Yorkshire Luddism:  Fiction and commentary 11: The Trial In York

On January 2, 1813 men accused of Luddite crimes were put on trial in York at the County Court.  Despite the distance from Huddersfield, York was still the centre for justice in Yorkshire, as it had been in the Middle Ages. 

York County Court, designed by John Carr. finshed 1777, still in use today. 

http://www.historyofyork.org.uk/themes/georgian/the-county-court-house

There were men accused of armed robbery, men indicted for the attack on Rawfolds Mill but the centre piece of the action was the accusation that George Mellor, William Thorpe and Thomas Smith had murdered William Horsfall.    They were condemned and executed on January 8.  On January 16th 14 men condemned of Luddite activities were hanged in two batches. 

The gallows would have stood outside the court facing St George's Field (to the left) in this area.

The door shown below is to the right of the building with square barred windows.

                               The novels that show the trials treat the event as an awful warning that restores not only the free but the condemned to their senses.  Ben O’Bill watches with the uneasy knowledge he could have joined his cousin Mellor on the scaffold; in Inheritance it is made clear that Joe has chosen the wrong side in the dispute between masters and operatives.  Joe could have been his master’s favourite but is hanged as an assassin’s accomplice.    Each of the novels wants to assert that the death of the Luddites is part of a greater pattern; the meeting of the justice of God and Man in Bond Slaves and Ben O’ Bill’s, or the tragic course of destiny in Inheritance.

The gap between Reid and Brooke and Kipling is at its most evident in their account of the trail.  Reid assumes all the alibis are false, whilst Brooke and Kipling try to ascertain the truth of the competing stories.   Brooke and Kipling have the harder task given that the procedures of the day meant the accused were not allowed to speak for themselves and their counsel was not allowed to address the jury (Brooke/Kipling, p 56) not to mention the difficulties of establishing a reliable time for the crucial events of the day.  Brooke and Kipling claim that Justice Le Blanc was more prepared to assume ‘the witnesses for the defence had unreliable clocks’ (p 57) than witnesses for the prosecution.   However, in the days when accurate time-pieces were expensive, the richer witnesses might well have been more accurate than the poorer. 

After the condemnation of George Mellor, it was convenient for both the government and any workers involved in Luddite activities to present him as the mastermind behind the violence in the Colne Valley.   Banks, Sykes/Walker and Bentley all use him in this role.    Similarly Reid believes the informant Benjamin Walker who told Magistrate Joseph Radcliffe that ‘Mellor and William Thorpe … had planned most of the district’s attacks of the past few weeks,’ (p 133).    Brooke and Kipling present Mellor as being one of many prepared to take violent action against mills and mill-owners.  They cite several other possible suspects for Horsfall’s killing as well as men keen to claim responsibility for being involved in Horsfall’s death, even though this was impossible in some cases (pps 59-60).    Their cross-examination of the evidence against Mellor and his associates brings out one of the paradoxes of the suppression of the Luddites.   The authorities seem to have been keener to condemn and execute a plausible number of suspects rather than attempt to eradicate every Luddite in West Yorkshire, despite the urgency of men like Radcliffe. Improbably Ben o'Bills turns him into a man prepared to turn a blind eye to Ben's involvement.      

              Prisoners may well have been led through this door beside the county court that leads from the Debtors' Prison to the hanging ground.

They would not have been led back.