ON THIS DAY · 12 APRIL 1812

Rawfolds Mill attack

11–12 Apr 1812 — About 150 croppers attack William Cartwright’s mill, where shearing frames threaten their trade. The defenders’ musket fire kills two of them; the Luddite rising crests and is broken.

The moment in context

Luddism was a targeted protest by skilled workers, and its targets reveal its logic. In the Midlands stocking trade, framework knitters, who worked rented knitting frames at home, faced falling pay per stocking and wide frames that made cheap, poorly finished stockings. Beginning at Arnold on 11 March 1811 they broke the frames of employers who paid low rates while sparing those who paid fairly. In Yorkshire the croppers, who finished woollen cloth by hand with heavy shears, faced shearing frames that did their work with a fraction of the labour, and in April 1812 about 150 of them attacked William Cartwright’s mill at Rawfolds, where defenders shot two of them dead. In Lancashire, hand weavers attacked mills that used steam-powered looms. These were precise attacks on specific practices, carried out in a decade of war, dear food and trade depression by men who had no vote and no legal union.

From Luddites, Peterloo and Chartism, chapter 6 of The Industrial Revolution, 1750–1914 (1848).

The place: Rawfolds Mill attack — map and full story →

The atlas that shows it

The Industrial Revolution, 1750–1914

12 CHAPTERS · AN INTERACTIVE SITUATION MAP