Yorkshire Luddism:  Fiction and commentary 8: The Assassination of William Horsfall

The failed attack on Rawfolds Mill encouraged the selection of softer targets.  A cropper claimed: ‘Mellor said, the method of breaking the shears must be given up, and instead of it the Masters must be shot, ‘(Reid, p 133). 

This remains a controversial decision.    Reid sees Mellor’s decision as a defeat from the outset and a narrowing of political ambition:

‘Instead of mobilising an army, to achieve his aims and what he believed should be the aims of the poor in general, he was adopting the tactics of a small-time gangster,’ (Reid, p 160). 

Brooke and Kipling criticise Reid:

‘These moralistic judgements betray a misunderstanding of the nature of the Luddite struggle as a form of guerrilla warfare,’ ‘Such tactics, greatly praised when committed by the French Resistance or other partisan groups against Britain’s opponents, are condemned when carried out by the Luddites, or others, against the British state,’ (Brooke, Kipling, p 128).

An echo of this controversy was heard at the unveiling of the statues to the Luddites.  An alternative ceremony followed the official unveiling, implicitly criticising the official version.  This unofficial ceremony was in turn heckled.  In the words of the site:

 ‘The person heckling the ceremony is the Chair of the Spen Valley Civic Society who, during the official unveiling ceremony held earlier, described the assassination of the mill-owner William Horsfall as a 'senseless murder' and had warm words for General Thomas Maitland who held large parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire and the North of England under military occupation in 1812.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWbOnxhv0PY

Nevertheless, as Brooke and Kipling themselves show the future of working class protest lay in mass action not individual attack.  These ranged from attempted the Huddersfield uprising of 1820 (Brooke/Kipling, pps 97-115) to the Chartist actions of 1832-48.  Chartists in the north mixed political protest via mass petitions with physical protest; the pulling of plugs to drain factory boilers and deprive the factory of steam power.   This mode of industrial sabotage led to these attacks being nicknamed the ‘Plug Riots’, http://spartacus-educational.com/CHplug.htm

However in 1812 Horsfall was not the only target for assassination attempts.  Reid’s chapter ‘Shots in the Dark’ recounts one attempt to shoot Cartwright on the edge of Huddersfield on April 13th.  Cartwright was riding back home from the Huddersfield court martial of the soldier who had refused to fight at Rawfolds, when he was attacked.   Peel  claims this happened in Bradley Woods ( The Risings of the Luddites, Chp XII, p 63)

                        Bradley Woods from the north.                                                Modern track inside Bradley Wood.

On two other occasions two shots were fired into Milnsbridge House aimed at magistrate Radcliffe (Reid p 128/9).  None of these shots found a mark.

Milnsbridge House

Many Luddite raids took place for the purpose of obtaining guns.  A flint-lock shotgun, stolen and sawed off by Luddites, was found in Elland Wood.   It is now on display in York Castle Museum in the prison where the Luddites executed at York were held.

Luddite shotgun, Castle Museum, York.

The barrels of the gun have had a history of its theft and hiding inscribed on them, making them the oddest Luddite text... 

The raids were necessary because few of the Luddites would have possessed guns.   Consequently few had much experience of handling firearms.   This was crucial because guns of the time were mostly one shot, temperamental weapons that took a significant time to reload.    A gun’s accuracy was affected by how much gunpowder was put in behind the bullet; an inexperienced gunman was likely to put in too much or too little which would affect the trajectory of the bullet, particularly if the shooter was nervous and his hand shook.    Some of the Luddites might have used muskets or rifles for poaching but few would have had occasion to learn to fire pistols, the chosen weapon for the best documented attacks.     On April 13th Cartwright was able to ride away when his two attackers missed him, though they fired from each side of the lane, and get out of range before they reloaded.   Had the attackers used shotguns, like the one illustrated above, it is likely that Cartwright would have been hit if not killed.

Though most of the novelists mention George Mellor's distinctive Russian pistol with a two foot barrel, only one novelist discusses the limitations of the weapons then in use.  Oddly it is not Henty, the writer of so many military adventures for boys, who does this; it is pacifically-inclined Christian Mrs Banks.  In Book 3, chapter 2 she remarks: 'At that time there were neither revolvers, nor percussion caps, not cartridges; all guns and pistols were fitted with small bits of flint, out of which flew a spark to the gunpowder, when the trigger was pulled and brought the steel hammer down upon the firestone at the right angle,' (p 284).   Her remarks then become satirical: 'The art of killing had not been elevated to a science in the early years of this century.  It has made gigantic strides since then, and won golden honours, rarely bestowed on the nobler art of healing,' (p 284) .

George Mellor's Gun

An imagined reconstruction.

 The squad that attacked Horsfall tried to ensure none of the problems of range or reloading occurred.  Four men with pistols waited for Horsfall by a plantation on Crosland Moor on Tuesday 28th April.    According to William Hall, George Mellor loaded the Russian long barrelled pistol he owned with two or three pistol balls and a large charge of powder, (Reid, p 134).  This certainly caused one of Horsfall’s mortal wounds but the recoil damaged Mellor’s finger.  (Reid, p 134)

On Tuesday 28th April, William Horsfall stopped outside Warren House, a public house on the road out of Huddersfield at 5.45pm. 

 Warren House in 2016, converted to a shop.   Robert Reid calls the inn 'Warrener House'

 At the door he bought drinks for himself and  two men who used to work for him but who had become cloth hawkers, a roving trade similar to Wat Harland’s.   

The doorway of Warren House

At 6.00pm he set off up the hill and was shot near where the street named after him now stands.

Wlliam Horsfall Street off Blackmoorfoot Road.

No plaque explains the street's name.  

A farmer named Parr who was riding up the road behind him saw four men in the plantation then heard one shot followed by two more.  As he rode towards Horsfall’s cry of ‘murder’ he saw a man jump up on the plantation wall and aim again.  Parr shouted: ‘What, art thou not contented yet?’ and the assailants ran off.   Parr helped Horsfall back into the inn where he died in an upper room on the following day. 

(Kipling/Hall, p 22, Reid, pps134-137)

Upper Rooms at Warren House.

This incident is central to most of the novels but receives radically different treatment and unexpected transformations.

In Shirley the mill owner Robert Moore is shot, though not fatally, as he pursues a vendetta against the rioters who have attacked his mill: ‘The four convicts of Birmingham were avenged’ (Chp XXX, p 427).    

In Sad Times it is unclear exactly who is shot, the victim is simply ‘a quiet unassuming, gentlemanly man’  ‘riding from the market town of H------ to his home,’ (Chp XIII, p141).  As far as readers are concerned this victim is chosen at random.  He is not identified as a mill-owner or shown to have any connection with the industrial unrest in the valley.

In In the Toils of the Luddites  the murdered man becomes a ‘machinist’, the maker of the hated weaving frames but he is not named (Chp IX, p124). 

In Through the Fray the killing is styled to resemble a detective story.  The mill owner Mulready is killed by ‘a rope stretched tight atween a gate on either side,’ (Chp XII, p 76) that trips his horse, shortly after the hero Ned has sworn to kill his bullying stepfather Mulready.  

How the killers in Henty’s story can be sure this trap will kill the right man is not entirely obvious…

In Bond Slaves and Inheritance the attack becomes a test of conscience.  Bond Slaves inserts an unlikely incident into the historical narrative.  Mellor and his men spring into action at the approach of a horseman.  This turns out to be ‘Old Joe Eastwood of Meltham’.  Mellor says ‘He’s done us no harm.  He’s made his fortune fair and tight by hand-loom weaving,’ (Bk III, Chp 7, p 331).  The remark deradicalises Mellor.  He becomes a man fighting for his own position and that of his specialist workers.   Eastwood’s chief function in the narrative is to preach a lay sermon and offer Mellor the chance to cancel the ambush:

 ‘You are meditating an awful crime, which may bring yourselves to an untimely end’, ‘You will never stop the progress of machinery by violent and unlawful deeds,’ (Bk III, Chp 7, p 331).    

After that history resumes and Banks tells the story much as historians do including farmer Parr’s words: ‘What? Are you not content?’ (Bk III, Chp 7, p 333). 

Banks keeps the historical incident that shows a generous side to Horsfall; his buying of drinks for his two ex-employees and enhances the act.  Horsfall throws the change from his drinks money to ‘two poorly-clad boys’, one of whom is Benjy, Wat’s crippled son (Bk III, Chp 7, p 332).   Not only does this establish Horsfall as a charitable man but also places Wat’s family at the heart of the action.   At the end of the chapter the author intervenes with a eulogy for Horsfall:

Many a workman’s family mourned for a kind master; father, uncle, brother, and those of his own hearth, wore the dark veil of sorrow through all the years of life (Bk III, Chp 7, p 334). 

The killers are described as ‘blinded croppers, who neither lacked work or wages’.  With a characteristic Satanic flourish the killing is called ‘a fiend’s carnival’ (Bk III, Chp 7, p 334). 

This Horsfall is far from the irascible Horsfall of Peel's Risings of the Luddites.  Peel's Horsfall is 'an excitable, impetuous man', who, when taunted by children: ' "I'm General Ludd !"', will 'pursue the frightened urchins with his horse-whip,' (Peel, ChpXIII, p 68).   Certainly this Horsfall sounds more likely to ride home unescorted than the Horsfall Banks creates. 

In Inheritance there is no equivalent of the attack on RawfoldsMill.  George Mellor determines to assassinate the mill-owner Mr Oldroyd after Mr Oldroyd successfully smuggles machines into his mill.  Oldroyd has fortified his mill with cannon in the same way that Horsfall fortified Ottiwell’s mill, and, like Horsfall, he threatens: ‘to ride in Luddites’ blood up to my saddle-girths,’ (Bk I, Chp 1.2, p29).    The story of Oldroyd’s murder is recounted in Book I, Chapter III .5, a chapter simply called ‘Crime’.    The killing is based on the shooting of Horsfall, but is oddly distanced by being told inefficiently by Briggs.  A bizarre comic tone is allowed to enter: ‘Enoch flew off to the doctor, who extracted no end of balls and bullets and slugs and what-nots from Mr Oldroyd’s belly and thigh,’ (Bk I, Chp III .5, p 97).

 Instead the focus of the book is on the Rake’s Progress of Joe, who finds his sympathies divided between the Olydroyds and Mellor and eventually makes the wrong choice.   Though he does not actually fire the gun he is given, he is part of the murder gang and ends the chapter ‘despairingly,’ (Bk I, Chp III .6, p 101).   Eventually he is hanged alongside Mellor in York, haunted by memories of the Ire Valley that he, like most of the characters in Inheritance, loves: ‘he would have liked to die in the Ire Valley, even if his body was not allowed to lie there,’ (Bk I, Chp V.2, p 142).   Despite this sentimental or visionary touch, the text does not criticise the punitive measures undertaken.  Instead both Banks and Bentley prefer to treat the assassination of Horsfall as the incident that alienated popular support.  

         The Colne is only 'little' in Joe's nostalgic imagination.                   Long before it meets the Ouse the Colne merges with the 

      It was a river powerful enough to drive the water wheels of               wider River Calder.   This shows the junction with the Colne,

      many early mills.   The picture above shows it flow under an             canalised as Ramsden's Canal (Huddersfield Broad Canal) 

      ex-mill in Longroyd.   It had enough water to be used for canals.                              taken from the A62 bridge.