshire Documents v 217

Because the letter does not mention the attack on Rawfolds Mill, it is likely
to have been composed before the raid.

Radcliffe Papers 126/28.

v v v

Mr
Radcliffe Esq
Mills Bridge
near Huddersfield

Mr Radcliffe Dear Sir

This comes from a friend
I found my Self to be and got into the Seckrets of the Ludites and knowing
the dredfull plots that is going forwards I Send this to you there is dredfull
Praprations goen forwards for Great Destruction
It is reported you back Thos Atkinson it was ordered a wile a go for your
place and Bradley Mill to be burnt one Night But I pled it of with great to do
When that Time comes foot nor Horses will be of any use there will be
a Great Destruction You must not compell Watching & Warding You must
side with the Luds if you Live
I should a spook 26 personley to you But durst Not
If this was known it is deth to me
From Mr Love Good
April 1812

Y10 v [After 9] April 1812: Song titled ‘‘Forster’s Mill,’’ Huddersfield vicinity

Portions of two other Yorkshire songs have also been preserved by Peel, the
products of his interviews with persons who recalled the Luddite risings. Peel’s
transcription of an oral recollection of the song may explain his rendering the
name as ‘‘Forster’s mill’’ rather than ‘‘Foster’s.’’ The event at ‘‘Forster’s mill’’
refers to the 9 April 1812 attack on Joseph Foster’s house and mill at Horbury,
seven miles from Huddersfield.27 Peel notes that the verse was ‘‘composed after
the destruction of the mill between Horbury and Ossett,’’ an attack that drew
hundreds of Luddites from several West Riding communities.
218 v writings of the luddites

With the exception of song narratives of dejection, including ‘‘Hunting a

Loaf,’’ the song is the closest approach to narrative in Luddite balladry. No date
is given, but the song could have been composed immediately following the raid,
because the form of the ‘‘Horsfall’s Mill’’ song, which it clearly imitates, was
already available. The narrative qualities might be understood as the croppers’
attempts to write for themselves a narrative in which their agency would lead to
a desirable end.28
Peel’s version of the song is untitled. I have given the title as ‘‘Forster’s Mill’’
rather than ‘‘Foster’s Mill’’ because it might be the case that Peel’s spelling (which
he retained through three editions of his book) preserves more accurately the
sounds or perhaps even the spelling of Foster’s name among the people of the
region at the time.

Peel, The Risings of the Luddites 120.29

v v v

Come all ye croppers stout and bold,

Let your faith grow stronger still,
Oh, the cropper lads in the county of York
Broke the shears at Forster’s mill.
The wind it blew,
The sparks they flew,
Which alarmed the town full soon
And out of bed poor people did creep
And ran by the light of the moon;
Around and around they all did stand,
And solemnly did swear,
Neither bucket, nor kit nor any such thing
Should be of assistance there.

Y11 v [Before 18] April 1812: Proclamation to ‘‘Croppers’’

Yorkshire’s West Riding produced few posted proclamations. The dearth of

proclamations coincides with the highly personal nature of the conflict between
the croppers and the owners of the shearing frames. Nevertheless, one such proc-
 Yorkshire Documents v 219

lamation appears in the Home Office Papers, enclosed with a letter from General
Grey to the Home Office, dated 18 April 1812. Grey remarks that he sends the
proclamation in consequence of the 12 April 1812 attack on Rawfolds Mill. It is
printed large in letters consisting of double lines. The slogan, ‘‘Now or Never,’’
appears also in a broadside posted at Manchester in early April 1812 (H. O. 40/1/1,
40/1/5, reproduced above). The Manchester placard is connected to a larger dis-
affection, one that encompasses both Luddism and political reform and involves
larger organized demonstrations, than is usually thought to be characteristic of
West Riding Luddism in early 1812.

H. O. 42/122.

v v v

Croppers
To harms
Inocent Blood
Crys For
Vengance
Now or Never

Y12 v 19 April 1812: Two letters from ‘‘John and Martin Middleton’’ at
Houghton and ‘‘G. D.’’

Letters from people who apparently were not engaged in machine wrecking
but who nevertheless sympathized with the Luddites illustrate popular attitudes
toward the Yorkshire Luddites prior to the murder of William Horsfall. Rad-
cliffe kept two such letters intercepted from the mail. Radcliffe describes the first
letter as a ‘‘copy of a letter put in the Post Office at Dobcross.’’ The second let-
ter, from ‘‘G D,’’ describes a clash between the Luddites and the Army, but the
events described seem to be those associated with the failed Luddite attack on
William Cartwright’s Rawfolds Mill, 11 April 1812, in the defense of which sol-
diers participated.30 The ‘‘son of a Church parons’’ would be John Booth, the
saddlemaker’s apprentice who was shot in the leg during the attack and died later.
Immediately after recounting the Rawfolds attack and asking for more particu-
lars, ‘‘G. D.’’ extends a curious offer, perhaps to any persons involved in attacks
220 v writings of the luddites

who would need to leave the region to escape detection: ‘‘and hif there is any
person that ar obliged to come away I have procured a seat of work for them.’’

Radcliffe Papers 126/32.

v v v

Houghton April 19th 1812

Dear Brothers & Sisters
We take the oportunity of answering your letter which you sent by your
friend & we are glad to hear that you are all well which these lines have us
all at present. Bless God for it. We are glad to hear that you have gained the
Victory which your friend related to us which He did the last night & today
which we was very glad to listen to him & receivd him as a friend from you
which we believe He is. & we have enjoyed ourselves over a pot or two of Beer.
& he read Mr Luds Song. We shall relate no particulars for we sopose you
have in of 31 papers & we can give you no satisfactory account And we will
leave you to judge about it
Yr father & mother gives thier Cind love to you all & we shall all be very
glad to see you at the time you have proposed which is all at present from your
loving Brothers
John and Martin Middleton

Frien I called at Tideswell as you ordered me for to call on your brother but
he was not there which I was determined to find him which I have found your
father & mother & all together but it was with much Ado I went to Litton &
slep all night & was recieved as a friend with Bingham & Bramwell there as an
engagement been betwixt the Luds & the Army which the Luds was defeated
which was oing to Halifax Luds not coming up as they was apointed There was
16 men stormed the plaise which they had two Cilled there wounded man was
carried of and none of them as been taken since which the two men was buried
on Thursday last at Hudersfield which the Corps was put in a Dark room with
six mold candles which the friends of the Luds followed them every man in
morning with a with aprom edged with Black which the minister refused to
Burie them but the Luds insisted on them being Buried in the Church which
are to have a grand stone he lived fore and twenty hours after he was taken
he was the son of a Church parons which many visited him but He refused to
 Yorkshire Documents v 221

invulge anything I have but sent you all the particulars I have and I hope you
will write to me by return of post & send me all the particulars and hif there
is any person that ar obliged to come away I have procured a seat of work for
them you will please to ax Wiliam pasomell were I may find the wife making
in Manchester please to direct for Edward Good over Mill Saddleworth nine
Manchester Yorkshire
Which you will not put any name
on the letter at all
And put a Cross on the bottom of the letter as I shall see your brothers on
Whitson Sunday so no more from yr well wishing friend
G D

Y13 v 27 April 1812: Letter from ‘‘A. B.’’ to Joseph Radcliffe, Milnsbridge
near Huddersfield

Another April 1812 letter, from ‘‘A. B.’’ to Radcliffe, mentions Thomas Atkin-
son, along with William Horsfall, as a target for Luddite wrath. The mingling
of legal language (‘‘tribunal’’ and ‘‘judge’’) with religious notions of divine judg-
ment and retribution distinguishes this letter from much Luddite discourse in
other regions. The religious language in the letter is vague in its orientation.
It could be generically Anglican or evangelical. Methodism and other dissent-
ing movements were particularly strong in the West Riding, as Frank Peel, Eric
Hobsbawm, and J. A. Hargreaves have demonstrated.32 Joanna Southcott, the
millenarian prophet, had her greatest following in the West Riding. Despite
the vagueness, the threat of civil war juxtaposed with Scripture calls to mind
the political and religious strife of the seventeenth century. In contrast, Mid-
lands documents occasionally threatened civic riot but rarely, if ever, implied
civil war or interpreted the conflict along religious lines. The writer evidently
believes Radcliffe to be susceptible to the influence of a Christian discourse—to
such an extent that the writer makes no threats at all against Radcliffe but rather
seeks his help in a righteous cause.
Reid speculates that the letter was written by George Mellor.33 Certainly, the
militantly political flavor of the document would have been agreeable to Mellor,
and his behavior prior to his January 1812 execution at York suggests that he may
have been influenced by one of the Methodist or evangelical movements.34 Com-
222 v writings of the luddites

pare Mellor’s letter from York Castle, transcribed below. Also, the letter is dated
one day before the murder of William Horsfall, for which Mellor was convicted
and hanged.35
The signature, ‘‘A. B.,’’ might seem to be the most insignificant part of the
letter, but from the perspective of an intertextual study it is one of the more inter-
esting features. ‘‘A. B.’’ was a typical nominal in the Luddite oaths reported by
spies and informers (‘‘I A B—on my own voluntary will and accord, do declare
and solemnly swear. . . . ’’) 36 The use of the nominal here lends credence to the
spies’ and informers’ reports of oathing in the northern counties and hints at a
connection between those who administered oaths and those who wrote letters
and addresses.

Radcliffe Papers 126/38.

v v v

April 27th 1812

Sir,
I thought it my duty as a Friend, to address you with a few lines upon the
Perrilous situation of this Country; as you are the principle Magistrate for
this District, they look to you, and only you, for some Redress; If this Ma-
chinery is suffer’d to go on it will probable terminate with a Civil War, which
I could wish to be avoided, there fore as you are not intrested by Machin-
ery and the Spirit of the People appears so resolute in the Cause, that if some
measures be not adopted and immediately, it will be attended with great Dis-
truction, and particular those who are our greatest Persecutors. With respect
to this Watch and Ward Act, you are not aware of the additional, Oppression
you are bringing upon your Tenants, and other Occupiers of Lands, and all
for the sake of two Individuals in this District, which I am not afraid to sub-
scribe their names, Mr Ths Atkinson, & Mr Wm Horsfall, who will soon be
number’d with the dead, and summoned before the awfull Tribunal, and that
God who will Judge every Man according to the Deeds done in the Body.
And Jesus knew their thoughts and said unto them, every Kingdom divided
against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against
itself, shall not stand.

A. B.
 Yorkshire Documents v 223

Y14 v 1 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘Peter Plush’’ purporting to write from
Nottingham to ‘‘Mr Edward Ludd’’ at Huddersfield

E. P. Thompson points out in his essay, ‘‘The Crime of Anonymity,’’ that

there were usually two audiences for anonymous threatening letters. One audi-
ence comprised rich employers or social superiors, and the other audience con-
sisted of fellow workers or social equals. In both cases, the letters adopt a col-
lective pronoun, ‘‘we.’’ 37 The following letter, demonstrative of the political and
militant tendencies of the writing associated with Yorkshire Luddism, is unique
in that the writer and recipient (both already eponymous and, thereby in the
Luddite rhetorical schema, collective) constitute a larger ‘‘we.’’
The address and salutation are confusing. The letter is addressed to ‘‘Mr Ed-
ward Ludd Market Place Huddersfield.’’ Below the address is the salutation, ‘‘To
General Ludd/ Juner.’’ To the right of the salutation is the town of origin, Not-
tingham. Thompson speculates that the letter may have been written by ‘‘a free-
lance Nottinghamshire Luddite . . . intended more to alarm the authorities than
to communicate with Yorkshire Luddites.’’ 38 There does seem to have been some
communication between Midlands and northern Luddites. In a 21 November
1811 letter to the Home Office preserved in H. O. 42/117, Colonel Ralph Fletcher
reports from Bolton that one ‘‘Williamson’’ of Nottingham met artisans in Man-
chester. Frank Peel mentions a visit to croppers in the Spen Valley by a man
named George Weightman, whom Peel describes, using the same language as
the authorities and spies, as a ‘‘delegate’’ from Nottingham.39 Additionally, one
piece of internal evidence in support of Thompson’s speculation is that the writer
makes no mention of the murder of William Horsfall, three days prior to the
date of this letter. A writer in the West Riding certainly would have heard of the
murder and, given the mention made of other events, undoubtedly would have
included congratulations. A writer from Nottingham might not have heard of
the murder by 1 May. Finally, the letter shares some of the characteristics of the
rhetorically duplicitous ‘‘friend’’ letters sent to authorities: it conveys little real
information, except for the news about ‘‘dispatching a few individuals by pistel
shot,’’ and it professes Luddite potency.
Nevertheless, it would be wise to consider the possibility that the letter was
intended for an internal audience. For an audience of machine breakers, the let-
224 v writings of the luddites

ter might serve much the same function as ‘‘The Cropper’s Song,’’ sung by John
Walker during a Feburary 1812 meeting at the Shears Inn. The self-congratula-
tory tone of the letter from Ludd to Ludd supports this possibility. Furthermore,
no external address or postmark is evident, indicating that it might not have been
sent through the mail or that it was intended to have been intercepted at the Post
Office.

Radcliffe Papers 126/46.40

v v v

Mr Edward Ludd Market Place Huddersfield

To General Ludd Nottingham
Juner May 1 1812
By order of Genral Ludd sener the levetinent colonel and every rank of
oficers in the generales servece in the town and county of Nottingham
I am reqested to expres the hye sence of honer We entertan of the meri-
toreous movment you and your forses have so gallantly mad in the neborood
of Hudersfield to secure the rites of our poor starving fellow creturs—
I am also desired to say that We lamment with extrem regret the fate of the
two brave boys who galantly spilt theire blood in a ladeble case at Rawfolds—
They further learn with pleser that a noble attempt was mad about a mil from
Huddersfield tho without suckses to destroy the Hytown machenry man 41
The Generl futher autherises me to say that he trusts to the attachment of
his subjects for the avenging of the death of the two brav youths who fell at
the sege of Rawfolds—He also wishes me to state that tho his troops hear are
not at present making any ostensable movments here that it is not for want of
force as the orgenisation is just as strong as in Yorkshire but that they are at
present only devising the best means for a grand attack and that at present they
are dispatching a few individuals by pistel shot on of which fel last nite— 42
I am futher otherised to say that it is the opinion of our general and men
that as long as that blackgard, drunken whoreing fellow called Prince Regent
and his servants have any thing to do with government that nothing but distres
will befole us there foot stooles. I am further desired to say that it is expected
that you will remember that you are mad of the same stuf as Gorg Gwelps 43
Juner and corn and wine are sent for you as wel as him
Peter Plush
Secretery to Genl Ludd
 Yorkshire Documents v 225

Y15 v 15 May 1812: Letter from ‘‘I-G’’ at Leeds to Benjamin Gott at Leeds

A third letter in the Gott Papers raises questions not only about authorship
but also Luddite rhetorical tactics. A 15 May 1812 letter appears in the Gott col-
lection immediately following the letter to Mr. Smith. It is addressed to Mr. Gott
from ‘‘I-G,’’ who identifies himself as Gott’s ‘‘Gardin angell’’ and ‘‘well wisher’’
and warns Gott of a Luddite conspiracy against his life.
Other Luddite letters notifying large masters of a judgment against them use
threatening, sanguinary language, but most of those letters do not provide much
evidence of rhetorical sophistication sufficient to execute the ‘‘well wisher’’ trope
very effectively. Many such letters lapse too quickly into the genuine threaten-
ing voice, but this letter withholds the genuine voice and reveals the writer’s true
sympathies in only a couple of ways. First, the letter conveys the fact of a threat
with no real or useful information. No Luddites are named or placed in jeop-
ardy by the information that the author communicates.44 Second, the ambiguous
abuse of the Luddites, calling them ‘‘Tigars,’’ actually praises them and portrays
them as deserving to be feared. Finally, the letter is interspersed with limiting
qualifications as to how effective the writer’s efforts to protect Gott might be,
thereby accomplishing a Luddite intention to smite their oppressors with fear.
This last feature distinguishes the ‘‘I-G’’ from ‘‘Mr Love Good’s’’ April 1812 let-
ter to Joseph Radcliffe, quoted earlier. ‘‘Love Good’’ claims to have been suc-
cessful in dissuading his colleagues from attacking Radcliffe. The absence of such
claims in the letter to Gott diminishes the likelihood that the writer wishes to
convey the reasonableness of the group.

Leeds University Manuscripts 193, Gott Papers, vol. 3, 106. The letter appears in Crump’s
Leeds Woollen Industry 230–31 (labeled 76).

v v v

I-G to Benjamin Gott, Leeds, 15th May, 1812.

Sir.
No doubt you are Informd as to the proceedins of the Ludites But feariful
you Should Not to the Extent is the Caws of My Trublin you thus = a friend
of Mine ad it from a Man that was Theair and on Sunday Night at Rounda
wood to the Number of 400 thay theair Decreed the Death of 2 and with
226 v writings of the luddites

Great Diffecalty He Extorted from the Man that you was one = Be Carful of
your Self for a few Weeks = alter your usal walks to your Busness = I will Giv
you all the Information In My power Be of Good Currige But Be Carful =
I Mentioned it to two of My friends who know your worth to the Town and
world In general as well as Myself you do Not know Me But I will Be your
Gardin angell as far as My abilities Go—rest Satisfide that if I Can find out
the Tigars that is apointed for that Infernall Job you Shall ave a Good account
of them or Him. God Bless and preserve you through these difficalt Times.
do not Cummunicate this to aney one==do Not Indevor to find Me ought
and you May Rest Satisfide I am your well wisher I-G.
Leeds 15th May 1812 45

Y16 v Late Spring or Summer 1812: Song fragment titled ‘‘How Gloomy and
Dark Is the Day,’’ Huddersfield vicinity

A very short song fragment recorded by Peel was composed some time after
the disastrous assault on Rawfolds. In the aftermath of that greatest of Luddite
failures, the croppers became more dismayed with collective action and turned
to personal vengeance, political reform, or the millenarian or ‘‘chiliastic’’ despair
described by Thompson as widespread during the period of industrialization.46
More than any other Luddite text from Yorkshire, this song reflects the increas-
ingly millenarian disposition of suffering workers whose efforts at self-help were
coming to nothing and who waited for some external force to effect change.

Peel, The Risings of the Luddites 120.

v v v

How gloomy and dark is the day

When men have to fight for their bread;
Some judgment will sure clear the way,
And the poor shall to triumph be led.
 Yorkshire Documents v 227

Y17 v July 1812: Letter from ‘‘a well wisher’’ at Daypool to ‘‘The Secretary of
State’’ at London

Although Yorkshire Luddites were more quickly and overtly moved to a po-
litical discourse than their Midlands counterparts were, and complained more
frequently of ‘‘that blackgard drunken whoreing fellow called Prince Regent and
his servants,’’ the Home Office Papers contain very few threatening letters sent
from Yorkshire to the regent and the cabinet. The following letter sent to the
secretary of state from the vicinity of Hull, outside of the Luddite regions, is one
example that affiliates itself with the Luddites, even though the writer claims to
come from the West Country. Although its signatory claims to be a ‘‘well wisher,’’
the letter hardly even qualifies as an attempt at a rhetorical duplicity.
What seems to be the original, printed in dark, clear letters, is preserved in
the Home Office. The same handwriting that appears in the body of the letter
directs it, ‘‘Haste/ To the Secretary of State for the/ Home Department/ Lon-
don.’’ The words ‘‘Delivered without d’’ appear below the address: What follows
the ‘‘d’’ has been cut off. A Home Office clerk dated its receipt, ‘‘1812 July.’’

H. O. 42/125.

v v v

Daypool near Hull July

Sir,
I have too long been a dupe, to mischiefous men, by being led on, to mis-
chief, in the west Country, and I have been guilty, of a many Crimes there,
and have come here, by being deputed, for a very wicked purpose, even that,
for which I now repent, & will have no concern, I am sent with others, to dif-
ferent parts of the Country, and especially where French Prisoners are many
to some thousands, are already sworn in, to rise on a certain day, appointed
in all parts of the Kingdom, on the 5th day of Novr next, the Luddites mean
to rid themselves, of all their Enemys. They reckon on 50,000 French Pris-
oners, as helpers, as out of all that are sworn, amongs the French, not one did
refuse.47 On that morning, several, or many heads in London, are to be laid
low, to cause a confusion, all the Mails, are to be stopt’d.
Castererleaah,48 Liverpool, Gibbs, & several, are to fall, as fix’d on. Men
228 v writings of the luddites

are to go to all the places, where French Prisoners are, to assasinate the Gards,
to let the Prisoners out, to join the Luddites, & then Mischief follows.
Tho’ they appear quiet now, you are very much rong, if you trust to that. I
have sent an account from here, where the arms are, in the Garrison, & what
number.
But I repent, & will do no more, with them, but do you not be laid from
Suspicion. Beware French Prisoners.
You need not advertize any reward for the writer of this to come forward
because I won’t tho’ my conscience tell me to do this I will go no farther be-
cause by doing this I dare not return home. I wou’d not turn Kings Evidence
for the World.
I will go so far as say that the Watch Word on that Day say 5th Novr next
is to be L i be rt y a n d Lu d d , for E v e r.
So no more from a well wisher No 1175.49

Y18 v September 1812: Song titled ‘‘The Devil Take the King,’’ Birkby
near Huddersfield

John Hog of Birkby, one mile north of Huddersfield, was charged in Septem-
ber 1812 with singing a seditious version of ‘‘God Save the King’’ after having
objected to the singing of the ordinary version. Hog is identified variously as a
Luddite and a malcontent in the different letters that dealt with his singing the
song, which was forwarded to the Home Office in September 1812.
Versions of the song (certainly by no means a Luddite original), varying in
completeness and somewhat in wording, appear in documents forwarded by Rad-
cliffe, Lloyd, and another anonymous correspondent. The source for the text
here is an anonymous letter.

H. O. 42/127.

v v v

The devil take the King

Rid England of the King
God save us all
God damn his soul in hell
And throw him down to hell
 Yorkshire Documents v 229

The devil will serve him well

God save us all.

Y19 v September 1812: Song by Charles Milnes, ‘‘You Heroes of

England,’’ Halifax

Occasionally, Luddite songs can be found outside of the usual primary source
collections. Such a song is preserved in the prosecutor’s brief for the crown case
against Charles Milnes and William Blakeborough and has been reproduced with
emendations in Thompson’s introduction to the fourth edition (1968) of Peel’s
Risings of the Luddites (xiv).
Tried on 2 January 1813 at the York Special Commission, Milnes and Blake-
borough were charged with larceny upon the statute 4 George II, cap. 32, for
stealing lead from the roof of an untenanted garden house owned by the Dowa-
ger Lady Ibbetson in Halifax. One of the attorneys for the prosecution wrote on
the brief for the case, ‘‘As it appears that the Lead was taken to cast into Bullets
for Lud purposes it may be considered Evidence to produce a song in the hand
writing of Milnes done in the presence of the Witness [Joseph] Taylor and deliv-
ered to him by the writer—it runs thus.’’ 50 Joseph Taylor was a Special Constable
for the West Riding and a spy who infiltrated the Luddite circles in the vicinity
of Halifax. Taylor had asked Milnes for a copy of Milnes’s song on 11 September
1812.51
The song follows a form of direct address that appears in the contemporary
‘‘Cropper’s Song’’ as well as in an earlier song by Gerrard Winstanley, ‘‘You
Noble Diggers.’’ 52

Rex v. Charles Milnes of Geldhill & William Blakeborough, Treasury Solicitor’s Papers
11.813.2673, Public Records Office, Kew.

v v v

You Heroes of England who wish to have a trade

Be true to each other and be not afraid
Tho’ 53 the Bayonet is fixed they can do no good
As long as we keep up the Rules of General Ludd.

As we have begun we are like to proceed

Till from all those Tyrants we do get freed
230 v writings of the luddites

For this heavy yoke no longer can we bear

And those who have not felt it ought to have a share.

And then they can feel for anothers 54 woe

For he that never knew sorrow, sorrow doth not know
But there is Cartwright and Atkinson also
And to shew 55 them justice sorrow they shall know.

Though he does boast of the deeds he has done

Yet out of our presence like a Thief he Does run 56
It is the Laws 57 of England to stand in our defence
If he comes in our presence him we’ll recompence.

Y20 v 21 October 1812: Letter from ‘‘Enemie Anonimous’’ to

‘‘Ratclif,’’ Huddersfield

After a brief hiatus during the summer of 1812, Joseph Radcliffe’s efforts to
discover Luddites attracted threatening letters again during the fall. Like sev-
eral contemporary letters from the Midlands and Lancashire, the following let-
ter to Radcliffe employs a ‘‘Bellingham trope,’’ a threat accomplished through
an allusion to the Liverpool man who, upset over having lost money in a Rus-
sian business venture and over the futility of his petitions for relief, assassinated
Prime Minister Spencer Perceval on 11 May 1812 and became a popular hero
whose actions were understood to symbolize public outrage at government poli-
cies. (Many of John Bellingham’s letters to the government have been preserved
in H. O. 42.)
Ironically, the author of this letter finds cause for hatred in Radcliffe’s ‘‘Pub-
lick character,’’ whereas Bellingham’s grievance was distinctly private.58 Clearly,
a perfect correspondence between the Luddites’ motives and actions and those of
Bellingham mattered less to the writer than representing the political dimensions
of resentment, hatred, and violence.

Radcliffe Papers 126/91. The letter is on a page of what appear to be copies of Radcliffe’s
correspondence.

v v v
 Yorkshire Documents v 231

Huddersfield 21 October 1812

Ratclif
Sir,
I drop you this as a warning that I have for some time Eyed you as your
Publick character act with so much injustice to almost every individual that
has had the misfortune to come before you that I and my two Assocites is this
hour your sworn Enimes and all his Magistes forces will not save you, for I
dow not regard my own life if I can have reveang of you which I mos ashuredly
will make myself another Jhn 59 Bellingham and I have the Pellit mad 60 that
shall be wet in you Harts Life 61 Blood if I should dow it in the hous of God
I with hatered your sworn
Enemie Anonimous
qr
Add. Joseph Ratclif Es
Millns Bridge

Y21 v 29 October 1812: Letter from ‘‘Secretary to the Brotherhood’’ to

Joseph Radcliffe, Milnsbridge near Huddersfield

Another October 1812 threat upon Radcliffe’s life employs a rhetoric demon-
strative of moral and religious motives instead of political or even trade concerns.
Some people in the Huddersfield neighborhood still sympathized with George
Mellor (arrested on 22 October and by the date of this letter jailed in York for
the murder of the Marsden manufacturer, William Horsfall). The language of
morality and moral struggle (‘‘good and righteous,’’ ‘‘glory,’’ and ‘‘monsters’’)
overrides even the language of political oppression (‘‘tyrant’’ and ‘‘persicuteth’’)
and completely replaces the juridical language of previous West Riding docu-
ments.
The letter is among the most difficult to read of all of the Luddite documents,
largely due to the rough handwriting, the poor grammar, some missing words,
the bleeding through of ink from both sides of each sheet, and the poor condition
of the paper itself. The names of two persons mentioned in the letter prove espe-
cially difficult to decipher. The name that I render as ‘‘Whitehead’’ is probably the
spy or informer whose deposition, which helped to indict several Huddersfield
Luddites, appears in General Maitland’s correspondence to the Home Office,
232 v writings of the luddites

preserved in H. O. 42/125. The name that I have transcribed as ‘‘Ferraby’’ is nearly

indecipherable, but the name clearly begins with a capital ‘‘F’’ and ends with a
‘‘y.’’ There was a Special Constable John Ferraby recruited for Secret Service in
Yorkshire and Lancashire. His name appears in H. O. 40/2 in General Maitland’s
Secret Service expenditures for 30 August 1812.

Radcliffe Papers 126/95.

v v v

Joseph Radcliffe Esq

Milns Bridge House
near Huddersfield
J. Radcliffe Esq
Unjust Judge
This is to inform thee that thy life will be taken from thee the very first
oppertunity which will take place before the 2 of January 1813 for we will watch
thee Both Day and But we will fulfill our promise to the Committee this is the
last warning that thou will have from us thou wicked tyrant who persicuteth
the Good and Righteous allso we are determined to murder 2 of thy wicked
Servants Before the Expiration of this year I am ordered to give them this last
warning But ther lives is determined on, I mean Ferraby & Whitehead for
ther dilligence in hunting after our distrest Brotherhood both night and day
for they are Both in there Glory which dragging our poor Brothers before the
thou wicked man But though Meller be in York Castle we have thousands in
this neibourhood left that shal much Glory to Rid the world 3 monsters and
as sure as I have spoken the words thou with them will be destroyed Before
the time they are in our poor Every week and thou will be watched closer than
even Mr. Horsfall was is will be down 62 if in thy own Grounds and the persons
suffer instant death for it for we shall Emortalise our reasons to further ages
to Rid the world of such a monster as thou art till then I Remain thy mortal
Enimey yrs Secretary to the
Brotherhood
October 29th 1812
 Yorkshire Documents v 233

Y22 v 30 November 1812: Letter from George Mellor at York Castle to

Thomas Ellis at Longroyd near Huddersfield

While imprisoned in York Castle, George Mellor attempted to pass a letter to

a friend, Thomas Ellis 63 at Longroyd, containing advice for his cousin on what
sort of testimony the family ought to offer at Mellor’s trial. The letter was inter-
cepted, and a copy came to Radcliffe enclosed in a letter from Henry Hobhouse
at Lincoln’s Inn.

Radcliffe Papers 126/127(a); H. O. 42/123, dated 30 November 1812.

v v v

I now take the liberty of informing you that I am in good health, as by the
blessing of God. I hope they will find you well. Please to give my respects
to my cousin and tell him to stick fast by what he swore the first time before
Ratcliffe and I hope his wife will do the same, that I left their House before
5 o Clock and I did not have any thing at their Hous, and if the Boy swears any
thing else my cousin to contradict him and say he told him a different Story,
that there had been a man and left them, and he did not know him, and as for
the Girl she cannot swear any thing. I know that will harm me, and tell the
Boys to stick by what they said the first time if not they are proven forsworn
tell him and his wife, I hope they will befriend me and never mind their work
for if I come home I will do for them. Remember a Soul is of more value than
work or Gold. I have heard you are petitioning for a Parliamentary Reform
and I wish these names to be given as follows G. M. Mark Hill James Haigh
Joseph Thornton Wm Thorp Geo Rigge Saml Booth John Hodges C. Cock-
croft James Brook Jos. Brook Geo. Brook James Brook C Thornton Jonathan
Dean Jms Walker Joshua Schonefield Jms Cihorsfield 64 Thomas Smith James
Storkey Anthony Walker Joseph Greenwood Thomas Green Benjamin Sigg
Geo. Ludge Wm Hodgson Geo. Brook Wm Barnard Geo. Beaumont David
Morehouse Wm Whitehead Joseph Fisher John Battley Jon Lamb Jon Shore
Benjamin Hincliff Geo. Horten Jonn Laild Jon Farrset James Whitehouse.
Give my respects to all enquiring friends, and accept these few lines from
your friend.
234 v writings of the luddites

Y23 v 1812: ‘‘Address to Cotton Weavers & Others,’’ Huddersfield

One of the texts that Radcliffe included in his collection of Luddite papers is
the ‘‘Address to Cotton Weavers & Others.’’ Radcliffe gives no indication why an
address directed to cotton weavers would have surfaced in the woolen districts,
but the address is less about wool and machines than about the origin of hun-
ger in political oppression. The Lockean argument that labor confers property
rights upon the laborer was the basis for several Luddite texts, including this one,
and it provided a language that enabled writers to make the leap from economic
to political issues.
The only indications of the document’s origin are a Huddersfield street ad-
dress, ‘‘Mr [or Mrs] Alexander Burlington, Quay,’’ and a Huddersfield postmark.
Radcliffe includes in his own handwriting a year for the ‘‘Address,’’ 1812. A Ludd-
ite oath follows the ‘‘Address,’’ as in the Radcliffe Papers.

Radcliffe Papers I Appendix, Item 78, which was acquired in 1993 by the West Yorkshire
Archives Service, Leeds.

v v v

An Address to Cotton Weavers & Others

Friends and fellow Mortals, long & tedious has been the oppression that you
are labouring under, & the prospect before you only tends to embitter y r days,
y r existance will be shortened, & y r many children will become fatherless if you
tamely submit much longer to wear that yoke, & to bear that Burden which is
intollerable for human nature to endure, frequently you have uselessly applied
to Government, to Magistrates, & to Manufacturers, but all to no purpose–
what then is to be done–will you still calmly submit to endure that Arrogance
Tyranny and Oppression that hath so long been exercised over you–Will you
suffer your Children to be tortured out of existance, by bearing the lashes of hun-
ger & nakedness, & yourselves insolently degraded by those very men that are
living in luxury & Extravagance from the fruits of y r labour–there is no doubt but
many of you are well assured that the present unjust, unnecessary and destructive
war is the Cause of your present Calamity–who are they then that have always
been Stedfast & Constant advocates for this War–have not the greatest part of
 Yorkshire Documents v 235

our Manufacturors, not to say Magistrates, who are they who have made them-
selves Rich since the War’s Commencement, they are a few in every principal
Town through this distressed Kingdom. from whence did their riches proceed,
Methinks I hear a Voice say, all riches proceed from the servile & feeble hand of
slavery. Who are they that are in the full enjoyment of their own Labour. None,
for the Rich & artificial great, Labour not, nor do they ever intend to do, in con-
sequence of which the just rights of the servile slave is innocently and unjustly
taken from him–Friends & fellow sufferers, how must justice be trampled under
foot–how long must the natural rights of mortal man be held from y r feeble sight,
or how long will you bear your unparalelled suffering, & permit yourselves to be
Robbed of more than four-fifths of the fruits of y r labour–to solicit is in vain, to
Petition is perfect Stupidity–as well might you solicit the Robber on the High
way to give you back the property he had taken from you, or as well might you
petition to head y r Cause–You have but one life to lose. Death you must meet
with, & to die with hunger is the most miserable, to Perish in the midst of that
plenty that you have laboured for, is the most Dastardly–It is a Duty you owe to
yourself & to the rising Generation, to put a stop to the unjust & lawless wheels
of Tyranny–It is in y r power and the immutable & unalterable Laws of Nature
require it from your hands–It has often been said it is lawful & right for a Man
to do what he will with his own–But this requires y r serious consideration, in the
first place you must determine what is a mans own, you must lay aside all Artifi-
cial Tyranical & unjust laws & simply look to the unerring Laws of Nature that
are the same in all ages of the World. By so doing you will immediately see that
nothing is justly a mans own but that he hath meritted by his own industry–but
if you shew Lenity & admit that all is a man’s own that he is in possession of, you
will soon see that it is not right for him to do what he pleaseth with it–admitting
it doth no harm to any Creature. But if it can be proved that his proceedings
are injurious to Society, then Society hath an undoubted right to put a sudden
stop to his Vile proceedings–But every thing is out of order through the whole–
& the admission of one evil renders the Tyrant a pretence to plead the necessity
of another–& thus the World has gone on for numberless generations--till at last
the insulted & degraded slaves of Brittain are involved in the lawless & direful
Whirlpool of Misery & Want. O’, injured and degraded fellow sufferers, look
around you & behold the rights you are deprived of - You who are as free born
as your Vile oppressors–There was a fair Creation ready to recieve you the mo-
ment you came into existance. A fertile Land that ought to have cost you nothing
236 v writings of the luddites

but the pains of Cultivating it. But not an Inch on the habitable Globe is yours.
Tyranny hath deprived you of it. Nor have you time to behold the fair & free
Creation of heaven the wide realms of necessary Care before you, & despair &
destruction invades y r wretched dwellings–Can you then any longer bear to hear
your innocent & helpless Children crying to you for food, or to behold them
Clothed in filthy rags - & yourself treated with disdain and ridicule & scorn by
those very men that are unjustly feasting on the fruits of your slavery. Can you
bear with impunity to see you rights and priviledges thus trampled upon by a
venal & profligate Band of Robbers. Insulted mortals, examine yourselves, and
ask where are our rights that Bounteous Nature bestowed upon us. And you will
see that they are fled from us for ever unless you Rise from y r lethargy of Stupid
Misery, and Boldly dare to tell your oppressors that you are determined to enjoy
your natural rights–Viz–the fruits of your labour as these rights are founded in
the unerring laws of the Great Creator

The Oath
I AB on my own Voluntary will & accord do declare and solemnly swear that I will
never reveal to any person or persons, in any place or places under the Canopy of
Heaven, the Name or Names of any Persons who compose this secret Commit-
tee, their secret proceedings, Meeting place, abode, dress, features, Connections,
or any thing else that may lead to a discovery of the same, either by Word, Deed
or Sign–under the penalty of being sent out of this World by the first Brother
who shall meet me, My name & Character blotted out of Existance & never to
be remembered but with contempt & abhorance, I further more do swear that I
will use my best endeavours to punnish by Death any Traitor or Traitors, should
any rise up amongst us, wherever I can find him or them, and though he should
fly to the Verge of Nature I will pursue him with unceasing Vengeance, so help
me God, and assist me to keep this my oath inviolable, Amen so be it

Y24 v January 1813: Letter from ‘‘L. M.’’ at Elland to ‘‘Cartlege Brow Bridge
near Elland’’

In the last weeks of 1812 and the first weeks of 1813, several threats were sent
to Mr. Cartledge, described by Lieutenant Alfred Cooper of the West Suffolk
Militia as the chief constable of Elland. In his letter, which encloses the threat
 Yorkshire Documents v 237

below, Cooper says that Cartledge received many threatening letters, including
one that said, ‘‘though Mellor had been hanged, he died game and there were
many Mellors left to avenge him.’’ Like some of the letters to Radcliffe, this let-
ter is styled rhetorically from a friend. The mention of imprisoned ‘‘Enemy’s’’
indicates the writer’s concern for the accused murderers of William Horsfall and
the Rawfolds attackers recently captured and jailed at York Castle. Like other
letters from different regions, the focus on the implement of destruction (‘‘the
Ball his Cast that must take your life’’) is typical of the Luddite preoccupation
with instrumentality, how something will be done—perhaps a response in kind to
the change in methods of production wrought by machines. Compare the Not-
tinghamshire letter from ‘‘Joe Firebrand’’ to Messrs. Trevit, Biddles, and Bowler,
transcribed earlier.
The letter to Cartledge was forwarded to Major General Acland at Wakefield
with Lieutenant Cooper’s 17 January 1813 letter from Elland, preserved in H. O.
40/2/3, Part 1. Acland probably forwarded both letters to the Home Office.

H. O. 40/2/4. It appears among documents from the West Riding from January 1813.

v v v

Cartlege Brow Bridge near Elland

Mr Cartlege I take the opertunity of leting you now that your life his in
great Danger you need not think that you have got all your Enemy’s into
prison has you may think the Ball his Cast that must take your life and that
verey won with out you look Damd sharp and your officer likewise.
and your Friend, John Bedford that keeps your Company so much and Brings
you news we keep a wach up on him has well has you on the 19th of December
he was at Mrs Wilkisons a long with you and 15th at Halifax on the 19th we
have Broke his Meshenery and will stop him verey soon take this for good
I Ham Your’s
L. M. Elland

Y25 v 12 March 1815: Letter to Radcliffe, Huddersfield

After the period of intense Luddism in Yorkshire had passed, the following
12 March 1815 letter was sent to Sir Joseph Radcliffe, who had lately been made
a baronet. Most of the rhetorical evidence in the letter points toward its having
238 v writings of the luddites

been written by someone who was less concerned about ludding than with con-
veying insults to Radcliffe and implicating James Rourk and Samuel Brook in
some trouble. It is likely that the letter is written in the duplicitous well-wisher
vein, as it falls under the same category as those that say much, especially to incite
fear and proffer insults, but convey little useful information.

Radcliffe Papers 126/136.

v v v

Sir Joseph Ratcliff March the 12

1815
Ludding is going to Start here again there has been A meetting of cropers
at my house but I heard What the 65 Were on and I would not have them in my
House The Way the are for Doing is to asemble in Private Houses and to Start
out at a Certain Hour Ludders this time Will Die to a man the Determined
to have Blood for Blood the Swear that the Will Shoot thee first old Bellsy-
bub the Call thee and then Shoot the Rest of the Devils after Tom Atkinson
Joe Atkinson Bradly mill Cartwright Frank Vickerman Taylor Hill Joe Hirst
Marsh and every other Devil that loves Machinerry the Swear the both Shoot
and Burn
But to Prevent all Disturbances order the Cavaldry or horse Soldiers to
Padrole the Streets and order all lights to Be put out Before tin a Clock other
ways thee have no Peace Depend upon much Blood Shed If Proper Steps be
not observed James Rourk or Jemy the Gabler is their Principle man He Calls
Himself Genral Lud Sir Joseph Ratcliff If thee Do not Send this James Rourk
out of this Country the Will be Destruction and Blood Shed He Swears he
Will Shoot thee Sir Joseph this James Rourk has been a Delegate to Leeds
and all over the Country he lives Marthas Walkers/ ould upperhead Row near
Joshua Lockets Samuel Brook Croper Deighton near Mr Whitakers those ar
Principal men of the Ludders do but Send those off all the others Will be
quite 66
 Notes

v introduction

1. Home Office Papers (H. O.) 42/123.

2. Letter from Nunn to Home Office, 6 December 1811, H. O. 42/118.
3. Malcolm Thomis, The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England (Newton Ab-
bott: David and Charles, 1970), 11.
4. See J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled Labourer, 1760–1832 (Lon-
don: Longmans, Green, 1919), chap. 9; Frank Darvall, Popular Disturbances and Public Or-
der in Regency England (London: Oxford University Press, 1934); E. P. Thompson, The
Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966), chap. 14; Thomis, Luddites
chaps. 1 and 6; John Dinwiddy, ‘‘Luddism and Politics in the Northern Counties,’’ Social
History 4.1 (January 1979): 33–63; Adrian Randall, Before the Luddites: Custom, Community
and Machinery in the English Woollen Industry, 1776–1809 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1991), chaps. 1 and 8; Brian Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion (New York: New York
University Press, 1998), chap. 10.
5. Duncan Bythell, The Handloom Weavers: A Study in the English Cotton Industry during
the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 20–21.
6. Randall, Before the Luddites 1–2.
7. Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, A Tale (London: Smith, Elder, 1849); Phyllis Bentley, In-
heritance (New York: Macmillan, 1932); G. A. Henty, Through the Fray: A Tale of the Luddite
Riots (New York: Hurst, 1890); D. F. E. Sykes and G. H. Walker, Ben O’ Bill’s, The Luddite:
A Yorkshire Tale (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kenty, 1898); Ernst Toller, The
Machine-Wreckers: A Drama of the English Luddites in a Prologue and Five Acts (New York:
A. A. Knopf, 1923).
8. Randall has demonstrated the pervasiveness of what he calls a ‘‘teleological view of
labour history,’’ which, in one form ‘‘argues that Luddism took place only where labour
240 v Notes to Pages 8–21

was not effectively organized’’ (Randall, Before the Luddites 150). That view, justly criticized,
Randall describes as not only teleological but also tautological.
9. John Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics in England and Wales, 1790–1810 (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 35.
10. Radcliffe Papers 126/114,West Yorkshire Archives Service, Leeds.
11. Robert Reid, The Land of Lost Content: The Luddite Revolt, 1812 (London: Heine-
mann, 1986), 251, citing Edward Baines’s report of the trial and execution in Proceedings
under the Special Commission at York (Leeds: Baines, 1813).
12. E. J. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London: Weiden-
feld and Nicolson, 1964) 1.
13. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class 515; Thomis, Luddites 15.
14. Thomis, Luddites 15.
15. The original source for information regarding Nottinghamshire Luddism from
March 1811 to February 1812, including the Arnold incident, is the ‘‘Brief Statement of the
Transactions which have taken place from the commencement of the disturbances in the
County of Nottingham and the Town of Nottingham’’ sent to the Home Office by two
London police officers, Nathaniel Conant and Robert Baker, and compiled with the as-
sistance of Nottingham Town Clerk George Coldham. The ‘‘Brief Statement’’ appears in
H. O. 42/119. See also Russell, ‘‘Luddites’’ 55; Darvall, Popular Disturbances 64–66; Reid,
Land of Lost Content 58. Thomis misprints the date of the Arnold action, recording it as
1812 rather than 1811 (Thomis, Luddites 75).
16. Darvall, Popular Disturbances 67.
17. The 24 November 1811 letter and the others cited in this paragraph appear in H. O.
42/117.
18. Several of the December 1811 newspaper negotiations are reproduced and discussed
in the chapter on Midlands Luddism.
19. Craig Calhoun, The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radical-
ism during the Industrial Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 187.
20. Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics 3–5.
21. Randall, Before the Luddites 123–24.
22. John Mee, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the
1790s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 8–9.
23. David Worrall, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790–1820
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), 4, 5.
24. James Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England,
1790–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 5; quoting Thomas Paine, The
Rights of Man (1792; reprint, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 42, 71–72.
25. Calhoun, Question of Class Struggle, 6–7.
26. Randall, Before the Luddites, 243.
27. The distinction between custom (or ‘‘the immemorial’’) and law is drawn by J. G. A.
 Notes to Pages 21–24 v 241

Pocock in the first three chapters of The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
28. Calhoun, Question of Class Struggle 60.
29. The various statutes are discussed in Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer,
168–69.
30. Charter of the Company of Framework Knitters, of the Cities of London and
Westminster, the Kingdom of England, and Dominion of Wales (15 Charles II.), Appen-
dix No. 2, Report of the Select Committee on Petitions of the Framework Knitters, House
of Commons, London, 1812; hereafter cited without pagination. A copy can also be found
in the Guildhall Library, Ref. 16865–7, London. The special sufficiency of the charter for
the framework knitters makes irrelevant, for the purpose of this section at least, the prob-
lem of differentiating between what we might call an originary document (a single text
that anchors a practical discourse on a single temporal origin) and a constitutive docu-
ment (one in what potentially is a series of texts that, like those that make up the English
constitution, evolve a body of rights and discourse).
31. The Rule Book of the Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters (London, 1740), vi,
notes that the company’s power to enact all rules therein derives from the 1663 charter.
Chambers notes that the Framework Knitters first sought, and received, a Charter of In-
corporation from Cromwell’s government in 1657, now in the Guildhall archives with the
later charter. A 1655 petition for charter indicates that an ‘‘embryonic organization’’ had
been functioning for some time until its membership had risen to a number warranting
incorporation. See J. D. Chambers, ‘‘The Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters
(1657–1778),’’ Economica (November 1929): 299.
32. William Felkin, A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacturers
(1867; reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1967), 56; Chambers, ‘‘Worshipful Company of
Framework Knitters’’ 299–300.
33. Charter of the Company of Framework Knitters; Hammond and Hammond,
Skilled Labourer 259; Chambers, ‘‘The Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters’’ 302).
Ironically, the charter initially benefited the wealthier masters, although smaller masters
and assistants benefited more in the next centuries. See Chambers, ‘‘The Worshipful Com-
pany of Framework Knitters’’ 303, and George Unwin, Industrial Organization in the Six-
teenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), 210–13. Many of these
small masters and journeymen fled London, where enforcement of the rules was certain,
to the Midlands (Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 221). Some of these same
small masters and assistants who had opposed the rules of the company, especially those
designating numbers of apprentices and length of apprenticeship, later appealed to the
company rules and charter to halt the machinery practices of the larger masters.
34. At H. O. 42/118 is a summary of a cause tried in London at the ‘‘sittings’’ of the
Framework Knitters Company. The document is undated and is not enclosed by any let-
ter, but it obviously dates 1809 or after and follows a letter from the duke of Newcastle
242 v Notes to Page 24

to Ryder, dated 13 December 1811. The page immediately preceding the summary reads
‘‘No date [1811].’’ The summary also follows a list of ‘‘Delegates from the Country ad-
mitted Members and Deputies of the Company. Nov. 1806.’’ The summary provides a clear
indication that legal language was not at all unfamiliar to the framework knitters.

Framework Knitters Company

Wm Payne
a Framework Knr residing at Burbage in the Co. of Leicester.
Cause tried at the Sittings in London before Ld Jas Mansfield after Nichs Term
1808
Verdict taken for the Plt. on the 1st. 4th. 5h. Counts in the Declare with £53
Damages.
Motion in arrest of Judgt. KB Term 1809 Judgment arrested.
Declaration--Stated the Charter of Charles the 2d. to the Company and sundry
By-Laws as applicable to the Actions, and contained, 6, Counts, Namely
1st. That Deft exercised the Trade without making Proof of a 7 Years Service of
Apprenticeship, and without having been first admitted a Freeman of the
Society--Forfeiture every offence 30s./
2d. That Deft exercised the Trade without having been admitted a
Member--forfeit. 30s./
3d. That Deft exercised the Art without making Proof of Service of 7 Yrs.
Apprentsp. Dt. 30s./
4h. That Deft having served an Apprenticesp of 7 Years to one Wm. Everitt,
did delay for 3 Months to be admitted--Forfeit. 30s./
5h. That Deft taught Thos. Main / not being his Child, or Apprentice lawfully
bound, in the said Art. Forfeit. £50.
6h. That Deft took T. Main an Apprentice, he Deft not having been approved
of or allowed to be a Workhousekeeper. D: £5.

35. Nottingham Review, 6 December 1811 and 27 December 1811.

36. Darvall, Popular Disturbances, 138–39. See also P. Cunningham, 8 April 1813 Circular
to Members of Parliament on the Repeal of Statute 5 Eliz. c. 4 (London, 1813).
37. Kirkpatrick Sale mentions the binarizing interpretations of the Luddite risings
(economic-industrial versus legal-political), although he does not interrogate them. He
writes, ‘‘On the question of how political (as opposed to merely industrial), or even revolu-
tionary, the Luddites were, much has been written, most of it merely speculative.’’ See Sale,
Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution (Reading:
Addison-Wesley, 1995), 301n119. I argue that examining the documents written or relied
upon by the Luddites themselves, rather than by authorities and informers corresponding
with the treasury solicitor and the Home Office secretary, reveals a legalistic discourse
that manages to bridge the political and the economic-industrial with confidence, if not
always with grace and accuracy.
 Notes to Pages 25–33 v 243

38. The authorities seemed to have feared Luddite appropriation of sanctioned dis-
courses. Literacy—the very ability to identify, appropriate, and interpret legitimating doc-
uments and discourses that might be employed in the creation of a literate subculture—
rated unusually harsh treatment by the authorities responsible for suppressing Luddism.
Henry Hobhouse, sent by the treasury solicitor to prosecute the cases before the Special
Commission at Chester, was especially interested in making an example of a literate cot-
ton worker, Thomas Whittaker, simply because Whittaker was literate. Hobhouse writes,
‘‘The case on which I have the greatest anxiety is that of Whittaker, whom it appeared to
me very important to convict, not merely on account of his crime, but because he is a man
of superior ability and education and of proportionate influence among his confederates’’
(Hobhouse to John Beckett, 30 May 1812, H. O. 42/123).
39. ‘‘A True Copy of the Articles to be Observed by the Woolcombers in Great Brit-
ain,’’ H. O. 42/130.
40. See, for example, Thomas Ollyffe’s The Young Clerk’s Tutor Enlarged: Being a Most
Useful Collection of the Best Precedents of Recognizances, Obligations, Conditions, Acquittances,
Bills of Sale, Warrants of Attorney, &c. (London: Battersby, 1717). Perhaps even the sus-
pected writer of some of the Midlands Luddite documents might have had a vocational
familiarity with legal forms. Reporting to the Home Office on events in Nottingham, Spe-
cial Constable Conant writes, ‘‘There is a poor half starved dissolute & profligate fellow
here who has been sometimes a hackney writer to the Attorneys, whose hand writing they
have sometimes thought might be traced, in disguize, in some of the threatening letters
received here, at an early part of the disturbances’’ (Conant to Home Office, 5 February
1812, H. O. 42/120).
41. Nottingham Journal, 28 December 1811.
42. This contrast with Yorkshire Luddism shall be developed at length later.
43. Wai Chee Dimock, ‘‘Class, Gender, and a History of Metonymy,’’ in Rethinking
Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations, ed. Wai Chee Dimock and Michael T. Gilmore
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 59.
44. Kenneth D. Brown, The English Labour Movement, 1700–1951 (New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1982), 82.
45. Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 264, quoting H. O. 42/120 (emphasis
added).
46. Darvall, Popular Disturbances 207.
47. William Toone, The Magistrate’s Manual: Or, A Summary of the Duties and Powers
of a Justice of the Peace (London, 1813), 399.
48. Felkin, History 439; Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 266.
49. Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics, 69–70, 72. By ‘‘communitarian,’’ I mean to
describe traditions, duties, practices, and ideals that are centered on a community defined
by the geographical proximity of its members to each other and a commonality among
them in economic, trade, or other social interests. I choose not to employ Anne Jano-
witz’s otherwise very useful definition of communitarian—figuring ‘‘identity as emerging
244 v Notes to Pages 33–43

from a fabric of social narratives, with their attendant goals and expectations.’’ For one
thing, her definition appears to have been constructed in opposition to her definition of
individualism in a discussion of romantic theory. For another, her use of the attendant
idea of embeddedness seems to presuppose an idea of entrenchment that I wish to avoid,
especially in a chapter on Luddism in Manchester, where workers had little experience of
embeddedness. On the distinction between ‘‘voluntaristic individualism’’ and ‘‘embedded
communitarianism,’’ see Anne Janowitz, Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13.
50. John Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution: Early Industrial Capitalism
in Three English Towns (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 31.
51. Bohstedt describes his ‘‘classic’’ model in the second chapter of Riots and Community
Politics 27–68. A concise summary appears on p. 68.
52. Ibid., 126.
53. Bythell, The Handloom Weavers 2, 8.
54. On the one hand, see Bamford’s description of the close interaction between a
weaver and his master in The Autobiography of Samuel Bamford: Early Days, 2 vols. (London,
1849), 1:119–25. For a different view, describing the requisites for setting up as a cotton
manufacturer and other information on those persons who were most likely to set up as
manufacturers, see the discussion of David Whitehead and others in Bythell, The Handloom
Weavers 30–31.
55. William Radcliffe, The Origin of the New System of Manufacture Called ‘‘Powerloom
Weaving,’’ and the Purposes for Which this System Was Invented and Brought into Use, Fully
Explained in a Narrative, Containing William Radcliffe’s Struggles through Life to Remove the
Cause Which Has Brought this Country to Its Present Crisis (Stockport: J. Lomax, 1828), 10.
56. Bythell, The Handloom Weavers 31.
57. Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics 126–31.
58. Ibid., 91.
59. Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer, 58–60.
60. Ibid., 62–64.
61. Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics 79.
62. Ibid., 75.
63. Ibid., 85.
64. H. O. 42/117.
65. Bythell, Handloom Weavers 25–27.
66. McConnell and Kennedy Papers 2/1/18/3/c–e.
67. See, for example, the letters from Robert Graham of Railton and Company in
McConnel and Kennedy Papers 2/1/18/8.
68. Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution 38–43.
69. Ibid., 48.
70. Ibid., 43.
71. Ibid., 38.
 Notes to Pages 44–60 v 245

72. Ibid., 37; Hay Scrapbook, with jottings from March 1812, Chetham’s Library, Man-
chester.
73. Thomis, The Luddites, 96; see also Wood’s 28 April 1812 letter in H. O. 42/122.
74. Curiously, John Dinwiddy does not mention the letter in his article ‘‘Luddism
and Politics in the Northern Counties,’’ even though the letter would perhaps factor into
his argument that Luddism was not part of a revolutionary, underground network but
did share many features with Jacobinical organizations. See Dinwiddy’s discussion of the
Manchester Exchange riots in ‘‘Luddism and Politics in the Northern Counties’’ 43.
75. Dinwiddy, ‘‘Luddism and Politics in the Northern Counties’’ 60.
76. Dimock, ‘‘Class, Gender, and a History of Metonymy’’ 59; citing Kenneth Burke,
A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 503–11.
77. Dimock, ‘‘Class, Gender, and a History of Metonymy’’ 59.
78. Randall, Before the Luddites 15.
79. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class 541.
80. Randall, Before the Luddites 263.
81. Thomis, The Luddites 170–72.
82. Randall, Before the Luddites 149–51.
83. Ibid., 20–23.
84. See Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 168–70; Randall, Before the Ludd-
ites 120, 201.
85. Randall, Before the Luddites 110–12.
86. Randall, Before the Luddites 131–32. Significantly, the Brief Institution also hired a
solicitor, a ‘‘Mr. Wilmot.’’ Perhaps Wilmot provided the cloth dressers with some of their
familiarity with legal discourse (131–33).
87. Ibid., 175–76.
88. Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 184.
89. Randall, Before the Luddites 178–79.
90. Alan Brooke and Lesley Kipling, Liberty or Death: Radicals, Republicans, and Ludd-
ites, 1793–1823 (Honley: Workers History Publications, 1993), 7–15.
91. Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Indus-
trial Revolution, Lessons for the Computer Age (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 119.
92. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class 530.
93. Sale, Rebels against the Future 119.
94. Thomis, The Luddites 86.
95. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class 530.
96. Sale, Rebels against the Future 119.
97. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class 530.
98. Randall, Before the Luddites 123.
99. H. O. 42/117.
100. Randall, Before the Luddites 242.
101. Ibid., 243. Randall provides a detailed summary of Jackson’s efforts before Parlia-
246 v Notes to Pages 60–72

ment on behalf of the cloth workers, deriving largely from Jackson’s The Speech of Randle
Jackson, Esq. to the Committee of the House of Common Appointed to Consider the State of the
Woollen Manufacture (London: Randle Jackson and Joseph Gurney, 1806) and an anony-
mous pamphlet, Observations on Woollen Machinery (Leeds: E. Baines, 1803). The frame-
work knitters, too, attempted to interpret the charter in their petition to Parliament in
1812.
102. Brooke and Kipling, Liberty or Death 10–11. Similar documents were found in
April 1812 after a Luddite raid on Joseph Foster’s mill near Horbury. Those documents
were forwarded to the Home Office by William Hay and appear in H. O. 40/1.
103. Randall, Before the Luddites 28–29, 37.
104. Ibid., 278–79.
105. Ibid., 279.
106. Brooke and Kipling, Liberty or Death 8.
107. Ibid., 9.
108. Roger Wells has detailed the activities of the United Britons in Yorkshire. See In-
surrection: The British Experience, 1795–1803 (Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited,
1983), 226–37.
109. Radcliffe Manuscripts 1.578; quoted in Brooke and Kipling, Liberty or Death 8.
110. Bohstedt, Riots and Community Politics 152.
111. Randall, Before the Luddites 269.
112. Thomis and Brian Bailey speculate that the two letters were written by the same
author; however, no stylistic features are cited as reasons for their speculations. See
Thomis, The Luddites 86, and Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion (New York: New York Univer-
sity Press, 1998), 49–50.
113. The same sort of containing maneuver is employed in the Nottinghamshire docu-
ment titled ‘‘By the Framework Knitters, A Declaration’’ (M10).

v midlands documents

1. John Rule has usefully summarized the dispute in The Labouring Classes in Early
Industrial England, 1750–1850 (London: Longman, 1986), 369–75. Somewhat less useful,
but more recent, is Brian Bailey’s discussion in The Luddite Rebellion (New York: New York
University Press, 1998), 144–53.
2. George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and
England, 1730–1848 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1981), 90.
3. Radcliffe Papers 126/46, West Yorkshire Archives Service, Leeds.
4. Point net, a type of mesh for hose, was first manufactured in 1776. None of the four
men (Flint, Taylor, Morris, and Lindley) credited with the invention of the machine used
to make it thought highly of the invention: ‘‘[A]lthough the mesh produced was the near-
est approach to the long-desired lacey mesh and was of the regular honeycomb-shape, it,
when wet, or even slightly damped, curled up and shrunk into a shapeless, stringy mass.
 Notes to Pages 73–79 v 247

This was because it was made ‘single press.’ ’’ Later, Rogers, a Mansfield stockinger, pro-
duced a doubled-pressed fast point net, which could be cut in any direction and would
not shrink or ‘‘rove.’’ By 1810 there were 1,500 to 1,800 such machines, 30 inches wide,
in Nottingham, according to W. H. Webb in ‘‘The History of the Machine-Made Lace
Manufacture,’’ Textile Recorder (15 June 1916): 41–42. Making of the single press was an
objectionable practice that motivated several of the Luddite documents transcribed here.
5. The two words following ‘‘By Order’’ appear to be an individual’s name, the first
name beginning with a T, the second with a D. Although the name appears to have been
struck out or smeared, some letters are evidently risers, narrowing the range of possible
names and suggesting ‘‘Thos.’’ I am less certain that ‘‘Death’’ is a proper reading of the last
name.
6. William Felkin, A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacturers
(1867; reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1967), 232.
7. Nottingham Journal, 16 November 1811.
8. Roy A. Church and Stanley D. Chapman, ‘‘Gravener Henson and the Making of the
English Working Class,’’ in Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution: Essays
Presented to J. D. Chambers, ed. Eric L. Jones and G. E. Mingay (London: Edward Arnold,
1967), 142.
9. Thomas Hayne of Nottingham, in a letter explaining to Secretary Ryder the prob-
lems in the town, remarks that the practice of reducing labor costs by paying workers in
goods (thread, cloth, and occasionally other items) was ‘‘very ruinous to the Workmen
and injurious to the trade at large.’’ He continues: ‘‘When the Workmen receive this pay-
ment in goods, except in that part which may consist of the necessaries of life, they have
no other means of turning these into money but by having recourse to the Pawnbroker,
and we can pretty well estimate what such a man will leave for the Workmen’’ (Hayne to
Ryder, 12 February 1812, H. O. 42/131).
10. Lord Newcastle seems to have held such a view, although with an emphasis on paci-
fication before relief. In a 20 November 1811 letter to Richard Ryder at the Home Office,
Lord Newcastle writes of the inhabitants of the vicinity of Mansfield, ‘‘They certainly are
very much to be pitied and when every thing is perfectly tranquil and that they find them-
selves subdued by being obliged to submit to the Laws I hope we may be able by some
means to relieve them’’ (H. O. 42/117).
11. In the Nottingham Review and the Nottingham Journal, the names appear in two col-
umns.
12. John Russell, ‘‘The Luddites,’’ Transactions of the Thoroton Society 10 (1906): 55.
13. ‘‘Town of Nottingham’’ Resolutions, Nottingham Review, 27 December 1811. In the
same list of resolutions, the council also offered a reward for information about a ‘‘cer-
tain threatening Anonymous Paper, addressed to the Mayor, and received by him on Sun-
day the 8th of December Instant, intimating to him, that unless he complied with certain
wishes express by the Author or Writer, it was intended on the part of the Author or Writer
to commit Murder upon some Person or Persons therein described. . . .’’
248 v Notes to Pages 85–93

14. Russell includes notes on Transcript 3 intended to clarify some of the words and
references in the letter. He says that ‘‘fugoffis’’ is ‘‘perhaps the same ‘fog-office,’ and used
as a description of the meeting place of the special committee, by way of a gibe at the
inability of the authorities, either by vigilance or reward, to discover perpetrators of out-
rages’’ (Russell, ‘‘The Luddites’’ 62).
15. Dr. John Willis was a physician specializing in mental diseases. Russell, ‘‘The Ludd-
ites’’ 62, notes that he had been called in 1811 to treat George III. That news had been
reported in the Nottingham Review, 29 November 1811.
16. St. Luke’s is a London hospital for the insane.
17. Malcolm Thomis, Luddism in Nottinghamshire (London: Phillimore, 1972), 18.
18. A seal (a circle enclosing an ‘‘S.’’) appears in the Russell transcription immediately
to the right of ‘‘By order of / King Ludd.’’
19. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to ignore or downplay the charter. Even
though he professes a measure of sympathy with the Luddites, Kirkpatrick Sale describes
the basis of stockinger claims as ‘‘some charter issued by Charles II in the 17th century’’
(emphasis added). See Sale, Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the
Industrial Revolution, Lessons for the Computer Age (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995),
99. Brian Bailey mentions the charter only once and ascribes to the charter granted by
Charles II the wrong date, 1657. See Bailey, Luddite Rebellion, 1.
20. J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled Labourer, 1760–1832 (London:
Longmans, Green, 1919), 259. The ‘‘endorsement’’ perhaps means nothing more than that
the ‘‘Declaration’’ was sent to the Home Office without an enclosing letter identifying the
sender.
21. Douglas has ‘‘Charles II.’’
22. Douglas has ‘‘28th.’’
23. Douglas has ‘‘III.’’
24. Douglas adds ‘‘as to.’’
25. Douglas inserts ‘‘by’’ following ‘‘to.’’
26. Douglas has ‘‘print.’’ This is a material misreading on Douglas’s part.
27. See later the open letter from ‘‘General Ludd’’ addressed to an ‘‘Unknown
Stranger,’’ returning goods stolen by some ‘‘Villinds’’ who had accompanied the general
on a raid at Clifton (Leeds Mercury, 15 February 1812, and Nottingham Review, 7 February
1812).
28. Rutland’s letter to Ryder also reports the result of posting the prince regent’s proc-
lamation and offer of reward for information: ‘‘I ought however to mention that soon after
the Royal Proclamation was posted on the Church Door of Sheepshead in this County, a
Handbill was exhibited at its side, stating that ‘as the Government had offered a Reward
of £50 for the conviction of offenders, there were 50 Bullets ready for the body of the first
man who should give information.’ ’’ (5 January 1812, H. O. 42/119).
29. Many of the manufacturers who signed the 15 December 1811 ‘‘Resolutions’’ also
are listed as signers of the 13 February 1812 proposals (transcribed later in the text). Most of
 Notes to Pages 94–103 v 249

them appear to be small manufacturers and masters. The ‘‘Resolutions’’ include condem-
nations of payment in goods, disapproval (as ‘‘injurious to the Trade’’) of the manufacture
of single-press point lace net, and disavowal of two anonymous letters from ‘‘Friends of
Ned Ludd, and Friends to Reason and Justice.’’
30. Malcolm Thomis, The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England (Newton Ab-
bott: David and Charles, 1970), 49.
31. The writer is attempting to spell out ‘‘two-course hole’’ and ‘‘single press.’’ In the
manuscript, the writer seems initially to have spelled out ‘‘ole,’’ then extended the ‘‘l’’ un-
derneath, and finally inserted, above a caret, ‘‘ole.’’
32. Roy Palmer, The Sound of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 104.
33. The papers are labeled: ‘‘1812 Jany 27. Statement of Outrages & from Notting-
ham, NB. This Statement was made out by the Police Magistrates during their Stay at
Nottingham with the assistance of Mr. Coldham the Town Clerk’’ (H. O. 42/119).
34. Full-fashioned work is a hosiery article that is woven in a single piece rather than
cut and resewn.
35. The line describes aspects of the process by which stocking material manufactured
on wide frames was made into hose. ‘‘Colting’’ refers to the practice of hiring workers, de-
scribed as ‘‘colts’’ because of their lack of maturity and experience within the framework
knitting trade, who had not completed apprenticeships. ‘‘Cutting’’ and ‘‘squaring’’ refer to
the practice of using large pieces of wide-knit fabric and cutting them into smaller pieces,
which were sewn into hose.
36. Gravener Henson, History of the Framework Knitters (1831; reprint, Newton Abbott:
David and Charles, 1970), 315–18; Felkin, History, 174.
37. Nottingham Review 21 February 1812.
38. Thomis, Luddites 179.
39. In his letter to Ryder, Thomas Hayne explains that the ‘‘Two Course’’ involves two
operations in making the hole. The method approved by the trade is ‘‘6 Course requiring 6
Operations,’’ resulting in a much more durable article (Hayne to Ryder, 12 February 1812,
H. O. 42/131).
40. This word in the manuscript is difficult to read. It could possibly be ‘‘be,’’ although
the first letter resembles the writer’s certain ‘‘d’’ more than it resembles the ‘‘b.’’
41. Contrast E. P. Thompson’s version in The Making of the English Working Class (New
York: Vintage Press, 1966), 556.
42. Ibid., 187.
43. Samuel Whitbread, MP, was one of a number of supporters of reform and political
liberties affiliated with Sir Francis Burdett and H. G. Bennet in the House of Commons.
Whitbread was among those rumored in depositions (such as those of Barnsley weaver
Thomas Broughton) to be intending to lead a revolution or ‘‘general rising,’’ of which
Luddism was thought to be a part (Thompson, Making 486, 580). Thomis mentions that
one writer—‘‘from a lunatic fringe of people whose scare stories were not based on any real
attempt to assess their local situation but were the products of vivid or disturbed imagi-
250 v Notes to Pages 105–114

nation’’—reported from York on 15 July 1812 that ‘‘Burdett and Whitbread were providing
great encourgement to the Luddites through their speeches’’ (Thomis, Luddites 83; citing
H. O. 42.125, 15 July 1812). Regardless of the accuracy of the York letter, clearly, Whitbread
was perceived to be friend to the oppressed textile workers. For information on Thomas
Broughton, see Thompson, Making 578, Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 314,
325).
44. My own brief search for victims of Luddite attacks named in the Home Office
Papers and in some of the histories does not indicate that any of the hosiers listed as having
acceded to the Plain Silk Hands’s proposals suffered the destruction of frames. A detailed
study of the correlation between the hosiers’ acceding to the proposals and immunity from
Luddite attack could perhaps clarify the relationship between the Luddites and the Com-
mittee of Plain Silk Hands.
45. Craig Calhoun, The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radical-
ism during the Industrial Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 60–61.
46. The word is barely legible, but it appears to end with a lowercase ‘‘l.’’ Russell reads
the word as ‘‘practicable’’ and the vertical line as an exclamation mark. The word could be
‘‘practicall’’ or ‘‘practicable,’’ but the generally literate character of the rest of the letter
indicates that Russell might be correct in reading it as he does.
47. Russell transcribes ‘‘Signed Joe Firebrand.’’
48. A. Aspinall, The Early English Trade Unions: Documents from the Home Office Papers
in the Public Record Office (London: Batchworth Press, 1949), has ‘‘Henton,’’ but the manu-
script reads ‘‘Henson.’’ ‘‘G. Henson’’ is certainly Gravener Henson, the Nottingham
framework knitter who tried to advance the stockingers’ claims through legitimate chan-
nels and who typically signed his name to his well-reasoned and carefully crafted texts.
Compare his 11 February 1812 advertisement, ‘‘To the FRAMEWORK KNITTERS of
NOTTINGHAM, THE COUNTY THEREOF and the TOWNS AND VILLAGES
ADJACENT 666’’ (H. O. 42/120).
49. Aspinall’s addition.
50. The manuscript seems to indicate that the letter preceding ‘‘Ludd’’ is ‘‘C,’’ rather
than the ‘‘N’’ that might be expected. Thomis reads it as ‘‘C’’ (Thomis, Nottinghamshire
43). It is unclear whether the letter in H. O. 42/120 was copied by a Home Office clerk, as
many were. The letter’s having been copied may explain the discrepancy.
51. By ‘‘wars,’’ I refer to the practices of publishing a document and responding in
the same print genre to that document. The Nottingham newspapers typically printed a
single, anonymous poem in each issue. Most of the poems were celebrations of the sea-
son, reminiscences of times past, or eulogies for the British navy. The poem ‘‘Industry
Distressed’’ was printed in the Nottingham Review, 6 March 1812:

INDUSTRY DISTRESSED.
a t ru e ta le .
How chang’d are the times! I’ve oft seen the day
Of Christmas approach, free from frowns;
 Note to Page 114 v 251

My creditor’s bills with ease I could pay,

With guineas, or shillings, or crowns!

Nor was the term, Bankers, in our village known,

To mean more than hedger or ditcher,
That work’d on the margin of fields that were sown,
Whilst his wife to the well took the pitcher.

But fine flourish’d paper has ’minished our coin,

And rais’d our banks without fences;
And knaves with their rag-money often combine,
Enough to distract a man’s senses.

By frugal industry, I had made it my care

To provide for the winter of age;
But unwarily caught in the bankruptcy snare,
Nought now can my sorrow assuage.

My barrels that used to be stor’d with GOOD ALE,

And wine which the elder produc’d,
Are worm-eat, and rotten, and not fit for sale,
Having many years never been used.

And useless the stone, where the pig lay in pork,

While others remain’d in the sty;
Nor hear we as once the carol or joke,
When say round our large Christmas pye.

No more my old consort nor I meet the smile,

This season was wont to produce;
Nor share in those visits which time so beguile,
Such visits being now out of use.

Not a vestige remains of my once happy lot,

The workhouse my refuge must be;
Must quit with reluctance my beautiful cot,
So dear to my partner and me.

That cot, where my ancestors liv’d in repute,

The spot where I drew my first breath;
such heart-rending thoughts, so sever and acute,
A period will soon have in death.

But what makes my misery fully complete,

My frame by Ne d L u d d has been broke;
252 v Notes to Pages 115–119

Release from these troubles, kind death I intreat,

But vainly thine aid I invoke.

But, hush! all rash thoughts which troubles create,

I’ll bow to adversity’s rod;
With humble submission I’ll yield to my fate,
And happiness seek in my G o d.

52. The elided names are Eldon and Ryder.

53. Since the mid-eighteenth century, Tewkesbury hosiers had undersold Nottingham
and Leicester by producing hose of inferior quality. On the conflict between Nottingham
and Tewkesbury masters, which resulted in the Tewkesbury Act (6 George III, cap. 29),
see Henson, History 359–71.
54. The tactic of opening at the post offices letters suspected to have been by Luddites
or their sympathizers was practiced widely, having been advocated by Sir Frances Freel-
ing of the postmaster general’s office and by Nottinghamshire hosier William Nunn in
a 19 December 1811 letter to the Home Office (H. O. 42/118). Other letters transcribed
here were discovered in just such a fashion. On the government’s use of the Post Office as
a surveillance arm, see Kenneth Ellis, The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in
Administrative History (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 60–70.
55. The phrase ‘‘nothing in hand’’ has a number of possible sources. Ecclesiastes 5 con-
tains a passage about inequity in distribution of wealth, but the precise phrase in Eccle-
siastes is ‘‘nothing in his hand’’ (Ecclesiastes 5:14, KJV), and it seems unlikely that the
poet would misquote a Scriptural passage. Another unlikely source is Martin Luther’s
Table-Talk; however, the English translation containing the phrase ‘‘nothing in hand’’ is
William Hazlitt’s The Table-Talk of Martin Luther (London: H. G. Bohn, 1857), DCVI:
(‘‘When he [Satan] finds me idle, with nothing in hand, he is very busy, and before I am
aware, he wrings from me a bitter sweat; but when I offer him the pointed spear, God’s
Word, he flies; yet, before he goes, makes a grievous hurricane’’). It does not seem likely
that a stockinger would quote from German.
Perhaps the most likely source is Samuel Rutherford’s sermon ‘‘The Deliverance of the
Kirk of God,’’ in Quaint Sermons of Samuel Rutherford, Hitherto Unpublished, with a Pref-
ace by the Rev. Andrew A. Bonar D.D. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1885). Rutherford
(1600–1661) was a Scottish Nonconformist pastor and political theologian, whose most
famous work, Lex Rex, or The Law and The Prince; a Dispute for the just Prerogatives of King
and People, outlined principles of constitutional government that were later embodied in
the Constitution Settlement of 1690 and the United States Constitution. The passage in
Rutherford’s sermon touches upon some of the themes raised in the poem:

How shall this then be that Babylon shall be destroyed and we restored? The Lord
answers this, that the deliverance is coming, but it would not come until that day
that He had appointed for it. To teach the Kirk of God to give God that much—
 Notes to Pages 119–120 v 253

as alas! He gets but little of that kind of us—that He will do for His own people at
length, though not for the present, and to look to that word in Psalm 25:22, that the
Lord will redeem Israel out of all his troubles, and Psalm 62:5: ‘‘My soul wait thou
only upon the Lord, for my expectation is from Him,’’ even to make God’s omnipo-
tence the object of their faith and of their hope, and learn to wait upon God only. ‘‘I
would do that,’’ says some, ‘‘but I have nothing in hand.’’ But we must remember that
all their stock is in God’s hand who hope rightly in Him; for if they had anything
in hand, it were not hope, as it is, Rom. 8:24: ‘‘Hope that is seen is not hope.’’ But
the thing which one sees not is properly the thing that he hopes for. And so the less
we have in hand we have the greater reason of hope. That no man may be troubled
with this, I have nothing for the present; but in such a case learn to believe in God,
and then ye have the more. How many rich men are there in the world who have
no more but only pieces of paper for all that they have, and yet men will account
them rich, albeit there be not two pence in their purse. The hoper and onwaiter
upon God is this way rich, yet all his sums are in God’s hands, who pays His annual
rents well, so that His annual rents they are better than the world’s principal sum.
(‘‘The Deliverance’’ 152–77, emphasis added)

The sermon had circulated as a pamphlet during the eighteenth century.

56. Perhaps an allusion to a line in Byron’s ‘‘An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill’’
(‘‘Who when ask’d for a remedy, sent down a rope’’) as well as to the Frame Bill itself,
which imposed hanging as punishment for frame breaking.
57. The quotation is from Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, Epistle IV:

Order is heav’n’s first law; and this confest,

Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.

58. One letter from Nottingham sheds some light on the proceedings below board be-
fore and during the March assizes. It comes from an informer who seems to hold a grudge
against some of the frame breakers. Dated 26 February 1812, it is enclosed with a 1 March
1812 letter from General Hawker to the Home Office:

i have rote this that ou may kno sum of the frame brakers, thomas bukson the bar-
ber in owld basford and thomas willbore he lives upon the flat in new basford and
mr dosley in owld basford and the maiser grines that stand stands in Nottingham
Market against the change on a saturday grindin, thees is sum of the Worst of frame
brakers, and is at all the frame brakin, and thomas Saxton in new basford is one of
the head men at layin plans how to go on to get to them. the maiser grines live in
sadby lane Nottingham, against the clock and hors, and Elias carnil in bulwel is the
head man at the committe and he lay plans how they must proseed, and thay seen
to Murder sum then that thay do not like and the way thay meen to Murder them
254 v Notes to Pages 121–123

is that when thay see them with a rope with a nouse in the middle of it, and one is
to put it over is head and then thay pull it at each end of the rope til he is ded and
thay meen to send sum delegates from bullwel and basford to Manchester to the
Wevers thear. and all this is true as I have rote as true as thear is a god in heaven
but you must Exques me putin my name to it, for I dar not. (H. O. 42/121)

Evidently, the letter had an effect, because William Carnell (or Carnill) was captured,
imprisoned in Nottingham, and sent before Judge Bayley, then trying cases of machine
breaking.
59. In the manuscript, the name is nearly illegible. Thomis’s transcription of it,
Byrnny, is reasonable (Thomis, Nottinghamshire 54).
60. What I have represented with the two closing brackets is actually one larger closing
bracket encompassing both lines on the manuscript.
61. Thomis transcribes the closing as ‘‘Yours for Genl Ludd / a trueman.’’ It may be
that ‘‘true man’’ was a real name, as many framework knitters in the vicinity were surnamed
‘‘Trueman.’’ See, for example, the 1814 letter from William Trueman to Bullock (H. O.
42/139, reproduced here and in Thomis, Nottinghamshire 77.
62. In the historical treatments of Luddism, there is occasional mention of the possi-
bility that local militia sympathized with Luddite aims. The perception of local sympathy
resulted in the government’s posting militia units from Devon, Sussex, Denbeigh, and
other remote areas to the various Luddite centers.
63. Large to Henson, 26 April 1812, Nottinghamshire County Archives CA 3984, I,
69, Nottingham.
64. Allsop to Large, 4 May 1812, Nottinghamshire Archives CA 3984, I, 84. Unfortu-
nately, I have been unable to locate Large’s ‘‘Last Dying Speech and Confession of Colt-
ing’’ to which Allsop refers.
65. The letter appears in the Nottinghamshire Archives CA 3984, I, 74, and in the
Records of the Borough of Nottingham (Nottingham: Nottingham City Council, 1952),
8:142–43.

Leicester 30th April 1812

Dear Sir
Yours of the 20th I had an am happy to hear that matters are in a fare hair for
succeeding I admire you plan and we fully acquiesce in it, You mention my petition
being Blotched and really you do it so funny that I cannot help laughing at that and
some other little matters which have come within my Knowledge very lately, but to
the business you say I must look out for somebody to come to Town if called for
now here I am lost we could sooner find a man than the money I was 5 Days in the
Country last week and we have scarcely paid expenses we rather hope to get some
in our Circular letter, if not we are stalled, Mr Toplas has sent us some large Bills
which have been posted up against Colting and I again request you to get this inser-
tion in the Bill in order that the act of the 5th of Elizb may be certainly extended to
 Notes to Pages 124–135 v 255

us. I have been informed that Mr Trantham Hosier of Nottm was shot on Monday
night at his own door, report says that on Saturday last he docked his hands two-
pence for pair and told them to tell Ned Ludd how true this may be I know not
certain it is that this is not a proper time to irritate the public mind by gross Insults
I dont know that the Hosiers of this Town mean to oppose our measures but many
of them have discharged their hands from having anythingto do with it, You shall
hear from me again soon
I am
Your respectfully
Thos Allsop

66. Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 269.

67. Rule, Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England, 369.
68. Chevening is a type of embroidery (Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer
270n1).
69. Like the name ‘‘Balfour’’ the word that I have transcribed as ‘‘Patrina’’ is not en-
tirely legible, particularly the character that appears to be ‘‘n.’’
70. Toplas was another member of the committee delegation.
71. Member of Parliament for Nottingham.
72. See Luddism, 1811–1817, as illustrated by documents in the Nottingham City Archives,
Nottinghamshire Archives 67.01q, typescript, n.d., p. 7.
73. Later in H. O. 42/124 is a handwritten version of the letter, prefaced by the fol-
lowing remarks: ‘‘The Author of the threatening Letter to Mr. Wood not having been yet
discovered he publishes a fac simile of it in the hope that it may assist in the detection.’’
74. Felkin, History 239.
75. Consider, for example, the verses on a paper posted on the toll gates of the New
Bridge in Manchester on 29 November 1800 and forwarded to the Home Office on 30 No-
vember 1800 by the Justice of the Peace, Thomas Butterworth Bayley (H. O. 42/53):

No peace, No King
to kill Billy Pitt it is no sin . . .
We will have a big loaf for a shilling
or else the Justices we will be killing

76. Palmer cites the song as Derby Broadsides 8672, Derby Broadsides Collection,
Derby Studies Library, Derby. Perhaps due to the song’s being moved, Palmer’s citation
is no longer accurate.
77. Palmer’s emendations, which improve the song for singing, hide the rough meter
of the popular, laboring-class song. Compare Palmer’s version of the first stanza and the
chorus:

G o o d people I pray, now hear what I say,

And pray do not call it sedition;
256 v Notes to Pages 135–141

For these great men of late they have cracked my poor pate:
I’m wounded, in a woeful condition.
Chorus
And sing fal lal the diddle i do,
Sing fal the diddle i do,
Sing fal the lal day.

78. Palmer has ‘‘Now it is not bad.’’

79. A reference to Burdett’s imprisonment in the Tower for some time during 1810,
an experience that Brian Bailey hints might have cooled Burdett’s enthusiasm for reform,
and which might explain the somewhat ironic treatment of Burdett in the song (Bailey,
Luddite Rebellion 68–69).
80. There is earlier evidence of correspondence between Bristol and the West Riding
of Yorkshire, where Luddism flared later. In the following letter from Bristol, the writer
professes sympathy and solidarity with the cloth dressers of the Leeds.
The letter is reproduced in Aspinall, who notes, ‘‘The original letter, after being inter-
cepted by the postal authorities, was sent on to its destination in order to prevent suspi-
cion’’ (Early English Trade Unions 69n2). Such a tactic was not unusual and is advocated in
a 25 June 1812 letter to Beckett from Freeling, regarding instructions for the postmistress
at Strand to open suspicious letters (H. O. 42/124). The original source is a copy in H. O.
42/70, Charles Thomas to George Palmer:

Bristol, 17 March 1803

We received your kind letter the 5th instant, and am sorry to hear that you have so
many enemies to contend with, as it must be very expensive to you when so many
men is out of employ. Hope you have had liberal supplies from most towns in the
kingdom; if you should be in want we have no objection of making you a small re-
mittance. Hope you will in a short time be able to give us an account of your having
met with good success, and be able to let the merchants and manufacturers know
they are in the wrong, and be ashamed of their nasty mean conduct. We shall always
be happy to hear from our brethren the cloth dressers of Leeds, as they are a set of
men which ought to be esteemed, and I hope is by all trades. Gentlemen, wishing
you health and respect, I remain you most obedient, Charles Thomas, President.

81. The ‘‘Bill’’ refers to the legal efforts of Gravener Henson and others to petition
Parliament for relief in the stocking trades. The authorities, such as Stevenson, rarely dis-
tinguished Luddism from the more peaceful attempts by the stockingers to participate in
public politics.
82. Few of the letter writers are known by name. In an 8 June 1812 deposition sworn
before Reverend John Becher, John Cooper Kirk, an Arnold framework knitter impris-
oned in Southwell, mentions an Arnold man named ‘‘Emmerson’’ as the writer of many of
the letters signed ‘‘General Ludd.’’ Some of the letters, he says, were put under doors by
 Notes to Pages 143–169 v 257

George Lovat of Arnold (H. O. 42/124). ‘‘Emmerson,’’ however, has not been completely
identified.
83. Hammond and Hammond, Skilled Labourer 230.
84. Malcolm Thomis, Politics and Society in Nottingham (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969),
38.
85. Perhaps the word might have been intended as ‘‘meretricor.’’
86. In the same issue of the Nottingham Review, on the same page as the letter from
General Ludd, the Review Office commends Sir John Cope Sherbrooke, who is described
as ‘‘Our Nottinghamshire Hero,’’ for his success in the war against America, as reported
in the previous Saturday’s London Gazette Supplement, 8 October 1814. The Nottingham
Review, 30 September 1814, quoted from the London Gazette Extraordinary, 27 September
1814, a report on the capture of Washington, an event in which, presumably, Sherbrooke
took part.
87. In the manuscript, the word could be read as ‘‘have’’ but it perhaps makes more
sense to interpret it as ‘‘hare,’’ a version of ‘‘are’’ with an initial aspiration frequently seen
in much of the phoneticized working-class writing from the Midlands and the North.
88. ‘‘Prizes’’ could be ‘‘prices.’’
89. The story of the Loughborough raid is told through witness accounts in Charles
Sutton’s Reports of the Trial of James Towle, at Leicester, August 10, 1816, for Shooting at John
Asher . . . (Nottingham: Sutton and Son, 1817). See also Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion 116–20.
90. Charles Sutton, Some Particulars of the Conduct and of the Execution of Savidge and
Others . . . (Nottingham: Sutton and Son, 1817), 3.
91. Ibid., 13. The man ‘‘who will soon be at large’’ is John Blackburn, called ‘‘Black-
borne’’ in the Loughborough convicts’ letters. See also John Crowder’s 17 April 1817 letter
to his wife, transcribed here.
92. The hymn is quoted in ibid., 13. Amos’s version uses the first-person plural. A
slightly different version, using the first-person singular, appears as number 786 in A Col-
lection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, With a New Supplement (London:
Wesleyan-Methodist Book-Room, 1889).

v northwestern documents

1. Letters in the McConnel, Kennedy and Company Papers for 1812 show continued
demand for cotton twist, which the company was hard pressed to meet. The papers can
be found in the John Rylands University Library, Deansgate, Manchester.
2. The letter appears in H. O. 42/121. See also the letter from Colonel Clay at Man-
chester to Ryder, 23 March 1812, H. O. 42/121.
3. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1966),
595; see also Duncan Bythell, The Handloom Weavers: A Study in the English Cotton Industry
during the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 189–95.
258 v Notes to Pages 170–180

4. Lloyd to Home Office, 10 April 1812, H. O. 40/1/1. Lloyd also informs the Home
Office that Wood’s name appeared in the materials taken from the ‘‘Manchester 38,’’ men
tried on 27 August 1812 at Lancaster and acquitted of charges of illegal oathing (Lloyd to
Home Office, August 1812, H. O. 42/127).
5. Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial
Revolution, Lessons for the Computer Age (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995), 116.
6. H. O. 42/122, reproduced later in the text.
7. The incident is treated in Malcolm Thomis, The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Re-
gency England (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1970), 22, and Garside’s letter to Ryder,
21 April 1812, H. O. 40/1/1 and 40/1/2.
8. Darvall, Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England (1934; reprint,
New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), 91n5, citing H. O. 40/1.
9. The number ‘‘41’’ seems to be an addition written in a different hand.
10. ‘‘A stop’’ is inserted between the line ending ‘‘put’’ and the next line, directly under
‘‘put.’’
11. The ‘‘e’’ in ‘‘Sevility’’ overwrites an ‘‘i.’’
12. The ‘‘i’’ in ‘‘ruined’’ overwrites an ‘‘a.’’
13. A new line begins with ‘‘ing.’’
14. The writer probably means ‘‘curs.’’
15. On a separate page, in handwriting resembling that of the copyist of the Falstaff
letter, a brief note identifies the persons who ‘‘will be looked to’’: ‘‘The Short hand are
Penson Darwell Melling, Pinington and Battersly.’’
16. Thomis, Luddites 87.
17. ‘‘The Plague among the Beasts’’ is one of Aesop’s fables. Several English editions
of Samuel Croxall’s translation of The Fables of Aesop were available in 1812. To give some
idea of the letter writer’s allusion, I reproduce here Croxall’s version of the fable from
Jean de La Fontaine, The Fables of Aesop, trans. Samuel Croxall (London: Cassell, Petter
and Galpin, 1879), 343–44:

A mortal distemper once raged among the Beasts, and swept away prodigious num-
bers. After it had continued some time without abatement, it was concluded in an
assembly of the brute creation to be a judgment inflicted upon them for their sins,
and a day was appointed for a general confession; when it was agreed that he who
appeared to be the greatest sinner should suffer death as an atonement for the rest.
The Fox was appointed father confessor upon the occasion; and the Lion, with great
generosity, condescended to be the first in making public confession. ‘‘For my part,’’
said he, ‘‘I must acknowledge I have been an enormous offender. I have killed many
innocent sheep in my time; nay, once, but it was a case of necessity, I made a meal
of the shepherd.’’ The Fox, with much gravity, owned that these in any other but
the king, would have been inexpiable crimes; but that His Majesty had certainly a
right to a few silly sheep; nay, and to the shepherd too, in case of necessity. The
 Notes to Pages 181–188 v 259

judgment of the Fox was applauded by all the superior savages; and the Tiger, the
Leopard, the Bear, and the Wolf made confession of many enormities of the like
sanguinary nature; which were all palliated and excused with the same lenity and
mercy, and their crimes accounted so venial as scarce to deserve the name of of-
fences. At last, a poor penitent Ass, with great contrition, acknowledged that once
going through the parson’s meadow, being very hungry and tempted by the sweet-
ness of the grass, he had cropped a little of it, not more however in quantity than the
tip of his tongue; he was very sorry for the misdemeanour, and hoped. ‘‘Hope!’’
exclaimed the Fox, with singular zeal; ‘‘what canst thou hope for after the commis-
sion of so heinous a crime? What! eat the parson’s grass! Oh, sacrilege! This, this is
the flagrant wickedness, my brethren, which has drawn the wrath of Heaven upon
our heads, and this the notorious offender whose death must make atonement for
all our transgressions.’’ So saying, he ordered his entrails for sacrifice, and the rest
of the Beasts went to dinner upon his carcase.

18. One April 1812 letter describes the people who joined in the Luddite riot at Middle-
ton on 20 April 1812: ‘‘One Thursday a numerous Body of People collected in Oldham,
chiefly from Saddleworth and Hollinwood. From the latter Place they were almost all Col-
liers, which when united with the rude uncultivated Savages of Saddleworth formed an
Assemblage of the most desperate Cast that can be imagined’’ (H. O. 40/1/1).
19. Daniel Burton was the owner of a Middleton mill that was destroyed by crowds
from Middleton, Oldham, Saddleworth, and surrounding towns on 20 and 21 April 1812.
‘‘Goodier’’ is Joseph Goodair, the owner of Stockport mill that was destroyed during riots
on 14 April 1812. Both Burton and Goodair used steam-powered looms in their mills. See
Thomis, Luddites 22.
20. Thomis, Luddites 96; see also Wood’s letter, 28 April 1812, H. O. 42/122.
21. Thomis, Luddites 26; Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, Chartists and Plug-
Drawers, 4th Ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1968), 53.
22. See Alfred Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester: A History of Leicester, 1780–1850
(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1975).
23. The word could be ‘‘five,’’ but comparison of the letters to those of the ‘‘ive’’ in
‘‘Divel’’ suggests otherwise.
24. The final letter in ‘‘faile’’ and ‘‘saile’’ could possibly be a shortened ‘‘l,’’ such as also
appears in ‘‘well.’’
25. On Vansittart’s role in the repeal, see Adrian Randall, Before the Luddites: Custom,
Community and Machinery in the English Woollen Industry, 1776–1809 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991), 204–5. 5 Elizabeth, cap. 4 was repealed in 1814. On the
statutes generally, see J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled Labourer, 1760–
1832 (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 168–71.
26. Gravener Henson to Thomas Roper, 30 June 1812, Nottinghamshire Archives CA
3984, I, 145, Nottingham.
260 v Notes to Pages 188–199

27. The ‘‘predecessor’’ to whom the writer refers is Spencer Perceval, who served as
chancellor of the exchequer from 1807 until 1809, after which he was prime minister until
his assassination in May 1812. His assassination caused the cabinet shuffle that resulted in
Vansittart’s becoming chancellor.
28. Also included with the letter to Blacow is the following handwritten sheet, in very
large letters, posted in Liverpool about the same time as the letter. Nothing intrinsic to the
letter associates it with Luddism, as the expressions therein are almost universal in Britain
at the time. Only its connection to the ‘‘Iulius’’ Luddite letter sent to Reverend Blacow
provides a reason to include it. The source is H. O. 42/123.

5000 For The

Heads of the Prince R
Lord Castlereagh and
Secrtary Ryder No Poppery
Britons Prepare for
Slaughter
Burdett our Captain
for ever Huza

29. The underline is more of a flourish consisting of a series of short loops. On the
left side of the page, on the same line as the name ‘‘Iulius,’’ appears a symbol resembling
a capital lambda with a chi superimposed. The significance of the symbol is unclear.
30. Keightley’s name also has a flourish underlining it. The first name seems to be
Archibald.
31. Roy Palmer, Sound of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 100. Com-
pare the weekly wages (around ten shillings) of Midlands workers in plain silk, a griev-
ance voiced in the open letter in the Nottingham Review, 20 December 1811, by the Derby
Committee of Plain Silk Hands.
32. Palmer, Sound of History 100; Darvall, Popular Disturbances 7. In fact, the act did not
go into effect until February 1811, although unsold cloth had been piling up in the Leeds
Cloth Hall since 1810 (Thomis, Luddites 46).
33. The ‘‘w’’ in ‘‘weavers’’ is of a size between a capital and a lower case, perhaps under-
scoring a conclusion that the compositing of the bill was hasty and amateurish. No such
problems appear in the later bill printed by Rogerson of Blackburn.
34. The ‘‘u’’ (selected by the typesetter but not turned upside down to create an ‘‘n’’)
is more evidence of an amateurish printing job.

v yorkshire documents

1. Letter, 22 January 1812, H. O. 42/119; Frank Darvall, Popular Disturbances and Pub-
lic Order in Regency England (1934; reprint, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969), 107;
Malcolm Thomis, The Luddites: Machine-Breaking in Regency England (Newton Abbott:
 Notes to Pages 200–210 v 261

David and Charles, 1970), 50; Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels against the Future: The Luddites
and Their War on the Industrial Revolution, Lessons for the Computer Age (Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley, 1995), 105.
2. On the arson fire at Ottiwells Mill and the resistance of Yorkshire croppers to the
introduction of dressing machines to the region’s woolen industry in the first decade of the
nineteenth century, see Adrian Randall, Before the Luddites: Custom, Community and Ma-
chinery in the English Woollen Industry, 1776–1809 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991), 176. See also Brian Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion (New York: New York University
Press, 1998), 12.
3. The story is told in D. F. E. Sykes and G. H. Walker, Ben O’ Bill’s, The Luddite: A
Yorkshire Tale (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kenty, 1898), 166–68.
4. Lesley Kipling, personal letter to author, 23 June 1999.
5. Palmer notes that the song has been recorded on Bill Price, The Fine Old Yorkshire
Gentleman, Folk Heritage FHR038, 1972.
6. Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, Chartists and Plug-drawers, 3rd ed. (Brighouse:
J. Hartler, 1895), 51. Walker was one of the five Luddites hanged following the York as-
sizes. He was discovered despite an attempt to evade the law by enlisting in a company of
Royal Artillery at Woolwich.
7. See E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements
in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), chap. 2,
especially 23–24.
8. Palmer has found a popular song, ‘‘The Gallant Poachers,’’ which resembles ‘‘The
Cropper’s Song.’’ Palmer is not certain which song predates the other but acknowledges
that he can find no version of the poaching song dated as early as 1812. See Roy Palmer, The
Sound of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 105, 316n. Regarding the tune,
see Roy Palmer, ‘‘George Dunn: Twenty-one Songs and Fragments,’’ Folk Music Journal
2.4 (1973): 276.
9. ‘‘Specials’’ refers to special constables appointed by the Home Office to assist the
Yorkshire magistrates in suppressing the machine wrecking in the West Riding. Ironically,
George Mellor’s employer and relative, John Wood, was a special constable.
10. Palmer has ‘‘night be night’’ (Sound of History 106).
11. Daisy Baines, in Huddersfield Weekly News, 22 January 1881.
12. Lesley Kipling, personal letter to author, 23 June 1999.
13. Thomis, The Luddites 183.
14. W. B. Crump, The Leeds Woollen Industry (Leeds: Thoresby Society, 1931), has
‘‘Government.’’
15. Darvall, Popular Disturbances 111.
16. Thomis, Luddites 184.
17. Crump has ‘‘mispresented.’’
18. As earlier, Crump has ‘‘Government.’’
19. Crump includes a note on Mr. Hanson, summarizing his support for the workers
262 v Notes to Pages 210–212

(Crump, Leeds Woollen Industry 230n). Hammond and Hammond provide a more detailed
account:

The leniency shown to the riotous [Lancashire] weavers was not extended to a man
in a more prosperous condition of life, who was charged with having encouraged
the strikers. Joseph Hanson, a colonel in the volunteers, who had stood as candi-
date for Preston and was popular with the weavers for his advocacy of the mini-
mum wage Bill, rode on to the field during the monster meeting of May 25 [1808
at Manchester] and addressed the people in opposition to the wishes of the captain
of the Dragoons. His own witnesses, citizens of respectable character, swore that
he merely urged the people to go home peaceably, but witnesses for the prosecu-
tion, a sergeant, two corporals, and two of Nadin’s constables, swore that Hanson
had used inciting expressions. ‘‘My lads, your cause is good; be firm and you will
succeed.’’ ‘‘I will support you as far as £3000 will go, and if that will not do, I will
go farther.’’ ‘‘Nadin and his faction shall not drive you from the field this day.’’ ‘‘I
am sorry your Bill is lost. My father was a weaver, and I am a weaver, and I am the
weavers’ friend.’’

Hanson was sentenced in May 1809 to a six-month imprisonment and was fined one hun-
dred pounds for having thus encouraged the strikers. The Lancashire workers offered to
pay his fine by penny subscriptions, an offer he declined; nevertheless, ‘‘39,600 subscribers
presented him with a silver cup.’’ See J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, The Skilled
Labourer, 1760–1832 (London: Longmans, Green, 1919), 81. See also Archibald Prentice,
Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester: Intended to Illustrate the Progress of
Public Opinion from 1792 to 1832 (London: C. Gilpin, 1851), 32–33. As John Dinwiddy points
out, Hanson could not have led any rebellion in the Cotton Country because he had died
in 1811. See Dinwiddy, ‘‘Luddism and Politics in the Northern Counties,’’ Social History
4.1 ( January 1979): 56, citing Cowdry’s Manchester Gazette, 14 September 1811. Cf. Duncan
Bythell, The Handloom Weavers: A Study in the English Cotton Industry during the Industrial
Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 192.
20. The version in H. O. 40/1/1 has ‘‘passess an Act to put down all Machinery hurtful
to Comonality.’’
21. See Depositions of William Hall and Joseph Drake, T. S. 11/812.2666, Treasury
Solicitor’s Papers, Public Record Office, Kew, London; Alan Brooke and Lesley Kipling,
Liberty or Death: Radicals, Republicans, and Luddites, 1793–1823 (Honley: Workers History
Publications, 1993), 18–19; Radcliffe to Lt. Gen. Grey, 16 March 1812, H. O. 42/121.
22. At the bottom left is added ‘‘Delivered by Mr. Vickerman to Jos Radcliffe Esq.’’
23. Among the authorities, a similar fascination was manifested as a fear of correspon-
dence between other Luddite regions and Nottingham. As late as 23 January 1817, Charles
Mundy, writing to Lord Sidmouth from the vicinity of Loughborough, fearing a resur-
gence of Luddism, reports as a matter of great significance the arrival in Loughborough
 Notes to Pages 212–222 v 263

of a man from Nottingham whose purpose it was to address the Loughborough Hampden
Club (H. O. 40/3, Part 1).
24. As Robert Reid points out, Millbridge is not the same as Milnsbridge, Radcliffe’s
home three miles west of Huddersfield on the River Colne. Millbridge is a village six miles
northeast of Huddersfield on the Spen. See Robert Reid, Land of Lost Content: The Luddite
Revolt, 1812 (London: Heinemann, 1986), 19n.
25. In their brief excerpt from the letter, Brooke and Kipling have ‘‘Sovrns [Sover-
eigns],’’ observing that it is ‘‘Jacobin terminology’’ (Liberty or Death 21). The handwriting
is unclear enough that their reading might be correct.
26. Read as ‘‘spoke.’’
27. Reid, Land of Lost Content 100.
28. This approach was developed by Hayden White in The Content of the Form: Nar-
rative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1987) and has been usefully employed in recent historical work such as James Vernon, ed.,
Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England’s Long Nine-
teenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
29. Peel’s The Risings of the Luddites contains a variation, appearing to combine the
‘‘Forster’s Mill’’ and ‘‘Horsfall’s Mill’’ songs. Peel reports of John Hirst, an acquitted York-
shire Luddite, that ‘‘when engaged in rocking his grandchildren to sleep he invariably
soothed them by crooning out an old Luddite ditty, every verse of which . . . ended with
the refrain:--

Around and around we all will stand

And eternally swear we will,
We’ll break the shears and windows too
And set fire to the tazzling mill. (270)

30. For a brief account of Cartwright’s defensive preparations, see Reid, Land of Lost
Content 106–7, drawing upon the York Special Commission records of Baines and Howell.
31. The writer appears to be attempting to spell ‘‘enough.’’
32. Frank Peel, Nonconformity in Spen Valley (Heckmondwike: Senior, 1891); E. J.
Hobsbawm, ‘‘Methodism and the Threat of Revolution in Britain,’’ History Today 7 (1957):
120; J. A. Hargreaves, ‘‘Methodism and Luddism in Yorkshire, 1812–1813,’’ Northern History
26 (1990): 160–85.
33. Reid, Land of Lost Content 133.
34. Peel, Risings of the Luddites 218–19.
35. Thomis misreports the date of Horsfall’s murder as 27 April 1812 (Luddites 184).
36. The excerpt for this version of the Luddite oath comes from a spy’s report for-
warded by Bolton magistrate R. A. Fletcher to Home Office Undersecretary John Beckett,
23 March 1812, H. O. 42/121. See also the oath included as part of the ‘‘Address to Cotton
Weavers and Others’’ (Y23).
264 v Notes to Pages 223–229

37. E. P. Thompson, ‘‘The Crime of Anonymity,’’ in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and So-
ciety in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay. (New York: Pantheon, 1975), 273.
38. Thompson, ‘‘Anonymity’’ 322.
39. Peel, Risings of the Luddites 56.
40. An abridged transcription, with several differences from the version given here,
appears in Thompson, ‘‘Anonymity’’ 322.
41. The ‘‘attempt’’ described is probably the attempted murder of William Cartwright,
owner of the mill at Rawfolds, near Hightown, on 18 April 1812.
42. Presumably, the man who ‘‘fel last nite’’ is Nottingham hosier William Trentham,
shot on 27 April 1812, one night before the murder of William Horsfall, Marsden mill
owner. George Mellor and two other croppers were convicted and hanged for Horsfall’s
murder. Trentham’s attackers were never discovered, but, earlier, Trentham had received
a letter (M30) complaining of low pay for women outworkers employed in chevening.
43. Thompson reads ‘‘Guelps.’’ The word is a misspelling of ‘‘Guelph,’’ and it adds a
tone of British nationalism to the letter. Guelph was the name of a German noble family
whose line of descent includes the British royal family ruling during the period. The writer
appears to be commenting with disfavor upon the nationality of the Hanoverian royals,
especially George ‘‘Juner,’’ the prince regent. Additionally, the word ‘‘Juner’’ applied to
both the Huddersfield Edward Ludd and the prince regent is a leveling stylistic device.
44. Contrast the 31 December 1812 letter to Joseph Radcliffe from ‘‘A friend to peace.’’
The letter names several persons and gives fairly precise information about them (Rad-
cliffe Papers 126/113, West Yorkshire Archives Service, Leeds).
45. On 14 June 1812, less than a month after Gott’s receipt of this letter, Gibraltar Mill
at Pudsey, just two miles west of Gott’s home, was burned down. See Crump, Leeds Woollen
Industry 72–73.
46. See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage,
1966), 381–82.
47. Much of the correspondence in H. O. 42/125 treats the problem of French pris-
oners of war confined in distressed parts of England. Escapes posed one problem, but pos-
sible French sympathy for the plight of hungry English laborers caused more concern—
a fact that the author of the letter from Daypool uses to advantage.
48. Apparently an attempt to spell ‘‘Castlereagh.’’
49. Immediately after the number is an equilateral triangle with a small circle inside,
another small circle above, an ‘‘x’’ at the lower left, and a ‘‘v’’ at the lower right. The symbol
appears on no other Luddite document that I have found.
50. There were four members of the prosecution team: J. A. Park, a barrister; John
Lloyd and Jonas Allison, solicitors; and Henry Hobhouse, of Lincoln’s Inn, who was su-
pervising the conduct of the case on behalf of the Home Office. The handwriting on the
brief does not seem to be Lloyd’s or Hobhouse’s.
51. Milnes also told Taylor that at the ‘‘rising’’ they would kill the officers of the local
 Notes to Pages 229–238 v 265

regiment, after which the men would join the Luddites (Rex v. Charles Milnes of Geldhill &
William Blakeborough, T. S. 11.813.2673).
52. Palmer, Sound of History 251.
53. Thompson has ‘‘Though’’; however, ‘‘Tho’’’ appears clearly in the treasury solici-
tor’s brief.
54. Thompson inserts an apostrophe, ‘‘another’s.’’
55. Thompson has ‘‘show.’’
56. Thompson has ‘‘thief ’’ and ‘‘does.’’
57. Thompson has ‘‘laws.’’
58. For discussion of the popular reaction to Perceval’s death, see Thompson, Making
of the English Working Class 570, and Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement (London: Long-
mans, 1959), 157.
59. The word is almost illegible.
60. Read ‘‘pellit’’ as ‘‘bullet’’ and ‘‘mad’’ as ‘‘made.’’
61. The word is almost illegible.
62. ‘‘His will be done’’?
63. Reid, relying upon the version in Mellor’s own hand in the Home Office Papers,
has the addressee as ‘‘Thomas Eddie’’ (Land of Lost Content 224). Such a reading is un-
likely. Ellis is named in the 31 December 1812 letter to Radcliffe from ‘‘A friend to peace’’
(Radcliffe Papers 126/113).
64. The first two letters are unclear; perhaps the name is Schonefield, as the previous
name.
65. Read as ‘‘they.’’
66. On Jimmy ‘Gabbler’ Rourk and Samuel Brook, both croppers from the area, see
Brooke and Kipling, Liberty or Death 51. Brooke and Kipling also speculate on the possi-
bility of a connection to Ireland.
This page intentionally left blank
 Bibliography

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Nottinghamshire County Archives, Nottingham
Parliamentary Papers, Public Record Office, Kew, London
Radcliffe Papers, West Yorkshire Archives Service, Leeds
Treasury Solicitor’s Papers, Public Record Office, Kew, London

v n e w s pa pe rs

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 Index

References to Luddite documents are indexed only when the references appear separate from
the documents themselves

Acland, Major General, 191, 192, 237 Barlow, William, 62

Aesop, 45, 180, 258–59 Barnes, William, 101
Alfred the Great, 20, 97 Basford, 113–14, 152, 153
Allsop, Thomas 122–23, 254–55 Battyeford, 61
Allsopp, L., 150 Bayley, Sir John, 120
Althusser, Louis, 20 Beaverlee (Beauvale), 112–13
American Non-Intercourse Act, 194 Beckett, John, 72, 110, 170, 196
American War for Independence, 179 Bedford, John, 237
Amos, John, 154, 162–65 Beer, William, 152
Ancoats, 168 Bellar Gate, 144
anonymity, 1, 2, 6, 30, 69, 74–75 Bellingham, John, 133, 190, 230–31; sub-
apprenticeship, 14–15, 22, 24, 34, 48, 50, scription for widow of, 139
110. See also colting Bentley, Phyllis, 7
arms raids, thefts, 3, 16, 91–92 Berlin Decrees, 61
Arnold, 2, 15, 73, 113–14 Birkby, 228
arson, 3, 15, 40, 41–42, 52, 55, 106, 174–75, Blackburn, 167
182–83, 199, 200–201, 214, 218 Blackburn, John, 154, 156, 161, 166
‘‘Articles to Be Observed by the Wool- Blackner, John, 143
combers,’’ 26 Blacow, Reverend W., 189–90, 260
Asher, John, 154, 156, 166 Blake, William, 18, 19
Atkinson, Joe, 238 Blakeborough, William, 229
Atkinson, Thomas, 30, 52, 53, 216–17, Bohstedt, John, 7, 8, 12–13, 14, 17, 20, 33,
221–22, 230, 238 35, 43, 50
attacks on mills, 4, 16, 53, 204, 207; on Bolton, 33, 37–39, 59, 167, 183, 192
power looms, 169, 170, 171, 178, 180 Bolton, Mr (Arnold hosier), 73–74
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 19, 57, 61, 148, 174,
Bailey, Brian, 2, 5, 7, 13–14, 49 194–95, 210
Baines, John, 63, 184 Booth, John, 207, 219
Baker, Robert, 98, 102, 112, 120, 137 Bradford, 57, 210
Bamford, Samuel, 34 Bradley Mills, 52, 217, 238
Barber, Mr. Alderman, 159 bricolage, 18, 19, 88
274 v Index

Brief Institution, 51–53, 67 colting, 15, 22, 24, 94, 100, 122, 127, 248
Bristol, 138, 256 combination (also correspondence,
Brontë, Charlotte, 7 unions), 16, 35, 39, 43, 49, 50, 52, 62, 66
Brook, Samuel, 238 Combination Acts, 35, 62
Brown, Kenneth, 30 community in Luddite regions, 12–13,
Brown, William, 92 17–18, 19–23, 33–43, 243–44; and frame-
Bull, Angela, 12 work knitting trade, 70, 77, 106, 120;
Bullock, John, 143–44 and woolen trade, 50, 53, 60–67
Bulwell, 15, 73, 113–14, 143 Conant, Nathaniel, 98, 112, 120, 137
Burdett, Sir Francis, 135, 148, 154, 249 Constitution, English, 19–20
Burke, Edmund, 19 Cooper, Lieutenant Alfred, 236–37
Burke, Kenneth, 46 correspondence. See combination
Burton, Daniel, 45, 180–81, 182, 259 Cotton Arbitration Acts, 35
Burton, Emmanuel, 180 cotton industry, 16, 18. See also spinning;
Burton, William, 156, 163, 166 weaving
Butterfield, Herbert, 19 cotton point net, 72, 89–91, 109, 246–47
Byrnny, Mr (Worksop jury foreman), cropping, croppers, 2, 3, 16, 34, 47–67,
120–21 199–238 passim
Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 114–16 Crowder, John, 154, 165–66
Bythell, Duncan, 5, 34, 35 Croxall, Samuel, 258–59
Crump, William, 74, 76, 94, 105
Calhoun, Craig, 7, 12–13, 14, 17, 19–20, 21, custom, 17, 20–32, 33, 42, 43, 44, 47,
50, 58, 96, 106 58–67, 99
Carnill, William, 120
Cartledge, Mr. (Elland), 236–37 Daisy Baines (serialized story), 203
Cartledge, Samuel (Nottingham), 41 Darvall, Frank O., 4, 7, 11, 31, 92, 172
Cartwright, Major John, 88, 96, 154 Davenport, William the Elder, 92
Cartwright, William, 30, 148, 201, 216, Dawson, J., 92
230, 238 Daypool, 227
Castlereagh, Lord, 227 Deighton, 238
chalking, 7, 44, 46 Derby, 2, 80, 122, 127, 135, 146, 152, 155–56
Chambers, J. D., 22, 24 Devon, 33, 42
Charles II, 23, 28, 88–91, 97 Dibdin, Charles, 97
Charter of the Worshipful Company of Dimock, Wai Chee, 29, 46
Framework Knitters, 14, 21–25, 27–32, Dinwiddy, John, 5, 7, 12, 45–46
34, 67, 71, 88–91, 97, 241 Dobcross, 55, 219
Cheshire, 2, 3, 16, 33, 34, 47 ‘‘Domestic System’’ of West Riding
Chester, 191; assizes, 186; Gaol, 177 woolen manufacture, 50, 60–61
Chesterfield, 121–22 Douglas, David, 11, 89, 90
Chorlton, 168 Douglas, Mr. (Holywell or Manchester),
Chow Bent, 191 181–82
Church, R. A., and S. D. Chapman, 73 Dressing machines, 172
class, 17, 36, 44, 46–47 Dumfries, 144–46
class consciousness, 18, 49 Dyke, J. and G. Mettam, 153
Clifton, 101 Dyott, General William, 139
cloth dressing (West of England shear-
men), 50, 53 Eastwood, 113
Cobbett, William, 20, 148 Eaton, Richard, 146–52
Coldham, George, 10, 85–86, 95, 98, economic analysis or engagement, by
143–44 Luddites, 36, 40, 41–44, 46, 48, 49,
collective identity, textual forging of, 55, 64; in Midlands, 70, 93–94; in
32–33, 35, 37–39, 46–47, 48 Northwest, 174, 181
colliers, 3, 182 Edgeley, 171
 Index v 275

Eldon, Lord, 115 Gott, Benjamin, 52, 207–9, 225

Elland, 236–37 Grey, General Thomas, 219
Ellis, Thomas, 67, 233 Grimshaw, George, 15
Emerson (or Emmerson; suspected Ludd- Grimshaw, John, 194
ite writer), 141, 256–57
Enfield, Richard, 10, 70 Halifax, 57, 210, 220, 229, 237
Enoch (hammers), 54, 203 Hall, Reverend Mr., 159
eponym, 6, 18, 29, 32, 46–47, 69, 75 Hall, William, 203
Epstein, James, 19 Hammond, J. L., and Barbara Hammond,
2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 24, 89, 96, 124–25
Felkin, William, 10, 22, 100, 133 Hampdenites, 184–85
Ferraby, Special Constable John, 232 Hankin, Major, 167, 191, 192
Fire Office Agents, 41–42, 174–75 Hanson, Joseph, 62, 210, 261–62
Fletcher, Colonel Ralph, 167, 196, 223 Hardy, Richard, 92
Flintshire, 3, 4, 33, 45, 167 Hargreaves, J. A., 221
Foster, John, 33, 42–43, 46 Harvey, Mr., 100
Foster, Joseph, 217 Hay, Reverend William, 45, 167, 170,
Foster’s Mill, 53, 61 175–76, 178, 181–83, 187, 191
frame breaking acts, 1, 24, 25, 28, 30, 31, Hayne, Thomas, 247
57–58; in Midlands documents, 112–16, Heathcoat, John, 153–54, 156
130–32; in Northwestern documents, Henson, Gravener, 10, 22, 24, 100, 102–3,
187 110, 116, 122, 127, 154
frames, shearing, 3, 15, 16, 48, 49, 51, 53, Henty, G. A., 7
54, 55, 56–57, 60, 65, 199, 200; breaking Herbert, Joseph, 110
of, 201, 202–3, 209, 211, 218 Hightown, 54, 201
frames, wide knitting, 3, 15, 24, 74, 94– Hill End, 208–9
100; breaking of, 2, 16, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, Hinckley, 153
70, 73, 88–92, 94–101, 102, 106, 116, 135 hiring practices, 40, 47, 168
Framework Knitters Company, 24, 48, 69, Hirst, Joe (clothier), 238
74, 106, 241–42 Hirst, John (cropper), 263
framework knitting, knitters (also historical interpretation of Luddism, 6–
hosiery), 2, 10, 14–15, 18, 34, 35, 36, 47, 14, 19–32, 49–50; compartmentalizing
50, 64, 69–166 passim; lace, 2, 3, 72, 89– approach, 49–50; historians’ naming
91, 100; plain silk, 74–77, 79–84, 93–94, Luddism, 4–5; ‘‘labor approach,’’ 52
103–5, 121, 145 Hobhouse, Henry, 233, 243
France, 22, 61 Hobsbawm, E. J., 7, 11, 14, 202, 221
Frearson, John, 92 Hog, John, 228
Freeling, Francis, 176 Holbeck, 52
French Revolution, 13, 19, 53, 61, 63, 208 Holland, Lord, 103
fustian makers, 3 Hollingsworth, Edward, 73
Hollinwood, 259
Garner, John, 203–4 Holt, David, 168
Garside, Thomas, 106, 171, 172 Holywell, 4, 33, 47, 181–83
George III, 28–29, 56–57, 85, 208 Honley, 203–6
gig mills, 3, 15, 16, 22, 48, 50, 52, 64, 65, Horbury, 217
199, 200 Horsfall, William, 3, 53, 149, 200, 203, 219,
Gilbert, Thomas, 92 221–23, 231–32, 237
Gledhill, James ‘‘Citizen,’’ 61 hosiers, 3, 14, 15, 30, 34, 35, 69–166 passim
Gloucestershire, 52, 106 hosiery. See framework knitting
Godalming, 127, 146 Houghton, 219–20
‘‘golden age’’ myth in handloom weaving, Hucknall, 113–14
34–35 Huddersfield, 2, 30, 47, 50, 52, 55, 61, 63,
Goodair, John, 171, 182, 259 64, 66–67, 71, 199–238 passim
276 v Index

Huddersfield Weekly News, 203 poor’’ (Y8), 55, 62; to Mr Byrnny

Hunt, Henry, 148 (M27), 28, 144; to Mr Harvey (M15),
27, 100–101; ‘‘To Mr Smith Shearing
Ibstock, 92 Frame Holder’’ (Y5), 56–59, 62–63;
industrialization, 4, 19, 23, 42, 43, 44 from ‘‘Peter Plush’’ to ‘‘Edward Ludd’’
‘‘Industry Distressed’’ (non-Luddite (Y14), 66, 71–72; from ‘‘Thomas Paine’’
poem), 250–52 to Richard Wood (N13), 44; ‘‘Thou-
invasion, threat of, 187 sands upon thousands’’ to ‘‘McConnal
Ireland, 57, 149, 210 & Kennady’’ (N4), 40–41
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 18, 19
Jackson, Randle, 60 Liverpool, 167, 189–90, 191
Jacobinism, 6, 19, 22, 36, 53, 56, 59, 61, 63, Liverpool, Lord, 115–16, 227
65, 148, 199 Liversedge, 201
Janowitz, Ann, 20, 243–44 Liversedge, Douglas, 12
Jarman, Reverend Mr., 160 Lloyd, John, 167, 170, 171, 196, 228
‘‘John o’ Grinfield’’ (song), 194 Lock, William, 94
Jones, Abraham, 22 Locket, Joshua, 238
Jones, T. W., 176 London, 15, 23, 106, 141, 146; mention
Jones, Thomas, 138 in ‘‘Hunting a Loaf,’’ 136; Thomas
Large’s description of, 126–29; Morning
Kennedy, James (Manchester spinning Chronicle, 114; threat of revolution in,
master), 169 187
Kennedy, James (Selkirk stockinger), Longroyd, 233
110–11 Loughborough, 2, 91–92; attack on John
Kipling, Leslie, and Alan Brooke, 7, 13, 53, Heathcoat’s factory, 153–55, 157–67
61, 200, 203 Ludd (also Lud), 2, 6, 18, 25, 28–32, 39,
Kirkby, Mr., 168 46, 56, 59, 64–67, 180; Captain, 70,
126; Edward, 70, 153, 223–24, 228; Eliza,
Lacy, Charles, 72–73 178–79; General, 95–100, 101–2, 112–15,
Lakoff, George, 46 120–21, 137, 149–52, 174, 177, 192, 208-
Lancaster, 184; Castle, 192 9, 212–15, 229, 238; General, carried in
Large, Thomas, 122–24, 126–29, 186 effigy, 180; General Ludd Junior, 223;
Latham, Thomas, 116–18, 122–23 General Ludd Senior, 224; ‘‘Iulius Lt
law, 15, 16, 18, 20–32, 48–52, 56, 59, 60, de Luddites,’’ signatory, 189–90; King,
65, 99 85–86; ‘‘lud’’ as verb, 174; ‘‘Luddites,’’
Lee, William, 22 plural signatory, 187; Mr., 121, 220; Ned,
Leeds, 50, 52, 67, 207, 210, 216, 225 15, 73–74, 78–79, 84–85, 90–92, 100–101,
Leeds Mercury, 29, 216 121–22, 128, 129–33, 135, 152, 188, 208,
Leicester, 2, 27, 127, 139–41, 146; Gaol, 211, 251; Ned, as eldest son of General,
2, 153–55, 157–67; Thomas Large’s 151–52
description of, 123–24
Leicester Chronicle, 139, 162, 164 MacCalman, Iain, 19
letters: from ‘‘A. B.’’ to Joseph Radcliffe Macclesfield, 33, 167, 176
(Y13), 53; ‘‘Eliza Ludd’’ to Mr. Simpson Macclesfield Courier, 177
(N8), 45; ‘‘Falstaff’’ to ‘‘Fire Office Maitland, General Thomas, 139, 231–32
Agents’’ (N5), 41–42; ‘‘General Ludd’’ Manchester, 1, 3, 4, 13, 15, 16, 18, 32–47
to Editor of Nottingham Review (M44), passim, 57, 59, 62, 64, 167–98 passim;
32; from ‘‘Genl C Ludd’’ to Spencer mention in Midlands documents, 106,
Perceval (M22), 28; from ‘‘Genl Ludd’s 122; mention in Yorkshire documents,
Soliciter’’ to Joseph Radcliffe (Y7), 55, 210, 219
64–65; from Holywell to Mr. Douglas Manchester Exchange, 170, 178, 184
and others (N10), 45; to Joseph Rad- Mansfield, 122, 129, 141, 142
cliffe signed ‘‘I ham for lud and the Marsden, 3, 54, 231
 Index v 277

McConnel and Kennedy Company, 40– oaths, illegal, 3, 192, 222, 236
41, 42, 168, 169, 172–74 Oatlands Mills, 3, 199
Mead, Henry, 22 Oldham, 33, 37, 42–43, 57, 180, 210, 259
Mee, John, 17–18, 19–20 Orders in Council, 17, 61, 119, 190
Melbourne, 24, 86–87 Ottiwells Mill, 200
Mellor, George, 8, 67, 200, 207, 221–22,
231–33, 237 Page, William, 110
Methodism, 221; hymn sung by Lough- Paine, Thomas, 19, 22, 61, 63, 64, 169,
borough Luddites at execution, 164–65 184–85
metonymy, 29, 46–47 Palmer, Roy, 97–98, 194, 255, 261
Middleton, 34, 178, 180, 183, 259 Parliament, 1, 25, 38, 48, 57–60, 67, 89–
Middleton, John and Martin, 219–20 91; petitions from cotton trade to, 193,
millenarianism, 19, 226 196; petition from woolen trade to, 48,
Milne, Nathaniel, 30, 45, 178, 179–81 51, 55, 65, 233; petitions of the Frame-
Milnes, Charles, 229 work Knitters to, 15, 22, 24, 78, 108–12,
Milnsbridge, 211–17, 231–32, 263 126–29; threat against, 121
miners, 182 parody, 26–28, 78
Mitchell, Elizabeth and Melicent (sisters paternalism, 36, 42, 49, 62, 94, 99, 147
of Joshua), 160 Patterson, A. Temple, 184
Mitchell, Joshua, 154, 158, 159–60 Payne, William, 24
Mitchell, Reverend Mr., 157, 165 Peach Tree (Nottingham tavern), 163
moral economy, 17, 23, 25, 31, 36, 55, 66, Peel, Frank, 7, 10, 63, 95, 200, 201, 203,
70, 125 217–18, 221, 223, 226, 263
Morley, Thomas, 145 Perceval, Spencer, 1, 28, 57, 84–85, 112,
Mundy, Squire, 163 130–32, 133–34, 210; reference to murder
of, 187, 189, 191, 230, 260
narrative, 20; historiographical use of, 19, petition, 15, 24, 26, 35, 36, 37–39, 43, 44,
263 46, 57, 59, 64, 65, 67, 78; rejection of
nationalism, 22–24, 31, 44, 63, 66, 67 petitioning, 210, 215, 235
Needham and Bray and Company, 153 Philips and Lee Salford Cotton Mills, 172
Needham and Nixon Company, 145 Platt, G., 182
negotiation, 3, 27, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 42, Pocock, J. G. A., 21
48, 49; between framework knitters and Pollard, Mr, 169
employers, 69, 74–84, 86–87, 93–94, 141 Pope, Alexander, 118
Newcastle, Duke of, 247 Prescott, Reverend Charles, 196
Norcliffe, Edmund, 61 Preston, 167
Norton, Colonel Thomas, 8–9 Prestwich, 175–76
Nottingham, 2, 15, 19–32 passim, 41, 64, price increases (of food and necessaries),
66, 69–166 passim; mention in North- 16–17, 38; linked to high farm rents, 183;
western documents, 191; mention in in Midlands, 77, 81–84, 86–87, 133; in
Yorkshire documents, 212, 223–24 Northwest, 171, 182, 192
Nottingham Corporation Committee, 28, Prince Regent, 26–28, 31, 36, 37, 56, 66,
78–79, 84–86, 112 78, 85, 88, 112, 148–49, 208, 210, 224,
Nottingham Gazette, 146–52 264; burned in effigy, 170; direct threats
Nottingham Journal, 15, 75, 85, 110, 148 mailed to, 136–38, 186; indirect threats,
Nottingham Review, 24, 32, 74–78, 79– 182–83, 189, 190–91, 192; petitions to,
84, 86–87, 88, 93, 96, 100–102, 103–5, 38, 171, 177, 193
107–10, 114, 250–52, 257; conflict with proclamations (Luddite), 2, 27, 39; ‘‘To
Gazette, 146–52 all Croppers, Weavers &c & Public at
Nunn, William, 2 large’’ (Y4), 23, 56, 62–63; ‘‘Declara-
tion; Extraordinary’’ (M1), 25–26, 28;
Oates, Woods, and Smithson Company, 70–73; ‘‘By the Framework Knitters, A
199 Declaration’’ (M10), 25–26, 28–29, 30
278 v Index

quality of frameworked goods, 3, 14, 21, Royal Exchange Insurance Company, 52

24, 30, 32, 74, 89–91, 99–101, 108–9, Rudé, George, 7, 13, 70
113–14; cut-ups, 108, 128, 248; gauge, Rule, John, 7, 9, 12
81–84, 89–91, 93–94; single press (also Rule Book of the Company of Framework
two-course hole), 21, 27, 89–91, 95, 100, Knitters, 21, 24, 241
106, 109, 127, 249 Russell, John, 7, 10, 70, 79, 85, 95, 100, 106
quality of wool in calico trade, 196 Rutherford, Samuel, 118, 252
Rutland, Lieutenant Colonel, 78, 92
Radcliffe, Joseph, 8, 30, 53, 55, 60, 61, 62, Ryder, Richard, 1, 78, 115, 120, 178, 183, 187
219, 233, 234, 237–38; threats sent to,
211–17, 221–22, 230–32 saddlemakers, 2, 207, 219
Radcliffe, William, 35 Saddleworth, 259
Radford, 87 Sale, Kirkpatrick, 7, 13, 14, 56–58, 96, 242
radicalism, 3, 12, 13, 18–20, 34, 42, 45, 46, Salford, 30, 45, 178
53, 63, 169 Salvatori, Laura, 12
Randall, Adrian, 5, 7, 13, 17–18, 20, 21, Savidge, Thomas, 153–55, 157–59, 162,
50–53, 59–62, 64, 239–40 Scotland, 57, 106, 110–12, 146, 210
Rawfolds Mill, 8, 10 Selkirk, 110–12
Rawson, John, 166 Shears Inn, 54, 201
Raynes, Captain Francis, 10 Sheffield, 57, 122, 210
reform, 4–5, 12, 16, 36, 37, 44, 56, 57; call Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 29
for, in Midlands, 88, 96, 135, 147; call Sidmouth, Viscount, 141, 142, 150, 155, 196
for, in Northwest, 170, 184–85, 193 Simpson, Mr. (Manchester), 178
Reid, Robert, 7, 12 Simpson, S. (Nottingham), 146
rent of stocking frames, 21 Smith, Charles, 193
revolution, revolutionary discourse in Smith, John, 127, 148
Luddism, 4–5, 10, 11, 12, 22–23, 45, 56– Smith, Mr. (clothier of Hill End), 208–9
63; in Midlands, 112, 121; in Yorkshire, social distance between classes, 35, 39, 42,
216, 231–32 44, 71, 118
Revolution of 1688 (also Revolution songs: ‘‘The Cropper’s Song’’ (Y2), 53–
Settlement), 20, 23 54, 96, 224; ‘‘Forster’s Mill’’ (Y10),
rhetoric, 6–8, 14, 17–18, 33, 36, 69–70, 88, 53, 200; ‘‘General Ludd’s Triumph’’
137, 199; constitutive, 19–32, 37–47, 48, (M14), 7, 28–29, 30, 54, 71, 95, 137, 194;
59, 61, 64–67, 176, 209; democratic, ma- ‘‘Horsfall’s Mill’’ (Y1), 218; ‘‘T’ Three
joritarian, 25, 31, 62, 71, 97; duplicitous, Cropper Lads o’ Honley’’ (Y3), 53;
well-wishing, 136, 215, 216, 225–27, 237, ‘‘Well Done, Ned Ludd’’ (M32), 150;
238; familial, 40; forms and models, 25– ‘‘You Heroes of England’’ (Y19), 30
28, 71, 133; legal, 20–32, 48–49, 52, 55, Southcott, Joanna, 221
64–66, 70–72, 73, 89–91, 95–100, 112– Southwell, 150
14, 116–18, 133–34, 212; local, 17, 48, Spears, John, 160
52–55, 57, 67; representation formula, Spence, Thomas, 19
27, 29, 62 spinning, spinners (cotton), 3, 4, 35, 40,
Richardson, James, 110–11 41, 47, 167, 168, 169, 172–74, 198
riots, 3, 15, 17, 27, 33, 36; antimachinery, spinning machines, 15, 34
14–16; ‘‘classic model,’’ 33–34; food, 1, Spitalfields, 14
16, 36, 167, 168, 170, 178 statutes: protective of trades, 16, 21, 22,
Roberts, John, 166 23, 48, 51, 55, 57–58, 61, 65; repeal of
Robin Hood, 29, 54, 97–98, 106 protective, 18, 23, 24, 48, 57–59, 64, 66,
Rochdale, 57, 167, 210 188
Roper, John, 166 steam-powered looms, 3–4, 15, 16
Roper, Thomas, 126 steam-powered winding machines, 41
‘‘rough parade,’’ 170 Stevens, James, 141, 142
Rourk, James, 238 Stevenson, James (Leicester mayor),
Rowbottom, George, 25, 113–14 139–41
 Index v 279

Stevenson, John, 98 in cotton trades, 34, 35, 38, 43, 44, 45,
stockingers. See framework knitting 171, 177, 182; decrease, linked to shear-
Stockport, 3, 4, 33, 37, 106, 167, 169, 171, ing frames, 199; in framework knitting
172, 178, 196 trade, 21, 24, 30–32, 69, 74–78, 81–84,
Sutton, Charles (Nottingham Review 86–87, 89–91, 93–95, 99–100, 103–5,
editor), 114–16, 129, 146–52 107–8, 125–26, 149, 153; payment in
Sykes, D. F. E., and G. H. Walker, 7, goods, 30, 109, 188
10, 63 Walker, John, 201, 224
Walker, Martha, 238
Taylor, Enoch, 54 war: against America, 32, 149–52; as cause
Taylor, John, 61 of economic distress, 4, 17, 35, 44, 108,
Taylor, Special Constable Joseph, 229 119–20, 179, 195, 234–35; against France,
Taylor Hill, 211, 238 138
Tewkesbury, 116–18, 146, 252 Ward, E., 155–56
Thomis, Malcolm, 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, 49, 52, Warren House Inn, 200
58, 85, 96, 102, 125, 146, 176 Watch and Ward Act, 53
Thompson, E. P., 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, weaving: cotton handloom, 3, 5, 16, 33–47,
28, 37, 49, 57–60, 62, 69–70, 96, 102, 59, 168, 198, 234; woolen, 207–8
125, 129, 223, 226 Weightman, George, 223
Toller, Ernst, 7 West Country (also West of England), 13,
Toplas, William, 127 48, 50, 59, 60, 227
Tories, 19 Westhoughton, 175, 178
Towle, James, 2, 153–54 Whigs, 19
Towle, William, 154, 156–57 Whitaker, Thomas, 243
trade, depression of, 16–17, 43, 61; frame- Whitbread, Samuel, 103, 249
work knitting, 20–32, 34, 70–71; wool White, Hayden, 263
cloth dressing, 18, 47–67 Whitefield, 175–76
tradition, of community, 12, 18, 33, 35, 36; Wigan, 33, 41, 167, 174–75, 192
of trade, 30, 35, 36, 39, 42, 44, 46, 47 Wilkison, Mrs., 237
Trentham, William, 123, 124–26, 149, Willis, Dr. John, 248
157–58, 264 winding machines, 174
Trevit, Biddles, and Bowler (hosiers), 106 Withers, William, 154, 160, 162
Trueman, William, 143–44 Wolseley, Sir Charles, 29
Tupman, Mr. (owner of Nottingham women, 3; hiring of, 40, 168, 169, 173, 196
Gazette), 146, 151 Wood, Charles (Macclesfield master), 177
two-course hole. See quality of frame- Wood, Henry (Leicester hosier), 27,
worked goods: single press 132–33, 134
Wood, Ottiwell (Manchester reformer),
Union of Friendly Societies, 35 44, 170, 184
unions. See combination Wood, Richard (Manchester borough-
Union Society, 143–44, 144–46 reeve), 44, 169, 170, 184
United Britons, 60–61 woolen industry, 2, 10, 13, 16, 47–67,
United Committee of Framework Knit- 199–238 passim
ters, 107–13, 117–18, 122–23, 139–40, 188 Worksop, 28, 121
Worrall, David, 18
Vansittart, Nicholas, 48, 188, 260 Wright, High Sheriff Thomas, 72
Vaughan, Reverend E. T., 156
Vaymouth, Southcot, 22 York, 3; Castle, 231–33, 237; mention in
Vernon, James, 19 Midlands documents, 122, 149; trial and
Vickerman, Francis, 53, 211, 238 execution of Luddites at, 8, 149, 221–22,
229, 231
Wakefield, 57, 210
wages, 3, 4, 14, 16; complaint about, 195; Zerzan, John, and Paula Zerzan, 12