Luddism in Nottinghamshire

          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”.