21st April 1812: Attack on Burton's Mill at Middleton - Day 2

After the disorder and resulting slaughter that had taken place at Middleton in the daytime on Monday, in the evening the crowd had not just gone home quietly. The Leeds Mercury reported that "Monday night was occupied with rallying ... scattered forces and obtaining an accession of strength".

Samuel Bamford proceeded early to his job in Manchester, thereby missing what was to come.

Early on Tuesday 21st, the crowds had gathered again, only this time they were out in greater numbers. They had been augmented by a large number of Colliers from Hollinwood and Saddleworth, some of whom were carrying shotguns, and most of whom had brought their pickaxes. At 10.00 a.m. that morning, these men had called at the arms depot of the Oldham Local Militia, with the Adjutant William Chippindale had again anticipated an assault on the building, and although the crowd collected there had looked like they would mount an assault, they again changed their minds and instead looted gun powder from nearby shops, before proceeding to Middleton. Others with them carried all kinds of weapons, even scythes mounted on poles.

Scouting parties had detected the presence of the military at Burton's mill and whilst a presence was kept up outside it, other tactics were employed. The houses of some of those workers who had decided to side with Burton and against their class the previous day, and were not at home now, had their houses plundered of furniture, which was then piled up in the streets and set alight. Bamford said that "In this manner the furniture of one cottage at Back-o'th'-brow, and that of two others at the Club houses was destroyed." The Colliers from Oldham and Hollinwood used their tools to destroy the end wall of one such house, and we know the names of three of Burton's assassins whose homes were attacked: Benjamin Cooke, James Kay and Edward Taylor. The Colliers were next called away to nearby Rhodes to help out with another plan about to be implemented.

Emanuel Burton's house, a mansion called Park House at Parkfield, had been abandoned by the family after the happenings of the previous day. At 1.00 p.m, a crowd of 200 people proceeded to comprehensively loot it, as Bamford describes:

"the mob immediately ransacked the cellars and larder, the younger ones crunching lumps of loaf sugar or licking out preserve jars, whilst the older hands tapped the beer barrels and the spirit bottles, or devoured the choice but substantial morsels of the pantry or store-room. This part of the business having been accomplished, the work of destruction commenced, and nearly every article of furniture was irretrievably broken."

Bamford goes on to describe how, inside the house, two "dark-haired and handsomely formed" "Amazonian damsels" called Clem and Nan, apparently the daughters of an old weaver who lived on the outskirts, then escalated the matter:

"Come," said one to the other, “let's put a finish to this job,” and taking up a shred which lay on the floor, she lighted it at the fire which had been left burning in the grate. In a moment the sofa was on fire; the sofa set the curtains in a blaze, and sofa and curtains communicated the flames to the floor and window, and at the expiration of probably half an hour not a beam nor a board remained unconsumed in the whole building.

The Lancaster Gazette later stated the damage to be around £2000, which included the barn and stables (a week later, the Hereford Journal raised this to £3000). The crowd waited until the roof had fallen in and then proceeded another quarter of a mile. They had the same fate in mind for the home of Daniel Burton, at nearby Rhodes, and demanded meat and drink from those in the house. Apparently, they spent 90 minutes eating and drinking, and managed to consume 2 barrels of ale kept in the house.The crowd gathered around it was eventually dispersed by the returned Scots Greys, who Colonel Clay at Manchester had dispatched at about 2.00 p.m., and no damage was done.

It seemed that in certain parts of Manchester, word had got out about Middleton, and some were prepared to lend a hand. Colonel Fletcher's spy John Bent, reported that he had heard that the same afternoon, up to 427 mainly Irish workers in the Boardman Square district, many armed with pistols and swords, were prepared to head to Middleton, but were held back by their 'leaders'.

Both William Chippindale and the Lieutenant Colonel John Lees of the Oldham Local Militia went on to recount to the Home Office other activities apparently being conducted in Middleton that day. They described how a number of "revolutionary Jacobins" were about town wherever there were large numbers of people as well as in all the public houses. They were equipped with large ruled sheets of paper, at the top of which was an illegal oath, and they were collecting names of those who wished to take part in a rising against government on the 4th May. However it is hard to find these accounts convincing, especially as they seem motivated to procure military aid fearing similar occurences in Oldham as had taken place in Middleton and other towns.

Colonel Clay later reported to the Home Office that the crowd outside Burton's mill
quickly dispersed upon the appearance of the Scots Greys, but many took up positions on higher ground as well as in the Church Yard, and those with firearms proceeded to fire on the military. After apparently having three vollies of shots directed at them in this way the Cumberland Militia set about returning fire, killing several people. The Greys then proceeded to "clear every point they occupied", killing and wounding even more. Samuel Bamford again described some of the victims and how they died:

"A man named John Nield, from Oldham, was shot through the body by one of the Greys whilst attempting to escape near Alkrington Hall; another man was shot by one of the Greys, and left for dead, near Tonge Lane; a woman, also, who was looking through her own window, was fired at by another of the same party, and a bullet went through her arm. But a Serjeant of the Militia earned deathless execration by shooting an old man, named Johnson, from Oldham. Johnson had never been nearer to the mob or the factory than the Church public house, where he had sat in the kitchen with the family, and had smoked his pipe and drunk a glass or two of ale. Towards evening, when it was supposed that all the disturbance was over, he strolled into the churchyard, and was standing with his hands in his coat pockets, reading the inscription on a grave-stone at the steeple end, when a Serjeant and private of the Militia, having ascended the Warren, caught sight of him from mongst the trees; the Serjeant went down on one knee, levelled, fired, and killed the old man dead, the ball passing through his neck."

The Leeds Mercury said that in addition to these deaths, "a great number" were wounded. William Chippindale attested that "the country about Middleton is strewed with killed and wounded." 17 people were arrested.

By 6.00 p.m. the crowds had dispersed.

Heading home from Manchester, Samuel Bamford described what he saw "individuals on the road who were returning to Manchester with fragments of picture frames and mahogany goods in their hands."

It is hard to establish the true number of dead. A week later, the Times said that the toll was 12 dead and between 60-100 wounded. This is unsurprising given another statistic quoted in the same paper - that between 2000-3000 rounds of ammunition had been fired by the military.

But is possible to piece together other names of the dead and statistics about them which seem to have been missed from the most regularly referred to works. The Morning Chronicle of 28th April adds Thomas Jackson, 20 year-old a hatter from Oldham and John Johnson, a joiner.

The Chronicle also adds a weaver called John Sudwell of Ratcliff (i.e. Radcliffe), but this may be the same man named by Bamford, if spelled slightly differently (Bamford has John Siddall of Radcliffe Bridge). The same publicaton also has a Daniel Knott from Oldham, rather than Bamford's David Knott, a 21 year-old glazier. Again, it could be a different man. The Chronicle also informs us that the George Albison mentioned by Bamford was called Albinson, a 19 year-old weaver.

Regarding the wounded, the Chronicle reported that a week later, the only person who could be "ascertained with certainty" was a weaver called James Taylor, son of an Abraham Taylor of Oldham, and that he was believed to be mortally wounded at that time. But this contrasts with the Times dramatic figures, likely to be true given the number of rounds of ammunition fired. The Derby Mercury of 30th April had 27 wounded, 9 of them 'very severely'.

On the 29th April, the Hereford Journal reported that "a number of dead bodies had been found in the adjoining woods" (Prentice says that 2 were found there), and gave a new death toll of between 25 and 30 people. All of this was after the Coroner's inquest, which took place only a day after the second attack of the Mill, on Wednesday 22nd April and found that the slaughter was 'justifiable homicide'.

Writing at 11.00 p.m. on the 21st, Colonel Clay reported to the Home Office that "none of the military were hurt". Given the toll exacted on the people of Middleton, one can only add more's the pity.

The next day, the Burton's issued a notice: "D. Burton and Sons have determined not to work their looms any more."

And so the objective of the weavers at Middleton was achieved, but not without further cost. Burton dismissed 400 workers, many of whom subsequently left the town within a few days.

It is ironic that when we think of Luddism, the tragedy of the 2 dead men (and possibly a further 3) at Rawfolds in West Yorkshire always springs to mind. But what occurred at Middleton over those 2 days was of an order of magnitude that is, by contrast, almost quietly forgotten.

The Leeds Mercury of 25th April engaged in classic Liberal hand-wringing, despairing:

"For many years the military of this country have been solely employed against our foreign enemies; but now, unfortunately, they are under the necessity of acting against their own misled countrymen, and the tranquility of the country is only imperfectly preserved even at the point of a bayonet!"

But the lesson for the authorities would be that they had to tighten their grip on the North. Contrasted with his scaremongering tales of Jacobins on the street corners making big lists of names, William Chippindale did make one salient point:

"If more military be not sent into the country, they will not be called upon to prevent it, but will be required to reconquer it."

The Suppression of British Jacobinism, by Alan Brooke

Membership Card of the United Britons, c.1802

Reformers and Republicans saw the political system of the eighteenth century as a betrayal of the Revolution of 1688, depriving them of constitutional rights guaranteed by the Magna Carta and of their free birthright bequeathed from Saxon times. In fact, the bourgeois revolution of the seventeenth century had removed the feudal absolutist obstacles to the development of the capitalist mode of production but it, had not removed political power from the sections of the aristocracy who were based on landed capital. Power was in the hands of this small oligarchy composed of landed, and to a lesser extent, commercial capitalists still largely of aristocratic descent, who monopolised parliament through the nomination of M.P.s. The same class composition permeated the hierarchy of the military and judiciary. Except for a few large manufacturers such as Peel, even the majority of industrial capitalists were excluded from central government although they might exercise considerable local influence.

The American and French revolutions provided a great impulse and inspiration to the British reformers and republicans. The Declaration formulated by the French National Assembly was enshrined by Thomas Paine in a book which took the same title "Rights of Man", outlining the course of the Revolution and proposing a reform of the British system of government. Paine's work became the manifesto of the republican movement, stimulating the formation of Constitutional Societies throughout the country, composed mainly of artisans and small tradesmen and "Rights of Man" was read widely by artisans and workers outside these circles. The London Corresponding Society (LCS), founded in 1792, became the largest and most influential organisation, communicating with the main provincial societies such as Sheffield, Manchester and Norwich.

The LCS advocated the reform of parliament by the institution of universal suffrage and annual parliaments and the reform of the fiscal system by the adoption of Paine's plan for progressive taxation and economies in the national expenditure - but there was little clarity as to how they were to be achieved. Paine himself did not exclude an insurrection, but only as a last resort and in defence:

“Reason and discussion, persuasion and conviction, become the weapons in the contest, and it is only when those are attempted to be suppressed that recourse is had to violence. When men unite in agreeing that a thing is good, could it be obtained, such as relief from a burden of taxes and the extinction of corruption the object is more than half accomplished.”

A Convention, with all the associations that term had with the French Revolution, was intended as the focus of agitation to express popular "Reason and discussion" but only the Scottish reform societies succeeded in organising a "British Convention" in November 1793, which made no decisive proposals other than to maintain pressure for reform and to increase co-ordination between the societies in Scotland and England. A contingency plan to convene illegally in the event of proscription or a French invasion was never put to the test.

Some reformers expressed support for an unequivocal republican position acknowledging the need for armed preparations and open approval of the French revolution by pressing for an alliance with the republican, pro-French, United Irishmen (UI) but this was rejected by an earlier Scottish convention in 1792. Government repression acted as a catalyst in the polarisation of the movement, and by 1797 groups of avowedly revolutionary United Englishmen (UE) and United Scotsmen were formed clandestinely, especially in London, Manchester and Dundee, often with the support of Irish immigrant workers, and secret emissaries passed between Britain, Ireland and France.

The basis for a social programme for revolution was also laid by Thomas Spence, although it reflected the immature state of the development of capitalism in proposing a scheme to destroy the economic and political power of the aristocracy by confiscation and redistribution of their landed estates. Whilst not a social revolutionary himself, his theories articulated popular opposition to both the political system and to industrial capitalism, which was expressed in terms of a return to an idealised past of smallholdings, yeomen farmers and manufacturers. It was a challenge to established property relations, if not to the right to property itself, and an explicit challenge to the system of government:

"When a people create Landlords, they create a numerous host of hereditary Tyrants and Oppressors, who, not content with their Lordly Revenue of Rents, seize also upon the Government and parcel it out among themselves and take as enormous salaries for the Places they occupy therein as if they were poor men."

Their domination at home. challenged by these doctrines and the heightened working class activity accompanying industrialisation, and their imperialist supremacy challenged by revolutionary France abroad, the ruling class launched a vigorous reaction. "Rights of Man" was banned as seditious libel and its sellers persecuted, known reformers were intimidated by "Church and King" gangs incited by the authorities and leading Jacobins arrested; the Corresponding Societies had no alternative but to meet behind closed doors. Consequently all information that came to the authorities emanated from undercover agents of one type or another.

After the arrests, the suspension of Habeas Corpus, and the mob terror of 1794, the LCS formed a secret executive committee to try and hold the organisation together. One of its number, a certain Citizen Groves, was in fact transmitting detailed reports of all its transactions to the authorities. He was almost exposed, but at a trial before the committee refuted accusations against himself by supplying evidence of his enthusiasm. Such enthusiasm by its agents could be counter-productive for the government. In the same year a government spy, Robert Watt, who claimed he had become a genuine convert to reform, was beheaded for high treason after his conviction for a plot to seize Edinburgh by insurrection. No clear delineation can be made between spy, provocateur and adventurer in such cases. The reformers were certainly aware of the dangers and Thelwall included in his lectures an exposure of the spy system. The use of spies and the arrest of key leaders such as Thomas Hardy, on dubious evidence which almost cost him his neck and which led to the transportation of others like the Scottish Jacobin, Thomas Muir, led to defections from the Constitutional societies. A group of "Working Mecanicks" wrote from Leeds to the LCS in late 1797:

“There was a very good Society here about 3 years since but the arbitrary proceedings of our Justices operated in so terrifying a manner on our Friends in general that their spirits have been sunk under the Standard of moderation & the Sacred flame which had been kindled in their Breasts was almost extinguished.”

The response of other reformers was to establish a more tightly knit secret revolutionary organisation, bound by oaths and other conspiratorial practices and devoted to republican insurrection and support for revolutionary France.

Fear that the leadership of the widespread popular unrest expressed in labour disturbances, food riots and anti-militia conscription riots would fall into the hands of such republican elements was overshadowed by events of 1797-98 when both the obvious and the suspected influence of the republicans assumed a much more alarming aspect. A Parliamentary Secret Committee, convened to investigate the role of the Jacobins on the evidence of informants and captured documents, concluded that members of the LCS had been active amongst the sailors who mutinied at Spithead and Nore where some of the mutineers hoisted a red flag. It had been reported that the Society of United Irishmen was also involved and one member had attempted to fire the magazine of "Repulse" rather than allow her to surrender.

The United Irishmen were also held responsible for the formation of the republican wing of the LCS into the Society of United Englishmen (UE) from a group initially meeting to read the UI paper "The Press" in the cellar of a London Inn. Societies throughout the country, formerly in correspondence with the LCS, were said to have joined the UE and the Manchester county committee was particularly energetic in dispatching delegates to the neighbouring industrial areas. The Parliamentary Secret Committee attributed wide success to this movement especially amongst the working class:

"Many ignorant or inconsiderate persons throughout the country were gradually involved in these transactions and the influence of the destructive principles from which they proceeded was still further extended by the establishment of clubs among the lowest classes of the community which were open to all persons having one penny and in which songs were sung, toasts given and language held of the most seditious nature."

The UI delegate O'Coigly, later hanged for treason, was said to have pressed for a general rising and plans were proposed to land parties of Irishmen on the coast to make their way to London as immigrant workers and to assist the English in seizing the capital.

Although the UE did not rise, the UI, despite the existence of spies near to the central leadership, did. A certain McNally provided detailed reports of the republicans' preparations, including negotiations with Bonaparte; and the Leinster Directory, a dozen key leaders, were seized on the information of another spy, Reynolds. This, plus savage repression in the counties around Dublin, failed to halt the uprising. Its defeat and "the success of the measures which have been employed for detecting and defeating the designs of the conspirators" in England, particularly the arrest of the principle leaders, had, according to the Secret Committee "averted impending danger" but they were unable "to justify the hope that the mischief is eradicated or the danger passed." The fears of the ruling class were expressed in the committee’s summary of the aims of the republicans in both Britain and Ireland as:

“the entire overthrow of the British Constitution, the general confiscation of property and the erection of a Democratic Republic founded on the ruins of all religion and of all political and civil society, and framed after the model of France.”

Fears which were to resurface at every assertion of strength by the working class, and at every alarming display of organisation such as the Institution. The cautious optimism of the Secret Committee received a blow that autumn with news of a disastrous harvest, rocketing food prices and near famine surpassing even 1794-95. Meetings were held throughout the industrial districts, particularly the West-Riding and South Lancashire, in the subsequent period of distress which remained critical until 1802 .The attitude of the authorities is reflected in a warning to the "disaffected" published at Halifax:

“…several illegal and most dangerous meetings have been held in the nightime for treasonable and Rebellious purposes for the subversion of the established government and a cooperation with a French invasion , which meetings it is the Determination of the Civil and Military Power: to oppose with the utmost rigour of Military Execution.”

Protest meetings and food riots had been a common feature of class conflicts in the eighteenth century but now, on the dawn of the nineteenth, they represented a different phenomenon - there existed amongst the working class a national movement, formulating its propaganda with a clear political ideology and agitating for resistance against ruling class and state. But how far this was a cohesive coordinated organisation was (and consequently still is) hard to ascertain. Members were sworn in and given a membership card bearing the motto ‘Liberty, Justice and Humanity’ and a small eight page pamphlet outlining the aims of the organization and its constitution. Each group was to be organized on a cell system where members were known only to the ‘conductor’ of the organization.

The existence of Societies of United Englishmen was suspected in the industrial districts signified by the proliferation of republican handbills and posters; one, in Doncaster in October 1800, calling for a moorland meeting for the establishment of a Convention. Most of this was dismissed by the Lord Lieutenant of the West-Riding as "Loose Conversation, taking its rise from the pressure of the times … ", but as a Whig he had a political interest in playing down anything which would strengthen government reaction. Conversely, Ralph Fletcher J.P. commander of the Bolton Volunteers and a Tory loyalist who managed an extensive spy network claimed evidence of the growing strength of the UE both in his own area and the WR . His agent ‘AB’ reported in 1801 “I am perfectly satisfied for 20 miles around this place 9/10s of the people are sworn to overthrow the present constitution.” Provocation was used even against reformers who were not implicated with the UE. In 1801 a smith, John Howarth was arrested for telling his workmates that the Jacobins ‘were going to demand the excise and be without Kings’ and whilst in custody he was threatened with a harsh sentence if he did not turn informer. He was instructed to join the Political Union for reform in parliament and accordingly approached the local leader, William Moor who swore him in and who was arrested a few hours later for administering an unlawful oath, in accordance with the act passed after the mutinies of 1797.

The incident as recalled by Moor also supports the evidence of Fletcher' spies that widespread disaffection, if not planned insurrection, existed, as thousands had assembled in Bolton and attacked the military escorting him to Lancaster Castle, ‘so much alive were the people at, that, time to parliamentary reform.’ Howarth still appears to have been under Fletcher's control by 1812 when he was executed at the Special Assize for leading an attack on a shop.

Whether or not the UE were planning an insurrection, the republican movement received a demoralising blow in 1802 which, combined with economic improvement and growing disillusionment with the French revolution, proved a severe setback to British republicanism. Colonel Edward Marcus Despard, one of those who had been imprisoned in 1798 and of Irish origin, was arrested in a London Inn at a meeting of soldiers and workers, including many of his compatriots, and accused of a plot to seize the Tower and the Bank of England. The revolutionaries had, or believed they had, wide support amongst soldiers and attempts to seduce soldiers from their duty had been one of the main complaints of the authorities against the UE. Callant, one of Fletcher's victims, was executed for this offence. The plan revealed at Despard's trial was for a putsch rather than a national revolution and the complicity of the United Englishmen arrested in Sheffield could not be proved. Despard's claim to fame lies more in his being a popular martyr, a victim of a reactionary government and its agents, than in being a great revolutionary leader, and the UE (or the United Britons as they sometimes were referred to at this time) shares more characteristics with later Blanquist secret military societies than with a mass revolutionary movement. But this does not diminish their role in this period.

The modus operandi of both Irish and British revolutionary groups was similar and some degree of collusion existed between them – the fundamental difference stemmed from the fact the former could rely on a base of a discontented and nationalistic peasantry with a long tradition of rural guerrilla warfare. No such socially and politically homogeneous force existed in Britain. The development of the factory system was creating such a force, but in a contradictory way. It was workers in the domestic system of production, in their opposition to the effects of industrial capitalism and united by their common conditions of exploitation, who made the first political assertion of the class interest of the working class which transcended trade and regional barriers. This growth in the organisations and consciousness of the working class had its class opposite in the growth of the capitalist state - a fact noted by Marx where he says, in one of his few references to 1812 " … the Luddite movement gave the anti-Jacobin governments of a Sidmouth, Castlereagh and the like a pretext for the most reactionary and forceful measures."