Yorkshire Luddism:  Fiction and commentary 10: Informers and Public Support

Banks and Bentley could back up their contention that the shooting of Horsfall alienated the support of the labouring classes through at least one incident.  What Reid calls ‘folk memory’ asserts that when Mellor was driven from imprisonment in Huddersfield to trial in York around October 10, he attempted to raise applause from the people who watched.  They remained silent (Reid, p 214).  Kipling and Hall say this took place on Kirkgate where the Pack Horse Inn used to stand (p 28)

Kirkgate.  The concrete arch marks the entrance to the Packhorse shopping centre.

The Pack horse Inn stood round here.   

Surprisingly neither Banks nor Bentley includes the incident; it is Ben o’ Bills that mentions George being carried away crying ‘Three cheers for General Ludd,’ and receiving no response from a crowd described as ‘fleyed [frightened]  to death,’ (Chp XI ,p 260).   

Continuing the theme of conscience that is the essence of Bond Slaves, informers are the heroes of the novel.   Wat’s children become the keepers of the conscience within Wat’s family and by extension within the heartland of Yorkshire.  At great personal risk they belie Mellor’s confident declaration: ‘We have the sympathy of the people,’ (Bk II, Chp 14,p 259) by warning mill owners of impending attacks.    

However the evidence before the arrest of Mellor mostly testifies to support for the Luddites, some of it coerced.  The risk posed to informers or even suspected informers was shown when a woman was stoned by a mob who thought she was an informer (Reid, p 131).   Sykes and Walker locate the incident at Berry Brow and let the narrator offer sympathy for the ‘poor woman’ (Chp VII, p 147).  The location is given confidently, with the confidence that has tempted a few later historians to see the novel as a primary source, but there is no guarantee that this is an authentic tradition, particularly as they conflate two attacks into one.  

Berry Brow.

Once an independent village, Berry Brow has virtually become a suburb of Huddersfield, linked by the construction of Victorian terrace houses like these. 

Reid doesn’t mention a location but names the woman as ‘Betty Armstrong’ and details two attacks, the first spontaneous, as in Sykes/Walker and the second a determined attack with stones that fractured her skull and prevented her testimony, despite being guarded by the military (Reid, p 130-131).   The Luddite bicentenary website compiles accounts from contemporary sources: 

On Friday 24th April 1812, Betty Armstrong was at the door of an Inn in Huddersfield when she was set by a group of people. Nearby were a group of cavalry soldiers and one of them managed to get her away from the crowd before she was too seriously hurt. She was suspected of having given information about people held on suspicion of being Luddites by the authorities.

At midday on Saturday 25th, she was on her to way to see Joseph Radcliffe when she again set upon and badly beaten by a group of people. In the fracas, she had suffered a fractured skull.

The site comments that this shows that Reid has embroidered the incident; there is no mention of a military escort at the time of the second attack but the sources also throw doubt on the Sykes/Walker version of the incident.   In 1812 Berry Brow was a settlement some two miles south of the centre of Huddersfield, a location unlikely to have been described as ‘in Huddersfield’ by contemporaries.     

http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/25th-april-1812-suspected-informer-is.html

Banks includes a more spectacular incident of violence against informers: ‘A parish clerk at Holmfirth … shot in the eye by an “avenger”, ‘(Bk III, Chp 12, p 374).  This refers to the shooting on July 22 of 'John Hinchliffe, a clothier of Upperthong and parish clerk at Holmfirth church,' (Brooke/Kipling p 37).  They do not specify the injury but Hincliffe lost his left eye.  His testimony says two men roused him from bed and one shot him in the head as he tried to break away.  http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/22nd-july-1812-john-hinchliffe-shot-and.html