Ned Ludd
Popular protest and machine breaking in England
Ned Ludd was possibly born Ned Ludlam and was said to be a Leicester stockinger’s apprentice who smashed his master’s frames with a hammer over a dispute. But this is said to have happened in the late 18th century. His name was anyway taken up first by workers of the lace and hosiery trades in the popular protests of 1811.
Reasons for the popular protests in England
The wave of popular protest and machine breaking that spread over England in 1811-2 was the result of the bad harvests of 1809-12 and the industrial depression of 1811 which was caused by the closure of the American market. Export trade collapsed and the price of wheat rose resulting in widespread deprivation in a variety of textile industries.
When negotiations over wage and frame rents broke down in the area around Nottingham, the stockingers and knitters who destroyed over 200 frames between February and November 1811 claimed to have taken their orders from their commander, Ned Ludd.
Machine breaking and Ned Ludd
Protests spread to Lancashire and Cheshire and the great cotton manufacturing cities of Liverpool and Manchester. The workers dissatisfaction with low wages and high unemployment due to the closure of the American market and bad harvests was transformed into anger against the newly introduced mechanised looms.
In Stockport, two men dressed up like women and proclaiming to be General Ludd’s wives led a crowd of rioters who engaged in machine breaking and stoning of the house of the owner of steam looms. Hundreds of arrests were made and many were sentenced to death or shipped to New South Wales.
Protests and machine breaking spread to Yorkshire, an area which was the centre of the cropping and shearing section of the woollen industry. Protests there were of a more violent nature and militias and the army were mobilised against them.
In Huddersfield, an owner of the new machines was sent a letter from “Ned Ludd, Clerk”, the “General of the Army of Redressers”, threatening him with death. By 1813, around 1,000 machines had been broken. Similar threats were received by other mill owners and manufacturers. A proclamation which was issued from “Ned Ludd’s office, Sherwood Forest” warned that all “frames will be destroyed that do not pay the regular price agreed to by the Masters and Workmen”.
The followers of Ned Ludd were eventually crushed by local militias and some 12,000 troops that have been gathered to defeat them. Machine breaking as a form of popular protest died out as it was not suited to the new industrial age that was dawning.
Sources
George Rudé, The Crowd in History, revised ed. Lawrence and Wishart, 1981
Samuel Smiles, Self Help, Oxford World's Classics, 2008
Ned Ludd
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1811 Reward notice for the capture of Luddites
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