THE LUDDITE NOVELS 4: TRANT, DAISY BAINES

 The Centres of Yorkshire Luddism

1] Almondbury & Castle Hill 2] Milnsbridge 3] Warren House 4] Rawfolds 5] Hartshead 6] Dumb Steeple 7 Three Nuns 7] The Shears 8] The Yew Tree 9] The Star 10] Brighouse and Raistrick 11] Bradley Woods 

Daisy Baines the Luddite’s Daughter, 1880, William Trant, (Huddersfield Weekly News anonymous serial, 16 Oct 1880-2 April 1881, transcription)  There appear to have been plans to publish the book as a novel but this never happened.

Geography/Names/History

The geography of Daisy Baines is mostly detailed and accurate; indeed this was seen as a selling point of the serial to a local population reading a local newspaper.  The Huddersfield Weekly News for Saturday October 23 1880 advertised the story mostly as a series of places:

          A Tale of the Machine Riots of 1811-12.  The locality of the story includes Elland,Fartown,

          Huddersfield, Milnsbridge, Slaithwaite, Marsden, Woodsome, Crosland Moor, Lockwood,

          Dumb Steeple, Mirfield, Rawfold, Hawley, Holmfirth, London, York &tc.

London is mentioned quite casually at the end.  The local reader would not realise from this advertisement that about half the serial’s scenes are set in London and a lot of the text is taken up with Daisy’s journey with her baby from London back to Elland. 

Despite the fictional romance between Frank and Daisy the text is heavily invested in actual places and events.   Rawfolds and Ottiwells’ mills retain their names.  The text is aware of the rapid transformation of the industrial landscape.  The description of the defences of Ottiwell’s mentions that ‘It may interest the curious that the barricade is still extant, as are the ruins of the mill,’ (Chp v, Col 1, 30.10.1880).   Following this up the Huddersfield Weekly News for November 13 1880, which contains part 5 of Daisy Baines,  offers readers ‘a pen and ink sketch’ of the ‘rough but STRONG BARRICADE’ created by Horsfall.  

The Defences of Ottiwell's Mill; a copy of the 'pen and ink sketch'. 

Elsewhere the text reports changes.  As Egerton rides through a militarised Huddersfield in Chapter III, Trant points out the transformation of the town centre through the intervention of Sir Joseph Ramsden.   Similarly there is nothing left of the original Rawfolds Mill: ‘It stood on the site now occupied by the large works of a dying company,’ (XXIII, Col 2, 11.12.1880).

Britannia Buildings: one of the grand structures set up on the square next to the station.   

The statue of Britannia on the roof adds an imperial touch.

Part of the Ramsden rebuilding of Huddersfield. 

There is a mixture of real, transformed and invented names.  The Reverend Hammond Roberson appears under his own name, whereas the magistrate Joseph Radcliffe appears as ‘Squire Joseph Retcliffe’.    His character is changed more than his name.  Trant presents a canny and calm magistrate, a worthy opponent to the resolute Luddites assembled against him, not the nervous and paranoid man of history.   The mill owners names are changed slightly:  ‘Horsfall’ becomes ‘Horsman’ and ‘Cartwright’ becomes ‘Arkwright’.  The latter is a neat touch that gives Cartwright the same name as the inventor of the ‘Spinning Jenny’, one of the first contentious machines of the Industrial Revolution.    Their characters are not much changed from history, though Arkwright shows a pity for the attackers on his mill unmatched by Cartwright and Horsfall’s notorious boast of riding through Luddite blood has been toned down.  Instead of being a threat to wipe out any Luddites who dared attack his heavily fortified mill, it becomes a declaration of personal bravery and defiance.   When warned he might be assassinated on Crosland Moor he retorts: ‘I shall go home to-day if I’ve to wade up to my saddle-girths in Luddite blood’, (Chp XXXII, Col 2, 15.01.1881).  The real mill owners are complemented by invented grandees such as the timid mill owner Mr Spenceley and Admiral Egerton, the uncle of the young hero Frank Egerton.

The London scenes show Frank mixed in with historical figures.  These include the radical Sir Francis Burdett, often mistakenly suspected of being the Luddites’ leader, and Lord Byron.  Byron appears in Chapters VII and VIII as a personal friend of Frank’s.    Trant shows not only the rake that the Victorians loved to be scandalised by; Byron hints that Frank should marry his wealthy cousin and keep Daisy as a mistress; but also as the political figure.     Trant knows that Byron’s maiden speech in Parliament sympathised with the Luddites and shows him preparing the speech: ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll speak against it [machinery] in the Lords’, (Chp VIII, Col 2, 06.11.1880).   Following the lead of a radical lord and a reformist knight the next chapter contains one of the most outspoken attacks on conventional economics in the text: ‘Political economy tells us these things must be… cheap clothing woven at the price of human blood’, (Chp IX, Col 3, 06.11.1880)

George Mellor is instantly recognisable as ‘George Waller’; his co-assassins appear as ‘Thorpe’, ‘Ben Hartley’ and ‘William Hall’ instead of ‘William Thorpe’, ‘Thomas Smith’ and ‘Benjamin Walker’.  It is a distracting mix of genuine and transferred names.    This is especially noticeable with the names ‘Baines’ and ‘Hartley’.  Both are names of important figures of the Luddite movement but they have been re-applied in Daisy Baines.  Instead of ‘Baines’ being the surname of John Baines, snr and jnr, both Halifax republicans, ‘Baines’ becomes the family name of Daisy’s family.  Her family consists of her father William, a poacher, his nephew John and his son Zach.  Zach is a reluctant Luddite and the others are enthusiasts but none have the intellectual and ideological knowledge of John Baines.   ‘John Baines’ appears under his own name, execrated rather than praised for  his democratic commitment, in Bond Slaves but is given more sympathy as ‘Mr Stead’ in Ned Carver. 

The transformation of ‘Hartley’ is even more bewildering.   The actual Luddite Samuel Hartley died under interrogation in the Star Inn, Roberttown, after the failed attack on Rawfolds.   In Daisy Baines the Hartley who dies at Rawfolds is John Hartley, who dies defending the mill.  His son, who is on the other side of the conflict, becomes one of Horsman’s killers. 

The informer M’Donald features as ‘Macdonald’.  Like his historical original he tricks Baines into making him a Luddite through an illegal oath and testifies against him at the trial in York (Chp LI, Col 2, 19.03.1881).   Charles Milnes, the man who introduced M’Donald to John Baines and was later tried as a Luddite, appears as ‘Charles’ or ‘Chuck Milnes’ in Daisy Baines but his character has been changed.  He is distrusted by Waller from the start of the book, seeks to blackmail Frank after he has been a witness at Frank’s wedding and acts as an informer against the Luddites.    He and Macdonald travel between London and Yorkshire adding comic relief to the book alongside Squire Retcliffe’s huge servant Jim. 

York does not play the pivotal role it does in Bond Slaves or Ben o’Bills.  In these texts York is the place where the time-honoured majesty of church and state is deployed to destroy the guilty and intimidate the wavering.  In Daisy Baines there is no description of the Minster or of York Castle as either symbols of power or tourist attractions, indeed the Minster is not mentioned at all.    York, in Frank’s mind is fragmented into ‘narrow streets’, ‘sombre walls of the prison’, ‘the gloomy portals of the castle’, so all he or the readers see clearly is ‘the gibbet with its seven ominous nooses’ (Chp LIII, Col 3, 26.03.1881).  The imprisoned Waller is not allowed to be as radical as his model Mellor.   None of the imprisoned Luddites sign a petition for Political Reform but the mood of the crowd is said to be sympathetic to the rioters, if not the assassins: ‘There was a feeling that the act the unfortunate men had committed had been prompted by the struggle to live, if not indeed by what they considered just and laudable motives,’ (Chp LIII, Col 3, 26.03.1881).  Where Sad Times and Bond Slaves see the Luddites as dupes led by Satanic figures, in Daisy Baines it is the gallows that is seen as ‘the work of some demon, ‘ (Chp LIII, Col 3, 26.03.1881).  The radical lawyer Mr Brougham who defended the real Luddites enters Daisy Baines to point out to Frank that the ‘long red streak’ of infantry and cavalry are there for practical purposes: ‘this display is not pageantry.  It is to prevent any attempt at rescue,’ (Chp LIII, Col 3, 26.03.1881).  ‘Long red streak’ is an evocative metaphor to sum up both the wound in the body politic inflicted by the Luddites and the violence used to suppress them.      Trant and his readers were in a position to know that six years after the execution of the York Luddites a crowd of peaceful protesters in Manchester were attacked by a similar force of cavalry and infantry in what became known as ‘The Peterloo Massacre’ http://www.peterloomassacre.org/history.html    

Despite its limited circulation as a local newspaper serial, Daisy Baines provided a model for later locally-written Luddite novels.  The title of Colbeck’s Scarlea Grange or A Luddite’s Daughter echoes Daisy Baines: The Luddite’s Daughter and shows a similar contrast between the worlds of the rich and the poor whilst Skyes/Walkers’ Ben o’ Bills shows a similar interest in local geography. 

The serial opens with a description of Elland Edge, where Daisy lives:

 'a rough moor on which grew little beyong the deep-green bracken and the rugged furze' (Chp 1, col 1, Oct 16 1880)

Genre

Like Scarlea Grand and Through the Fray Daisy Baines mixes genres.  Half is a society novel about men connected with rich families courting the daughters of labourers and half is a novel of social unrest amidst the industrialised Colne Valley.  Scenes of Frank Egerton trying to be an honourable man as he stands for election at the fictional borough of Briborough and marries his social inferior Daisy are contrasted with the mill-owner’s son Edgar Spenceley who seduces Emma Hartley and leads her to a life of ruin in London’s gambling dens and Vauxhall Gardens.   The backdrop for these fictions is an historical account of the attack on Rawfold’s Mill and killing of Horsfall, rendered energetically and violently;  indeed  the violence of the attack on Rawfolds is intensified.     When the 7th part of Daisy Baines appeared on the ‘Literature’ section of The Huddersfield Weekly News it was preceded by an acrostic by George H. Elam that ends ‘S weetly beguiled by charming “DAISY BAINES”’.  Though the name is placed in inverted commas as if to indicate the serial, probably the person of Daisy herself is meant.    There is little else ‘beguiling’ in the first 6 parts that deal with poverty, poaching and arson. 

The nostalgia of this poem contrasts with the poem that precedes Part 4.  Called ‘Starved to Death’ this poem, by ‘J.D.’ starts with an explanation that it is based on the finding of the body of a man who had broken his ankle and starved to death on the road near Meltham.  The last verse sums up the moral:

Alas! That when a country’s wrapped in gold,

Its heart should take on the nature of the ore,

Its glittering hardness, deaf to charity,

And let the helpless on the public road

Become the victim of an o’erstrained law!

The Huddersfield Weekly News, Literature section, 06.11.1880

Though the poem calls for charity not revolt, it points out that the sufferings endured by the population of 1812 are far from ended. 

Instead of the reductive contrast between the moral rich and the desperate poor shown in Sad Times, Scarlea Grange and Ben O’ Bills, Trant occasionally achieves subtler effects.  In Part 13, (08.01.1881) Trant ‘rhymes’ the preparations for the wedding of Daisy to Frank with the preparations to assassinate Horsman (Chps XXX and XXI).   By the end Daisy Baines has made a virtue of the use of mixed genre.  The meeting of social and society novels allows radical voices from both ends of society to be heard without being corrected by the voices of religion that dominate the narration of Scarlea Grange or Bond Slaves.   

Raistrick Church, when Frank and Daisy wed.

Conflict /Politics.

Daisy Baines is prepared to mock Snooks, the radical opponent of Frank Egerton, and laugh at the scythe-men that Frank’s agent uses to stop voters casting their votes against Frank (Chp XIV, Col 2, 27.11.1880) but is generally sympathetic to the Luddite’s cause.   To be more precise it enthusiastically exploits the opportunities for sentiment or violence offered by the Luddite plots and attacks in a similar but more predictable manner than Shirley.  Waller is described as a ‘self-willed, determined, violent man’, (Chp X, Col 1, 13.11.1880) but he is intellectually capable.  He mentally argues with Cobbett, against the utility of machines: ‘every cropping machine throws eight or nine men out of work’, (Chp XI, Col 3, 13.11.1880).  Oddly this is the only mention of the Radical William Cobbett in any of the Luddite fictions.  Though Weller is a Ludd, he is initially against assassination: ‘But I’m agaen shooiting  altogether, except in defence’, (Chp X, Col 1, 13.11.1880).  He is a religious man who sings Dissenting hymns and notices their subversive intent:

  Here’s a rap at the ministry in t’ next hymn:

Great Britain shakes beneath Thy stroke

And dreads thy threat’ning hand;

Oh! heal the island Thou hast broke,

Confirm the wav’ring land.

The hymn Waller approves is a politicised translation of Psalm 60 written in 1799 by the American Joel Barlow.

What turns Waller into a killer is the seduction of the woman he loves, Emma Hartley, by Edgar Spenceley.  In Chapter XII Waller discovers Edgar embracing his girl and the two have a fist-fight that foreshadows the more deadly violence to come.   When taken to execution for attacking Rawfolds and killing Horsman, Waller leads the men who die with him in singing ‘Behold the Saviour of Mankind’ and speaks Mellor’s last words: ‘Some of my enemies may be here…I forgive them,’ (Chp LIII, Col 3, 26.03.1881).     After that fiction intrudes and he is hanged as he tries to bid Emma farewell: ‘But if yo every see Emma Hartley, tell her my last thoughts wor – ’ (Chp LIII, Col 3, 26.03.1881).   

Consequently, unlike Lodge or Banks, Trant does not demonise the Luddites; the Luddite part of the narrative is solidly based on historical fact, though the attack on Rawfolds has its drama intensified.   Trant’s intervention begins with Waller leading the Ludds on a diversion.  Instead of marching straight over Hartshead Moor to attack Rawfolds they go via Liversedge and shatter the windows of Rev Roberson’s Heald’s Hall.  This provides a convincing, though unhistorical reason for one of the mysteries attending the attack on Rawfolds; why did the military take so long to respond?   In Daisy Baines this is because the soldiers have been decoyed by a clever stratagem.  In reality it would have been an unlikely tactic for the Luddites to adopt because it would have meant an extra mile’s march through inhabited places like Roberttown and a retreat through Liversedge, possibly running into the soldiers going to Heald’s Hall.  The route they appear to have chosen across Harthead Moor meant bypassing most settlements.  However, this gives Trant the opportunity to build up the idea of the fight at Rawfolds being the manoeuvring of two clever and equal antagonists, Waller and Arkwright.

Heald's Hall

As in Shirley the fight at Rawfolds is interpreted as the clash of the wills of two strong males.   Waller and Arkwright are virtually co-heroes.   Waller is praised for his ‘wonderful presence of mind’ whilst Arkwright is capable of cutting the hand off an attacking Luddite (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 18.12.1880). 

The latter incident shows Trant’s enthusiasm for exaggerating the violence of the event.  He bases the incident on Peel.  The Risings of the Luddites reports a ‘John Walker’ ‘thrusting his pistol through the window’:

    “I was determined to do it,” he said afterwards, “though my hand was shot off, and hand and

    pistol had gone into the mill,’ (Peel, 1880, p47) https://archive.org/details/risingsluddites01peelgoog

In Daisy Baines this actually happens:

     ‘I’ll shoot one of ‘em anyway,’ called out Brook, and pulling his pistol from his pocket he thrust  

      his arm in at the broken door.  He pulled it out sharply however, but without the pistol and

      without the hand, for the vigilant Mr Arkwright had seized a hatchet and severed the limb

      before there had been time to pull the trigger. (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 18.12.1880)

Not only is this an unlikely feat but Brook does not pass out through loss of blood or bleed to death; he simply becomes more annoyed: ‘smarting with pain and thirsting for revenge,’ (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 18.12.1880).   By Chapter XXXL some confusion seems to have arisen in the narrative because it is Thorpe who is described with ‘his handless arm in a sling,’ (Chp XXXI, Col 2, 08.01.1881).  Apparently this does not stop him becoming one of the two effective assassins when Horsman is shot: ‘Thorpe, taking steady aim through the gap they had made in the wall, pulled the trigger’,   (Chp XXXII, Col 2, 15.01.1881).    Probably Trant has muddled Brook and Thorpe during the pressure to get an episode in on time.  A similar mistake in Chapter V was noted by ‘correspondents’ and corrected at the end of episode 4: ‘ “Egerton and Mr Spenceley arrived at the spot.” The context shows that Mr. Horsman and not Mr Spenceley is meant,’ (Episodes 4, end of Chapter IX, Col 5, 06.11.1880).

Trant follows other narratives in picking out the importance of silencing the mill’s warning bell but he turns this into another unlikely feat.    Ben Hartley climbs onto the roof of the mill and fights the man ringing the bell hand to hand.      Suddenly a realisation comes over his opponent:

    ‘Oh! horror! horror!’ he said, striking his brow, ‘my son, my own flesh and blood.’

    He staggered, fell over the parapet on to the ground, and the body of John Hartley lay in the 

     mill yard, silent for ever more,’ (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 18.12.1880)

The intention may be to make the incident echo Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 3 where the evils of civil war are represented symbolically by a son who has slain his father and a father who has slain his son (Hen VI, Act II  Sn V)  http://shakespeare.mit.edu/3henryvi/full.html.  Trant may wish his readers to recall that Shakespeare's scene is another Yorkshire tragedy, set during the battle of Towton. 

The symbolism swiftly makes way for realism.  One of the soldiers defending the mill refuses to shoot: ‘”I’ve been a cropper mysen.”’ (Chp XXV, Col 2, 18.12.1880).  This declaration is less radical than the original report 'I might hit one of my brothers' (see 'Fiction and commentary 6)  and Trant doesn’t pursue the question of how he is punished.  There is no court-martial or flogging scene in Daiy Baines.  Chapter XXI picks up the story of the Luddite retreat and includes incidents like the incriminating hat left floating in the water of Rawfolds Mill pond.  What the narrative stresses is solidarity:

     All who were arrested, however, kept faithful to their oaths; and although they were taken to

     gaol , and treated with unwonted rigour, not one betrayed his companions, or gave the

     authorities the slightest information,’  (Chp XXXI, Col 2, 08.01.1881).

‘Unwonted rigour’ is one of the few hints that fiction gives about the intimidation and extra-legal interrogation of Luddite suspects.

Earlier, in Episode 9 Trant invents or circulates the story that Arkwright’s children are hidden in the chimney of their house by his wife as a precaution against the attack: ‘I thought I would hide the children in the kitchen chimney,’ (Chp XXIII, Col 2, 11.12.1880).  Bond Slaves will elaborate the incident.  The narrative presents Arkwright’s  tense expectation of attack: ‘He [Arkwright] peered into the darkness , but he could conjure up no sound,’ before ending the episode with a cliff-hanger as Luddite assault begins:

           There was a sudden flash of light, a rattle of musketry, a voice calling out ‘Bang at ‘em lads,’

           and every pane of glass in the mill was broken,’ (Chp XXIII, Col 3, 11.12.1880).

As in Shirley the narrative inter-cuts between attackers and defenders, reinforcing the interpretation of the incident as the clash of male wills.  Trant’s Luddites are so staunch that they only call off the attack when they run out of ammunition:  ‘I’ve no more cartridges cried one’,   (Chp XXIV, Col 3, 18.12.1880).  Unlike Shirley the next part of the narrative changes perspective and shows the economic motives for the Luddite’s desperation and resolution.   Chapter XXVI gives a quick account of the rise of the Luddites, circumstances where, as  ‘Everything seemed arrayed against the poor’, ‘The movement spread rapidly,’ (Chp XXVI, Col 1, 24.12.1880).  By providing this background the text shows why the news of the defeat at Rawfolds is met with relief in governmental circles: ‘It cheered the heart of the Perceval ministry,’ (Chp XXVI, Col 2, 24.12.1880).     Simultaneously it shows the government as having no idea how to relieve the problem of the Luddites except by repression.    Trant leads readers to expect Frank will make a significant speech suggesting measures of amelioration but Frank flees the Houses of Parliament without speaking when he hears Daisy has been arrested.  This plot development saves Trant from having to proffer a solution…

Luddite hammer-men fall back after failing to break into Rawfold's.

Like contemporary newspapers and other writers Trant is impressed  by the Luddite’s drill and use of numbers not names, as he shows as the forces to attack Rawfolds assemble (Chp XXIV, Col 1, 18.12.1880).   However Trant’s is the only fictional account of the attack on Rawfolds that mentions the use of firework signals , though he may have misunderstood the contemporary accounts to mean coloured lights: ‘The signal was answered by three green lights from the other detachments,’ (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 18.12.1880).

The serial is full of other convincing details that may be fact or fiction.  Trant’s Luddites do not fully black their faces but each one has ‘a broad, black cross painted diagonally on his face,’ (Chp XXII, Col 1, 11.12.1880).  Chapter I shows Zach Baines painting the faces of Luddite raiders with ‘a St Andrew’s cross on some of them, a broad St George’s cross on others,’ (Chp I, Col 2, 16.10.1880).  This might be a poaching tactic that the men are applying, though old Baines does not appear to have blacked his face when he has gone out after hares just before the men prepare for their raid.  In Chapter X when Waller has a long monologue he remembers ‘poor Westley’.  A footnote tells readers that ‘John Westley was the Luddite’s first martyr.  He was shot during the first attack on a mill that was made viz at Arnold near Nottingham,’ (Chp X, Col 2, 13.11.1880).  Westley is described in similar terms on this modern history-site: http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/11th-november-1811-john-westley-luddite.html .   Later Trant’s Luddites use the name of ‘John Westley’ as a password as they prepare to attack Rawfold’s: ‘by the blood of Westley,’ (Chp XXIV, Col 1, 18.12.1880).  

Throughout Daisy Baines readers are reminded that the Luddite movement originated in Nottinghamshire.      The Yorkshire Luddites are aware of the death of John Westley and Arkwright has heard of the destruction of Bulwell’s mill.   After John Westley had been killed in an early assault the Luddites carried away his body and then attacked again, destroying the mill and the house of the owner: http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no6/luddites.htm .   When the attackers at Rawfolds withdraw Arkwright cautions his men against going outside: ‘it’s a regular dodge of these men to go away with their wounded and then come again.  They did so at Bullwell’s and they did so at Heywood,’ (Chp XXIV, Col 3, 18.12.1880). ‘Bullwell’s’ is evidently ‘Bulwell’ but the reference to ‘Heywood’ is enigmatic.

Though the Luddites appear as ‘black-faced demons’ in Frank’s dream (Chp II, Col 1, 23.10.1880) the text is interested in presenting them as humans driven beyond endurance, not sinners tempted into Satanism.  However to feed a popular appetite for the supernatural, Trant invents Bess o’ Woodsome, a wise-woman or witch who acts as a kind of Shakespearean Chorus, predicting the disasters that disrupt the lives of the characters of the serial. 

There is no village of Woodsome.   Woodsome Lane, which looks unchanged since 1880, runs from Woodsome Lees to Farnley Tyas.   

Folklore/Oral Tradition

Of all the text about the Luddites Daisy Baines is the one that shows most interest in local customs and folklore.  Unfortunately, if the song ‘T’ Three Croppers of Honley’ is any guide, it is not necessarily reliable and much may be as fictitious as Bess o’ Woodsome herself.   ‘T’ Three Croppers of Honley’ is presented as a traditional song sung by enthusiastic Luddites (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 22.01.1881) but the song appears to have been invented by  Trant himself.  The story itself predates Trant.    Following Lesley Abernethy’s researches, Brooke and Kipling trace the tale to George Walter Thornbury, writing in Charles Dicken’s All the Year Round, though it remains uncertain if the story was taken from local sources or not. (Brookes/Kipling, p125)  Henty uses the legend in Chapter III of Through the Fray (p 22) but, as Henty was not a local man, he may well have picked up the story from Daisy Baines or, more probably, from Dicken’s magazine.  

 Trant evidently had some knowledge of local traditional customs.  The song that Bob Hartley proposes to sing and which is later whistled by Milnes in Chapter XXXVIII is ‘Pratty Flowers’ or ‘The Huddersfield National Anthem’ (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 22.01.1881).  This appears to be a Yorkshire rewrite of a song about a sailor going to the wars parting from his girl.  Traditional examples include ‘Lovely on the Water’ and ‘The Larks They Sang Melodious’.   Now more frequently known as ‘The Holmfirth Anthem’ it is an important part of the Yorkshire Carolling tradition in places near Sheffield like The Royal Hotel, Dungworth.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytlME4IrqP4

Trant retells the story of the whistling and dancing at The Coach and Horses, Honley but is more exact than most writers about the dancing that takes place.  Hartley whistles whist Hall dances ‘a single step – then a favourite amusement of the humbler classes’, (Chp XXIV, Col 2, 22.01.1881) Presumably what is meant is step-dancing, the ancestor of tap-dancing : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPPOszLXuB4&list=PLo3K8YSHyT-HtTJtFm--1BzfJgFp2agpQ&index=1

'The George Hotel'

In another of the ironic contrasts Trant enjoys, the Luddite preparations in the wood are 'rhymed' with the mill-owners

discussion of counter-measures that take place in The George Hotel. This is the facade of the building.  In 1812 it stood where

 John William Street now runs.  It is now tucked away at 10 St Peter's Street. (See Part 9)

Bess of Woodsome's Prophecies, Tradition or Invention?  

Similar questions of authenticity are raised by Trant's creation of Bess O’ Woodsome.  Bess turns up to issue dramatic prophecies of doom at each stage of the narrative, warning the Luddites of destruction as they set out to attack Rawfold’s and telling Horsman he will be killed before he reaches home.  Many of the portents are generic and all are melodramatic but it would be interesting to know if one or two are genuine local traditions.  Bess’s first omen concerns ‘old Peter’s ghost’, the spirit of a man struck by lightning at Crosland (Chp XI, Col 3, 13.11.1880).  This is kept deliberately vague so it is hard to investigate if it had any local foundation.  In Chapter XXVIII when the plot has come to a temporary standstill, Trant describes Bess’s hut.   At this point the debt to the weird sisters of Shakespeare’s Macbeth becomes evident.  Bess has a raven, a magpie, an owl and a cauldron and the raven and magpie offer advice as to how to concoct a spell: ‘“Put in the vervain,” said the raven.  “And stir with the elder twig,” added the magpie’, (Chapter XXVIII, Col 2, 01.01.1881).    Unlike the weird sisters, all of her prophesies are unequivocal,  each foretells a disaster that duly happens.    At the end of this spell she sees doom lying in wait for the Hartleys.  At this point the narrative has moved far beyond realism, local history and history itself.    

By contrast the omens Bess refers to in Chapter IX are local and may have some genuine folklore behind them.  Bess mentions ‘Arthur Kaye’s tomb i’ Aumbrey [Almondbury] sweats and groans’, and ‘t’ ravens built [nests]  in t’ Dumb Steeple tops,’ (Chp IX, Col 3, 6.11.1880).     The fact that the Dumb Steeple will later be the meeting point for the disastrous Luddite attack on Rawfolds makes this second superstition look more like opportunism than tradition.  

Gledholt Church.  Typical of the grand urban churches Methodists constructed from the middle to the end of the 19th century.

This has the date of 1890.

http://www.yorkshireindexers.info/wiki/index.php?title=Gledholt_Methodist_Church

This satire of rich self-made Dissenters is counter-balanced by sympathy for the poor dissenting congregations of Yorkshire.   Charles Milnes is introduced in Episode 1 as the ‘Ranter Chapel keeper fra Netherthong’, (Chp I, Col 2, 06.10.1880), and Waller is ‘one of the choir at a chapel in Netherthong’, (Chp X, col 1, 13.11.1880).   'Ranter' is not necessarily an insult, Ebenezer Elliot's 1833 poem 'The Ranter' has a radical preacher, a 'ranter' as its hero.    Though Milnes loses his faith as the story proceeds, George Waller remains a true Dissenter till death, leading the singing of ‘Behold the Saviour of Mankind’ as he and his comrades walk to the gallows (Chp LIII, Col 2, 26.03.1881).   At this point Trant’s viewpoint signally diverges from Charlotte Bronte’s High-Church perspective.    Even the assassins are not the dangerous antinomians of Shirley.    As early as Episode 2 the Church of England vicar John Coates goes out of his way to separate his criticism of the Luddite leaders from criticism of Dissent:

       My own opinion is that they are misguided men, and the men who lead them ought to be severely punished; but I make

       it a point not to interfere, either by my right of office as Vicar, or as a citizen, because some of the suspected Luds are 

       members of the choir of the High-Street Chapel, and some of the Bank Street chapel, and any steps I took in the matter

       would be sure to be attributed to a desire to bring odium upon Dissent.   (Chp III, Col 1, 23.10.1880).

Both chapels have since been demolished. http://archiveswiki.wyjs.org.uk/index.php?title=Buxton_Road_Wesleyan_Methodist_Church,_Huddersfield http://archiveswiki.wyjs.org.uk/index.php?title=High_Street_Methodist_New_Connexion_Church

The surviving chapel at Netherthong: the Methodist Free Church of 1872, now a private dwelling.

Though built at the end of the century, like Gledholt, it retains the original architectural simplicity of Methodist meeting places. 

 No similar scruples restrained the historical Rev Hammond  Roberson or any of the fictional ecclesiastics of Shirley.  Daisy Baines prepares the way for Colbeck’s sympathetic account of Methodism during the Luddite years in Scarlea Grange.       

The last impression made by the Luddites in the book is not of a shamed and exorcised body-politic, as in Bond Slaves but of a community taking back its own with religious ceremony and mourning:

       Egerton met the solemn procession coming down the hill near the Three Nuns.  First came a

       band playing a mournful dirge, the muffled drums sounding like the subdued murmur of the sigh

       of a multitude.  Then came six carts all painted black, and doing the duty of the ordinary funeral

      hearse.   (Chp LIV, Col 4, 02.04.1881)

The Three Nuns.  

Despite the half-timber decorations on the upper story, this building was built in 1939.

The foundations of the earlier building where the Luddites met, that dated back to 1497, lie under the car park.

https://lowercalderlegends.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/the-three-nuns-cooper-bridge/

Its true antiquity is further disguised by its association with 'Fuzzy Ed's Funhouse'... 

Against this background Frank is united with Daisy and his child, linking his fate with the lower not the upper classes:

      ‘Let this day,’ he said, ‘change all our mighty griefs to everlasting love.’

      And it was so.

THE END.

It takes a pragmatic reader, faced with all this emotion and resolution, to remember that Frank had been hoping that Daisy was dead and has become engaged to the heiress Edith Spenceley in an attempt to solve his financial problems.   Logically the story should end with Frank being sued for Breach of Promise and ending up in a Debtors’ Prison…

Barred windows on the lower floor of York's Debtors' Prison

Ecology

Unlike Shirley or Inheritance Daisy Baines takes little notice of the impact of industrialisation on the country side.    Like Bond Slaves it mostly notices the changing townscapes, frequently with wry wit.  The once isolated and beautiful gardens of Milnsbridge House have vanished: ‘It was a charming spot, beautifully situated and hardly recognisable now in the row of humble dwellings to which the house has been converted,’ (Chp III, Col 2, 23.10.1880).  

Milnsbridge House.  The house is no longer even 'a row of humble dwellings'.

Not all changes are for the worse however.  In Huddersfield ‘New Street was new in nature as well as in name.    It did not wear the neat and elegant appearance which strikes everyone who visits the town in these days,’ (Chp III, Col 2, 23.10.1880). 

New Street.  Some of the 'neat and elegant' architecture of the late 19th century survives above shop-window level.

As Trant points out however the original street was barricaded during Luddite times as the town became the main military 

stronghold against the Luddites. 'A barricade stretched across New-Street', (Chp XXVI, Col 3, 24.11.1880)

According to Trant most mills were fortified, including Bradley's.

Bradley Mills

'Bradley Mills quite bore the appearance of a fort', (Chp XXVI, Col 3, 24.11.1880)

 Though the text does not provide scenic tours of the local valleys, like Scarlea Grange does, there are occasional glimpses of the wilder country that Huddersfield and its satellites displaced, though Trant’s view is the opposite of Colbeck’s.  This is especially true of the evocative opening when Frank travels from the Ainleys along Elland Edge to Daisy’s ‘hut’.  Where Scarlea Grange celebrates the beauty of the moors Daisy Baines complains of a ‘wild waste of dreariness’, a ‘dense black ocean of gloom’ with ‘bare, naked, death-like trees,’ (Chp I, Col 1, 16.10.1880).   Compared to this ‘dreary moor’, the industrial landscape of 1880 looks attractive, indeed ‘enchanted’.  The ‘immense factories’ of the Calder Valley are described as ‘lighted within as if by magic, until, dazzling in the darkness they look, from their extent,  like gem-lit palaces in a land of enchantment and dreams,’ (Chp I, Col 1, 16.10.1880).   This quote comes from the opening paragraph of the serial, establishing a Socialist-Realist poetry of progress that is at odds with Trant’s sympathy for Luddites. 

Though many of the 'immense factories' of Elland no longer operate, the footpaths across Elland Edge would still be hard to traverse at night...

Race and Heartland

Episode 4 starts off with a history of the Egerton family that depicts them as originally Norman: ‘The Egertons claimed to have come over to England originally with the Conqueror,’ (Chp VII, col 1, 06.11.1880).  This detail looks as if it wishes to engage with Scott’s investigation into race and heartland in Ivanhoe, especially when the book centres round the marriage of the aristocratic Frank with the lowly Daisy, a marriage even Daisy finds unlikely and transgressive.  One of the first remarks Daisy makes to Frank is ‘The hawthorn may not aspire to the oak,’ (Chp I, Col 2, 16.10.1880).   However the engagement with the subject of race is not followed up.  Frank is cut off from the Egerton money in Chapter XLI whilst Daisy, somehow, speaks standard English of a grander tone than her dialect-speaking family.   Consequently the two seem to be equals, occupying a strange hinterland between class and rank.  Though Mr Spenceley complains that manufacturers have no social status and are ‘overlooked’ (Chp. XVIII, Col 1, 04.12.1880) most of the serial is realistic enough to point out that money is more important than rank.    Certainly Mr Spenceley’s lack of rank does not stop his daughter being courted by the absurd aristocrat Fitzfoodle (Chapter XLIII). 

By the time the serial finishes, Norman blood and the old aristocracy are shown to be irrelevant to the economic struggles that accompany the production of new wealth.  Trant seems more at home in the Calder Valley than in the House of Lords, so the serial’s depiction of society life is sketchy and superficial. Nevertheless his story depicts the displacement of a society of rank by a society of class where money is more important than heritage.    Simultaneously it shows the mechanism by which society disguises this fact from itself.  Despite Spenceley's  complaint that mill owners have no status, their rich daughters are attractive matches for hard-up aristocrats.   Old titles pursue new money as Fitzfoodle pursues Edith Egerton.   

Overall Daisy Baines is more radical than it appears in Brooke and Kiplings’ account: ‘Daisy Baines also shows some attempt to understand the Luddites’ motivation, but again Mellor/Waller is very much the villain of the piece,’ (Brookes/Kipling, p 126).   However this is radicalism more of sentiment than ideology.  The text is content to leave its readers with affecting images of Waller forgiving his enemies, of Luddites buried with as much ceremony as their comrades can afford, of Frank cleaving to his lower class wife than sort out what can be done to redress the political and economic  grievances of the industrial working class.   Luddism is buried; despite Trant’s interest in the TUC (see Brooke/Kipling p125) he makes no attempt to link Luddism with contemporary struggles for workers’ rights.