11 April
‘Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations, reduce them to a lowly standard.’
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Today in 1812, some 100 Luddites, calling themselves the ‘army of General Ludd,’ attacked Rawfolds Mill in Liversedge, attempting to break the new shearing machines.
Charlotte Bronte’s novel Shirley describes the attack. Originally, Bronte wanted to set the novel against the background of the Chartist unrest but to avoid potential embarrassment to her minister father changed this to the earlier period of the Luddite struggles.
’A number of reflections arise ... but we shall content ourselves with one remark: we have of late frequently deemed it our duty, from the regard we feel to the labouring classes, and to the laws of our country, to warn those that are engaged in those violent proceedings of the fatal consequences that await them in the unequal contest which they are now waging with the civil and military power of the country.’
Leeds newspaper report at the time of the attack on William Cartwright’s Rawfolds Mill
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365 days is co-authored by Steve Platt and Fiona Osler
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