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Luddite attacks were initially successful in not only Yorkshire but also Lancashire and Nottinghamshire. Contemporary newspaper reports bear reluctant testimony to how well focussed and conducted these raids were.
Their first tactic was to try to prevent machinery reaching the factories. Machines in transit over Hartshead Moor were intercepted and destroyed. Such an action took intelligence and planning.
Hartshead Moor looking towards Castle Hill and Huddersfield.
Shirley opens with worries about whether the machines will get through before a credible imitation of a Luddite letter arrives telling Robert Moore: ‘Your hellish machinery is shivered to smash on Stillbro’ Moor’ (Chp II, p 24). The text acknowledges that this was a bloodless operation: ‘your men are lying bound hand and foot in a ditch, ‘(Chp II, p 24).
Inheritance inverts the incident. In Book I, Chapter III.2, p 70, it is revealed that the machines have been smuggled into Syke Mill the day before the Luddites expect them. Consequently George Mellor resolves to assassinate Mr Oldroyd. By contrast Ned Carter in Danger returns to history. It is the book’s hero Ned who tells the Luddites that the frames will cross ‘Thong Moor’ and then sneaks along to observe the results. Though there is personal animosity between the attackers, led by Robert, and the attacked, Alf Gossling, Alf is beaten and tied up, not killed (Chp 4).
Nevertheless manufacturers were succeeding in installing machinery more rapidly than it could be intercepted, so the Luddites targeted the mills themselves. The attack on Vickerman’ Mill (a.ka. Taylor’s Hill) is typical of the initial successes. Frank Vickerman the owner was deeply unpopular amongst his workers and those who lived near his factory (See Ecology section). A Lud letter delivered to Vickerman’s before March 15 threatened him with death: ‘vickerman tayler Hill he has had is Garde but we will pull all down som night and kill him that Nave and Roag,’(Brooke/Kipling, p 31). Nevertheless the attack was bloodless. Contemporary newspaper accounts in the Leeds Mercury and Leeds Intelligencer of March 1812 reluctantly testify to the focus, restraint and discipline of the attack:
‘As soon as the shears were broken, the cry of "Out," "Out," proceeded by several voices; they then retired into a field, and their numbers, to which they answered, being called over, they dispersed about half an hour before the arrival of the Military Guard, which it was known would be placed at nine o’clock.’
The existing mill on Taylor's Hill
Though Banks records a similarly sparing attack at Arnold near Nottingham where 'not a rag, not a coin was carried away. Only the frames were wrecked, only the master injured [in the sense of finacially ruined],' (Book 2, Chp 10 ,p 211) She accompanies her account with the dire prophecies she enjoys: ''They had struck the death knell of many a living man, friend and foe, ' (Book 2, Chp 10 ,p 211).
The later attacks in Yorkshire are more sinister. They are given a Satanic perspective by showing these Luddites as habitual arsonists:
'Undefended mill were broken into and left in ruins. Now and then a fire was kindled but not often and then only in low-lying secluded spots, since fire might serve as a beacon to bring the military down upon them,' (Prt 3, Chp 2, p 281). At attack on Horbury Mill ends with the mill being burnt: 'and with a rush and a roar the fire waved its red banners high in the air for all the country round to see,' (Prt 3, Chp 2, p 283). 'Red banners' unites the hell-like flames with the banners carried by left-wing workers' movements from the Chartists to the Marxists.
This attack is based on the destruction of the mill usually called 'Foster's Mill' on April 9th 1812.
http://ludditebicentenary.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/9th-april-1812-attack-on-mill-of-joseph.html
It inspired the song known as 'Foster's Mill' to the folk-revival but is mentioned as 'Horsfall's Mill' in Binfield:
Come all you croppers stout and bold
Let your faith grow stronger still,
For the cropper lads in the County of York,
Have broke the shears at Horsfall’s Mill.
The [y?] broke the shears and the windows too,
Set fire to the tazzling mill;
They formed themselves all in a line,
Like soldiers at the drill.
The wind it blew and the sparks they flew,
Which alarmed the town full soon,
And out of bed poor folk did leave,
And they ran by the light o’ the moon;
When these lads around the mill did stand,
And they all did vow and swear,
Neither bucket nor can nor any such thing,
Should be of any service there.
(Y1, Binfield, p 201) (See Luddite Culture section]
This song may conflate an accidental (?) fire at Horsfall's Mill in 1803, with the attack on Horbury Mill.
Inheritance includes no examples of successful Luddite attacks whilst Shirley only mentions in passing that Sykes’ Mill has been attacked. Bond Slaves describes the attacks in Nottingham that created the blueprint for the attack on Vickerman’s. Banks expresses surprise that an armed entry into a factory was followed by the destruction of machines not people and there was no looting: ‘Yet not a rag, not a coin was carried away,’ (Bk II, Chp 9, p211). Nevertheless the chapter ends with a warning: ‘They had struck the death-knell of many a living man, friend and foe,’ (Bk II, Chp 9, p211).
Ben O’ Bills depicts an attack of the type mostly carried out, where a disciplined Luddite force intimidates a mill owner but only destroys machines. It shows an attack probably based on the destruction of machines in Joseph Hirst’s cropping shop in Marsh on Feb 23 1812 (Reid, p 74). In the novel the mill belongs to a ‘Mr S–’ in Marsh, near Jim Lane and Gledholt and the incident is turned into a joke. Mr S- is ‘a great braggart’ who boasts of ‘what he would do if the Luddites ever came his way,’ (Chp VI, p 129). It is poetic justice that his braggadocio should be exposed on the night of the raid. Instead of resisting, Mr S– begs: ‘a piping voice all tremulous, faltered, “What mean you, good gentlemen? What is your will? For heaven’s sake go away quietly,’ (Chp VI, p130). The comedy is reinforced when ‘the very next Market Day’ Mr S – resumes boasting, claiming he routed the Ludds: ‘the whole thirty or forty had fled before him,’ (Chp VI, p 135).
Marsh Mills 2014
Ned Carter in Danger sees similarly focused and disciplined the arms raids as brutalising not comic: 'At first we were sorry when we had to bully decent elderly men; as time went on we enjoyed their fear, we found it amusing to see them turn pale and tremble,' ( Chp 8, p 85)
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