Luddism (1811-1817) is basically a phenomenon where the breakage of machinery appears with a noticeable concentration in time and with an unusual intensity in the history of British industrialism. It was not the first time frames were attacked, but the first time they were so extensively.

          Far from a main political motivation, Luddism was the consequence of an unprecedented economic distress in the framework-knitting and lace manufacturing in the Midlands. Since 1740, it became a popular saying the phrase “as poor as a stockinger”. It may be an exaggeration but the fact is that an average stockinger earned only seven shillings a week and “while he worked the frame, his wife seamed the stockings and his children wound the thread from hanks on to bobbins”.

          As soon as 1710 it is possible to trace the first disturbances in relation with the forthcoming Luddism, more than a century before it all started. In that year, a mob of stockingers enters the house of a hosier called Nicholson and beats him and his twelve apprentices, smashing the frames and throwing them out the windows. During the next two nights, 100 frames were destroyed.

          Later on, the trade moved to the Midlands (Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire), not due to these outrages but to the successive attempts of regulating hosiery and its wages.

          Similar alterations of public order were to occur as well in 1752-1753 and 1778-1779, both dates coinciding with two frustrated attempts on behalf of the framework knitters to regulate the trade as fiercely as they had in London.

          When on the 11th of March 1811 stocking frames are attacked again, incessant rumours spring all over the Midlands. In successive weeks, frame-breaking becomes an almost diary event; uninformed commentators from the House of Lords believe Luddism has to do with the shock produced in the trade by the arrival of new machinery. Radical activists blame the Tories and reckon the disturbances are an attempt to discredit any reform movement. Some think Luddites are actually receiving instructions from William Cobbet and other national leaders of the reform movement in London. Gravenor Henson, whose importance in the development of the legal consequences of the period will be later related, dares to say that it is all a scheme put up by the Government to enable it to place vast areas “under the heel of military despotism”.

          Nevertheless, the more reasonable and verified cause of Luddism is well expressed through the pages of The Nottingham Journal by “The Plain Silk Hands”:

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.

             Through the pages of the radical The Nottingham Review, an  address from the framework knitters depicts more or less the same situation when it is there confessed that “a Man that has full employ, with all is industry, and a Woman, with all her care and economy, can by no means support a Family with any degree of comfort”. Though both messages, one in the Journal and one in the Review, seem to share a serene tone, it is necessary to admit that through the quiet examination of how both papers accounted of Luddism very different biases are to be found. The Nottingham Journal was, basically, an instrument in the hands of the Tories. It would be never published there any menacing or aggressive letter from the Luddites; nor the very terms “Luddites”, “Ludd” or “Luddism” appeared very often, but scornful adjectives towards those “atrocious disturbers of the public tranquility”.

          In spite of that, both newspapers tend to share a common trend of the periodicals between the 18th and the 19th centuries: they had just begun to obtain detailed information from foreign and national affairs and therefore they became more reluctant to focus their view over local issues, even when they could be as relevant as Luddism undoubtedly was.

          One way or another, it is possible to enunciate a main and synthetic reason for the outbreak of Luddism: it arrived “at the crisis-point in the abrogation of paternalist legislation, and in the imposition of the political economy of laissez-faire upon [...] the working people”. And it is so because the ancient customs of the trade and the old lists of agreed prices between hosiers and journeymen were about to disappear. Low quality products and declining wages were the two main drastic responses of the hosiery industry to a sudden crisis following the boom of 1810.

          Luddism thus became almost a desperate exit to such distressing circumstances, when the workmen regarded themselves as “little better than mere engines to support a jealous competition in the market”.

          Leaving apart the discussion of its possible causes, Luddism can be examined from the point of view of public order and social control. It is from this point of view that it becomes unquestionably a real challenge to the machinery and capabilities of local authorities. Not because they were local, but because they were inefficient.

          The Luddites always operated in small mobs, rarely more than forty or fifty, and making use of a wide range of clever strategies whose effectiveness is well documented. First of all, they were very selective and their attacks “did not consist of random acts”. They destroyed  “only those frames making cut-ups low quality products, usually made up in the so-called “wide” frames] or those belonging to hosiers who were paying below agreed rates”. As the General Ludd’s Triumph Ode confirms:

The guilty may fear but no vengeance he aims [general Ludd]

at the honest man’s life or Estate,

his wrath is entirely confined with wide frames

and to those that old prices abate.

These Engines of mischief were sentenced to die.

            Apart from that selectivity, they were highly organised and disciplined, and thus able to co-ordinate simultaneous attacks in several villages at the same time, while following a complex system of signals, watchwords, disguises and secrecy. They situated some “guards armed with defensive weapons and parties for entering the houses with destructive weapons”.

          There is a very realistic description of one of those attacks, occurred in Basford, where “stocking frames were attacked “with ponderous hammers, and scattering the broken fragments of wood and iron about the public road”. After the work of destruction was done, “the captain called them over by numbers, to which they answered, and, on his firing a pistol, the men uncovered their faces and dispersed”. William Felkin, the author of the very famous “History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufacturers”, was himself a framework knitter of the time (though he ended as a lace manufacturer) and he is able to depict very vividly the courageous behaviour that was possible to find in some Luddites:

The man [a Luddite] at once perceived his danger, threw himself on the roof; passing along others he saw in the dim light that the earth lately turned up in a garden below, and leaped from the caves of a three-story home upon it. The frame breaker quietly passed through a kitchen where a family were at table, and scaped.

          The strength of the Luddites laid as well on the fact that local population supported, more or less actively, their claims and even their nightly attacks. Moreover, they constituted a solid group and “even when in prison or at the point of death” their oath, the one they took when they first joined, “seemed to close the mouths”. The newcomer swore fidelity “under the penalty of being sent out of the world by the first brother” who shall meet him. The oath had to be learnt by heart in order to make the new Luddite able to administer it later on; a written copy of it was provided too.

          Another common tactic was to spread threatening letters among the owners of frames who incurred cut-ups, deceitful wages or truck payments. Those letters were usually signed by an imaginary “King Ludd” or “General Ludd”, a mysterious leader that was, in fact, imaginary. One of those letters warns a hosier that “because your frames are secured by the presence of so large a civil and military force you have nothing to fear but can defy us with impunity”. Later on the undersigned (Ned Ludd) makes the frame owner understand that there are other methods of punishment and he dares even to explain how “Spirits of Turpentine Tar and Powdered Gunpowder mixed together” can be situated easily under the owner’s door and “lighted by the application of a bit of Touchpaper”. This “will do the business instantly”.

          Another example of threatening letter, this time addressed to a foreman of a Nottingham jury, is even more terrible, since “General Ludd” tells him to amend his “character” towards the Luddites, otherwise “you may be called to repentance soon. Remember you are a marked man”.

          To face these complex strategies of terror and outrage became a target for the local authorities, though their capabilities in tackling with the disturbances were quite reduced. First of all, the attacks were mainly concentrated around villages, not in the town of Nottingham itself. Villages were more difficult to maintain under control with the scarce forces available.

          The two heads of the machinery of order were the Town Clerk, Mr. George Coldham, and Henry Clinton, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord-Lieutenant of the County. Coldham, until his accidental death in 1815, was in charge of the town, while the Duke of Newcastle took care of the village districts. The latter had a much more difficult task to accomplish, and through the examination of some of the reports he sent to the Home Office in London it is possible to argue that his knowledge of the situation was quite insufficient. For example, he was absolutely mistaken about the nature and cause of the Luddite disorders when he confessed that “a new machine has been invented which enabled the manufacturers to employ women” and that “foreign agency is strongly suspected to be the support and mover of the whole”.

          No wonder he found himself overwhelmed at the clever actions of the frame-breakers: “at present we are working entirely in the dark. Before long I anxiously that we may succeed in our endeavours”. Nevertheless, he admitted that “if I only knew what to do I should have no hesitation in carrying it into effect”. His disorientation was almost total.

          George Coldham, the Town Clerk, showed rather more efficiency in his procedures. He adopted strong precautions from the beginning, keeping up from the 21st of November 1811 “a nightly watch of thirty-six Constables” and placing members of the military in different parts of Nottingham.

         He assured to the Home Office that “a Military Guard could be moved at any Moment to any part of their district which was in danger”. He required from the special and regular constables a complete report, every morning, of  “the state of the Town for the preceding night”. He was right when he reckoned the causes of Luddism were in “the distress occasioned by the failure of the Trade”, and again when he confessed that the levying of contributions for the promotion of Luddism was the root of the problem and therefore it would last until that way of financing could be stopped.

         Meanwhile, the Duke of Newcastle reported that “the rioters” were “completely overawed by the force which has been brought against them and it is expected that order will be very soon entirely restored”. This would not happen until seven years later.

          Both Coldham and the Duke of Newcastle made use of the forces of order available during the period 1811-1817; basically, these were the following:

          – Police force. Robert Reid refers that in 1812 the only regular police force was “a handful of Bow Street Runners attached to London magistrates’ offices”. The rest of magistrates all around the country relied upon usually unpaid constables that where locally recruited amongst “manufacturers, small Masters of traders and seldom members of the working class whose misbehaviour they policed”.

          – Voluntary defence associations. As Luddism was supported by a vast part of the local population, it became almost a need not to rely on these associations, but to renew and resurrect the old system of Watch and Ward. Here the recruitment became compulsory and it was explicitly enabled by the Nottingham Peace Bill. It was extensively used when the team of both special and regular constables turned up to be insufficient.

          – Yeomanry Cavalry (between 50 and 60 members) and regiments of militia (600-700 members). They were really effective when dispersing any kind of mob. Nevertheless, as precedents of the modern territorial army, they were rather trained for military purposes than for civil duties.

          – Regular army. More efficient than the former three, their force was increasingly concentrated in the North (especially West Riding). During the summer of 1812 more than 12.000 troops arrived to the disturbed districts between Leicester and York. These forces were “larger than many actual armies with which British Generals had waged and won important foreign campaigns”. Between 1811 and 1813 generals Maitland, Grey, Dyott and Hawker maintained a fluent co-operation with local and civil authorities. The area commander in question planned his campaign in consultation with them, “whenever and wherever they requested it”.

          As a result of the profound collaboration between the forces sent by the Central Government and the local machinery of order, “they developed closer contacts and relationships than they had ever previously known as local notables from public affairs and industry; they acquired the habit of correspondence with central figures in London”, especially with the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr. Ryder.

          As a result of the extraordinary perseverance showed by the Luddites, the use of repressing forces had to be complemented by other schemes. Three of those schemes, perhaps the most important of all, were legislation, a secret net of spies and regular informers and, at last, rewards for any information conducting to the conviction of the rioters.

          In the Parliament the whole affair was mainly appreciated as something “to suppress” as soon as possible. Secret committees of both Houses appointed to study the reports arriving from the localities affected. However, the parliamentary action was at the moment focused on war and foreign affairs. The Government was granted with the powers for which it asked in order to solve the disturbances.

          Four bills were requested and the four were passed by uninformed and generally apathetic members of the Parliament:

          – The Framebreaking Bill, passed too late (February 1812) and actually never put into effect.

          – The Nottingham Peace Bill, passed at the same time that the former. In case of necessity, it enabled the local authorities to call upon anyone for service in the Watch and Ward.

          – The Unlawful Oaths Bill, passed in May and absolutely ineffective.

          – The Preservation of the Public Peace Bill and the Act of Indemnity or “Public Safety Bill”, passed in July.

          A fifth one became the more controversial of all, making the frame-breaking a capital offence. Luddism was from February 1812 not threatened by fourteen-year transportation, but with death. The hardening of the punishment originated some averse reactions, and not solely on the side of the Luddites. George Coldham commented in a report to the Home Office the disadvantages of the new Bill:

It is as I feared, I have had a long conference with those who have given me most important information, and kept a watch upon the motions of the Framebreakers, and they will do so not a moment longer than the law is as it now remains. They cannot [...] act where the death of a fellow creature must be the consequence of their giving such information”.

            From all this legislative action Frank O. Darvall deduces that the Parliament did not achieve a synthetic vision of what was happening in the Midlands. It seemed “to think in water-tight compartments”, dealing with “different aspects of disturbances separately”. He reckons that “upon the whole it limited its action to doing what the Government requested of it”.

          One way or another, a more effective and undoubtedly attractive method of fighting against Luddism was the configuration of a quite dense net of informers and spies. Some names have remained: Bent (known as B.), John Stones, Simeon Stones and Oliver the Spy. These agents operated even before the first outbreak of Luddism took place in 1811, and continued to exist after it had died out. They were recruited amongst soldiers, members of the public and sometimes even convicts. Some of them not even informed about possible disturbances in order to prevent and repress them, but they prompted them. It was a way of keeping their employment. For the same purpose they tended to exaggerate, and they “did more than anyone to foster the threat of a national uprising which never took place”.

          The third and more desperate attempt to control Luddism and promote the scarce help proportioned by the public was the rewards. As soon as the 14th of December 1811 it is possible to read in The Nottingham Journal a proclamation “by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales” which, in a pompous style, offers £50 for each Luddite sent to prison by means of the information given. Apart from that, the Town Clerk offers in that page £500 to those able to pass information about some threatening letters sent to “the Magistrates and Corporate Body”.

          Still in the same page, notice is given about the creation of a Special Committee of the Corporation of Nottingham. The (for that age) important amount of £2.000 is offered to the Committee to face Luddism. From this sum rewards will be extracted, in a “very liberal” proportion, to those helpful informers disposed to collaborate with the local authorities.

          It would be most unfair to finish a discussion about Luddism without stopping in an outstanding personality of the time: Gravenor Henson.

          Henson represented the legal struggle for the framework knitters’ rights. Luddism became more desperate and less heroic during its last years, sometimes even constituted a well-paid job where destruction was accomplished for money.[ Meanwhile, on the side of the law but against the contemporary legislation, Gravenor Henson criticised the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1880 which “had forced the trade unions into an illegal world” of  “secrecy and hostility to the authorities”. These Bills would not be abolished until 1824.

          Nevertheless, Henson became a model for forthcoming reformists and constitutional protest. He founded a quasi-legal association, the United committee of Framework Knitters, and tried to oppose the “Gagging Act” (popular name for the Bill that made frame-breaking a capital offence). The Committee even supported and actually prepared and sent a Bill “For Preventing Frauds and Abuses in the Framework Knitting Manufacture”.

          The papers and letters of this Committee are available in their manuscript form at the Nottingham Archive Office. Through their reading we are able to assess, for example, the extremely demanding job faced by Henson and his colleagues (especially Thomas Large and Thomas Latham, the first being with Henson in London and the latter staying in Nottingham). The necessary co-ordination with other centres of framework-knitting caused problems from the beginning. The continuous and fluent correspondence between these men was absolutely crucial for the vast task of elaborating a Bill. Henson had to face even the Irish strong accent when he travelled to Dublin and he had to ask for a concrete street: “it being wrote Malpas, and pronounced Maypas, I was taken to Marlborough Str. (pronounced Maybor) and Mapert Street”. In spite of that, Henson was totally devoted to the Bill (which was not passed by the House of Lords), and he demanded that devotion from all his comrades.

          He writes to Thomas Latham that “if any man in the Trade refuses to do his Duty in the making of the Articles for the Recovery of his Trade Knock his Teeth down his Throat instantly”. The framework knitters’ papers were seized in 1814 from the Committee headquarters and they have helped to clarify many aspects of the parallel effort to do it “the right way” in the middle of the Luddite outrages.

          As Kate Tiller remarks, the nineteenth century period is most rewarding for the historian because of the range of new and detailed sources of information it produced. In my particular case, I have had to appeal to printed sources primarily because of my limited knowledge of the English language. Nevertheless, I dared to decipher the framework-knitters’ papers and it resulted to be most interesting; I was helped by the Borough Records of Nottingham, where it is possible to find some of those documents perfectly transcribed.

          Returning to the main issue developed above, it would be fair to end trying to answer a very simple question: was Luddism a revolutionary challenge for Britain? For sure it was not. It meant a desperate exit for the distressful situation of some framework knitters, but the movement was strongly concentrated on the Midland counties and had an essentially local nature. Henson’s activities were the political face of the struggle, but actually both ways were disconnected and Henson expressed his “outmost abhorrence” about the outrages. He thought “no individual is or can possibly be justified in such  diabolical actions”.

               However, the main conclusion deduced from the repression and opposition to Luddism is the following: “to the authorities of the day its causes were not a matter of prime importance; they saw the problem as one of law and order and their main concern was to suppress Luddism and punish the evil-doers for the wrongs committed”.