Luddites trialIn 1813, a special Commission opened at York, England to put on trial 66 persons for offenses connected with Luddism. Within days, seventeen of them had been executed on the scaffold. Taking their name from (perhaps mythical) Ned Ludd, Luddites vowed to destroy the factory mechanization they blamed for their unemployment. Riots began in 1812, and spread north from Nottingham where half of the population were receiving parish relief. Falling prices for goods, bad harvest increasing prices for food, wages at starvation level, costs of war and lost foreign markets contributed to the economic distress of the working class. One thousand looms were broken up in Nottingham, and a law was passed making destruction of machinery a capital offence.« |
