Yorkshire Luddism:  Fiction and commentary 12: Luddite Funerals

HALIFAX

The most significant expression of public sympathy for the Luddites occurred at the funeral of Samuel Hartley, one of the men who died of wounds in the Star Inn after the raid on Rawfolds.   On Wednesday April 15th a large public demonstration of mourning filled South Parade Road as Hartley was taken to Huddersfield Methodist Chapel to be buried.   The minister, Jabez Bunting refused to officiate and delegated the task to his junior Jonathan Saville.  His memories describe how

 On the Sunday after the funeral, the people came from far and wide to show their sorrow for the deceased, [or rather, to make a political demonstration]. They filled the Chapel to overflowing; hundreds stood on the outside, unable to get in, and constables walked before the doors to keep the peace. The preacher who was planned for that afternoon had gone to Huddersfield, probably to get out of the way. Mr. Jabez Bunting sent for me

He records that his sermon was not taken well:

 Then I exclaimed, "Infidel, die hard! never strike the black flag when Death confronts you!" It seemed to have a great effect. A few days afterwards, as I was going up King-Cross Lane to my Class, some persons threw stones at me, but I was not hurt.

http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/jabez%20bunting

                          South Parade Sidings.                                                              Now occupied by  the Eureka Science Museum.

The chapel building was rented out and was demolished in 1965 to allow the road to be expanded as the car replaced the train as remodeller of traditional landscapes. 

George Eliot’s Silas Marner fictionalises a similar process.    In Part II, Chapter 21 Silas returns to the northern industrial town where he was expelled by the dissenting congregation of ‘Lantern Yard’.    He finds that the industrial revolution has replaced the church with a factory: ‘The old place is all swep’ away, … the little graveyard and everything,’ (London, Penguin, p179)

 In Halifax 1984 heritage replaced demolition when the abandoned  Sion Congregational Church  was moved from Wade Street and incorporated in the bus-station:

                                     Sion Chapel                                                                       Sion School and Sion Chapel

Huddersfield Bus Station         

HUDDERSFIELD

To avoid similar demonstrations of support, John Booth, the other Luddite mortally wounded ad left behind at Rawfolds, was buried at 6.00 am in Huddersfield Parish Church on April 16th.    His body lies somewhere in the landscaped area behind the church that used to be the graveyard (Kipling/Hall p28).

Huddersfield St Peter's Parish Church: Graveyard.

Colonel Campbell was part of the military force called into Huddersfield to supress any trouble occasioned by the burial of Booth.  A letter from him reports:

At half past Ten o'Clock I received an Express that a considerable number of Men were assembled and were still collecting in the vicinity of Two Mills about Three miles from Leeds, & in half an hour this information was followed from the same quarter thus immediate attack was expected. The parties however appear to me not to have made any pre arrangement, but were met together most of them accidentally

He goes on to claim:

The country is in a most perturbed state & the utmost exertions of the military necessary.

“Vengeance for the blood of the Innocent” is written on every door; but I think these people will pause a little before they make another experiment after the manly reception they have met with—

http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/16th-april-1812-colonel-campbell-writes.html

However, this is the Colonel Campbell who reported the hostile crowd gathered beside Horsfall.   Given the conspicuous lack of military success in preventing attacks on mills or threats to mill-owners by April 16th, it would be in Campbell’s interest to exaggerate the size and potential hostility of the inhabitants on all possible occasions in order to claim credit for pacifying Huddersfield.   He seems to have seen the Luddites as a challenge to his virility, judging from the phrase ‘manly reception’.     Charlotte Bronte might have understood his feelings ….

None of the novels repeats the detail of the inscriptions.  This is not too surprising in the case of Bond Slaves, Ben O’ Bills, Inheritance and Ned Carver  that prefer to think of the labouring classes as being in a mood to be shocked by Horsfall’s assassination but is more unexpected in the case of Daisy Baines.  Daisy Baines talks of the ‘cowardly assassination of Horsman [Horsfall]’ and shows the ‘number of Luds decreasing’, (Chp XLII, Col 1-2, 19.02.1881) but the last part of the novel praises the condemned Luddites: ‘Not one of them impeached any of their accomplices’, (Chp LIII, Col 3, 26.03.1881) and shows a huge turnout for the funerals of the executed Luddites.   In the Toils of the Luddites is more cynical than the other novels.   It sees the rise of informers as men seeing ‘a chance of saving their own lives by imperilling the lives of their associates’, (Chp X, p130).  By contrast Ben O’ Bills asserts ‘It [the assassination] did not embolden the Luddites; rather they became alarmed at their own extremes,’ ( Chp X, p 234).    There does not seem much evidence of this in the short term; there were other attempted shootings after Horsfall was killed, such as the shooting at the house of a constable in Lockwood (Kipling/Hall p 6).  In the long term, although the urban working class of Yorkshire remained prepared to use violence to further their demands during the Huddersfield Uprising of 1820 (Brooke/Kipling, Chapter 7) or during Physical Force Chartism, the tactic of assassination was dropped.  

A possible exception to this assertion is the fatal shooting of two gamekeepers near Buckstones House in 1905 but this incident is probably related to the violent conflicts between keepers and poachers during the 18th-19th centuries rather than the industrial struggles of urban factory workers.    Only Daisy Baines mentions poaching as a point of friction between a semi-rural population and those who owned the land.    The text opens with Bill Baines poaching a hare to feed his fellow Luddites (Chp I, Col 2, Oct 16 1880), whilst Frank, standing before the crowd at ‘Brilborough’ is asked to intervene in a poaching case: ‘Wil you get my brother Bill out o’ jail?   He’s in for poaching yor uncle’s hares’,   (Chp XIV, Col 1, 27.11.1880).

Marsden Moor, Buckstones National Trust information board mentions the shooting of two gamekeepers in 1905.

The case remained unsolved. 

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/murders-still-mystery-after-century-5094131

Brooke and Kipling defend the Luddites as ‘guerrillas’ (p 128) but armed struggle was not the direction followed by the majority of workers in the later 19th century as trades unions gained mass support and legal recognition. 

Nevertheless at their peak the Luddites operated like a military force and their opponents testified to them possessing ‘a promptitude and apparent discipline that no regular troops could exceed,’ (Brooke/Kipling, p 35).   No informants told the authorities of the location of drilling grounds or arms stashes; Luddism was seen as the hard solution demanded by hard times.    During the Chinese Revolution of the 1940s Mau analysed the relationship between the people and guerrillas:  ‘The former may be likened to water and the latter to the fish who inhabit it.’ (Chapter 6 - "The Political Problems of Guerrilla Warfare" On Guerrilla Warfare, 1961, p 93 [1936])

http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/FMFRP%2012-18%20%20Mao%20Tse-tung%20on%20Guerrilla%20Warfare.pdf

Applying this metaphor to the Luddites, the movement appears to have been kept buoyant by a mixture of active, passive and intimidated supporters for most of the months from 1811 to 1813 over a wide part of the northern centre of Britain, ranging across Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire.    Its collapse as an organised movement seems to have been relatively swift but it is important to remember its organisation, especially between separate towns and counties appears to have been ad hoc.  As Brooke and Kipling point out, the role of Luddism was taken over by more recognisably political and industrial movements such as Chartism and Trade Unionism that were well-organised nationally, as well as locally.

There was no funeral for George Mellor and the assassins of William Horsfall.

Their bodies were dissected in the old York hospital.

The old hospital stood where the approach road now is in front of the brick building dominating the horizon.  

This is the replacement hospital that was built in 1851.   It is now a block of apartments. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_County_Hospital