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Updated: May 10, 2025
"We have had a man down from town ever since you have been away, but we have done no good. He went up to Varley and tried to get into the confidence of the croppers, but somehow they suspected him to be a spy sent down to inquire into the Luddite business, and he had a pretty narrow escape of his life.
The non-success which had attended their efforts, and the execution of all their leaders, thoroughly cowed the rioters, and their ranks were speedily thinned by the number of hands who found employment in the rapidly increasing mills in the district. Anyhow from that time the Luddite conspiracy ceased to be formidable. The Sankeys' mill at Marsden flourished greatly under Ned's management.
Unhappily, this last cause, being the only one visible to artisans, was regarded by them as the sole cause of their distress. During the autumn and winter of 1811 "Luddite" riots broke out among the stocking-weavers of Nottingham. Their name was derived from a half-witted man who had destroyed two stocking frames many years before.
This device, which he imagined would impoverish us to enrich his own States, was the greatest aid that he could have rendered to our hard-pressed social system; and readers of Charlotte Brontë's realistic sketches of the Luddite rioting in Yorkshire may imagine what would have befallen England if, besides lack of work and low wages, there had been the added horrors of a bread famine.
If the reader will refer to the account I have given of Miss Bronte's schooldays at Roe Head, he will there see how every place surrounding that house was connected with the Luddite riots, and will learn how stories and anecdotes of that time were rife among the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages; how Miss Wooler herself, and the elder relations of most of her schoolfellows, must have known the actors in those grim disturbances.
The prince regent's speech in opening it, though it noticed the suppression of the Luddite disturbances, was inevitably devoted to the great events in Spain and Russia, the conclusion of a treaty with Russia, and the American declaration of war.
In the winter of 1811 the terrible pressure of this transition from handicraft to machinery was seen in the Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots which broke out over the northern and midland counties; and which were only suppressed by military force.
It 'ull be rough on her, but it bain't to be helped; and as she will be going away from Varley and settling elsewhere, it wouldn't be brought up again her as she had an uncle as were a Luddite and got hoong for killing a bad maister. Goodnoight, lad! oi will see thee i' t' morning."
This device, which he imagined would impoverish us to enrich his own States, was the greatest aid that he could have rendered to our hard-pressed social system; and readers of Charlotte Brontë's realistic sketches of the Luddite rioting in Yorkshire may imagine what would have befallen England if, besides lack of work and low wages, there had been the added horrors of a bread famine.
In 1812, another stain of blood was added to the sanguinary criminal code of those days by the Act making death the penalty for the destruction of machinery. This was caused by the Luddite outrages, which were carried on in the most systematic manner, and on the largest scale in Nottingham and the adjoining counties.
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