As Poor As A Stockinger

 My latest feature in my continuing industrial series for Jane Austen's Regency World (November issue) is on framework-knitters (stockingers). 

Framework-knitters were extremely poorly paid. In March 1819, a Leicester framework-knitter, William Jackson, told a parliamentary select committee that none of the workmen earned more than six shillings a week (36p) on average, despite working a 15-hour day. 

Children helped their parents. Leicester had a wife and six children to support. He said that he earned eight shillings a week for making 'superfine' stockings, and he had 'put three of them into the frame' [i.e., making stockings], and they earned him 'nine shillings a week more'. William's wife did some seaming, for which she earned one shilling and sixpence. So their total income was 'eighteen shillings and sixpence'. The family was behind with their rent, and were in debt, even though Jackson had sold some of his belongings to try and make ends meet. 

Washing, fulling or 'felting' stockings. 

Probably one of the best-known stockingers was Jeremiah Brandreth, who was hanged for treason in 1817 following the ill-fated Pentrich Rising. Many contemporaries believed that Brandreth (a former Luddite), and his unfortunate companions on the gallows, was entrapped by a notorious government spy. 

Image of a stocking weaver courtesy of the Wellcome Library. 

Image of washing, fulling and felting stockings from Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Recuil de Planches de l’Encyclopédie Par Order De Matières, Tome Sixième, (Panckoucke, Paris, 1786). Author’s collection. 

The Bow St Runners

The next stop on my blog tour is on Victorian crime author Angela Buckley's excellent history blog. The magistrates attached to the Bow Street office in London, and their peace officers, the famous Bow Street Runners, play an important role in my new book Regency Spies.  
The Runners were sometimes asked perform investigations in the provinces; the magistrates also undertook covert missions outside London when necessary, for example, during the Luddite disturbances of 1812, and during the run-up to the Blanketeers' march of 1817. When local magistrates asked the Home Office to send Runners to help with inquiries in their locality, they were not best pleased to discover that they had to pay for their services.
Illustration:  The Bow St Runners arrest the Irishmen they hired to make false coins. George T. Wilkinson, Newgate Calendar Improved Vol. IV, Thomas Kelly, no date. Courtesy the Internet Archive, archive.org.

Regency Spies Now Available For Pre-Order!

I'm thrilled to announce that my forthcoming book Regency Spies is now available for pre-order from Amazon UK or from the publisher, Pen & Sword. Launch date is currently scheduled for 30 November 2015. 
Here's a preview of the blurb to whet your appetite:

                                                                          Regency Spies:  

                                            Secret Histories of Britain’s Rebels and Revolutionaries 

An Age of Revolutions

Sue Wilkes uncovers the hidden histories of Regency spies and the men they hunted. Eavesdrop on the secret meetings of Britain’s underground political societies of the 1790s and early 1800s. Discover the true stories behind the riots, rebellions, and treason trials in late Georgian Britain.

Regency Spies explores the plots, intrigues and perils of those thrilling times:      

• Wolfe Tone’s ambitious plan to free Ireland from British rule      
• Luddites incite arson and machine-breaking in Britain’s industrial heartlands
• The doomed Pentrich uprising of 1817 
• The race to stop the 1820 plot to murder cabinet ministers and seize control of the capital 

Inside Cover:

Sue Wilkes reveals the shadowy world of Britain’s spies, rebels and secret societies from the late 1780s until 1820. Drawing on contemporary literature and official records, Wilkes unmasks the real conspirators and tells the tragic stories of the unwitting victims sent to the gallows.

In this ‘age of Revolutions’, when the French fought for liberty, Britain’s upper classes feared revolution was imminent. Thomas Paine’s incendiary Rights of Man called men to overthrow governments which did not safeguard their rights. Were Jacobins and Radical reformers in England and Scotland secretly plotting rebellion? Ireland, too, was a seething cauldron of unrest, its impoverished people oppressed by their Protestant masters.

Britain’s governing elite could not rely on the armed services – even Royal Navy crews mutinied over brutal conditions. To keep the nation safe, a ‘war chest’ of secret service money funded a network of spies to uncover potential rebels amongst the underprivileged masses. It had some famous successes: dashing Colonel Despard, friend of Lord Nelson, was executed for treason. Sometimes, in the deadly game of cat-and-mouse between spies and their prey, suspicion fell on the wrong men, like poets Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Even peaceful reformers risked arrest for sedition. Political meetings like Manchester’s ‘Peterloo’ were ruthlessly suppressed, and innocent blood spilt. Repression bred resentment – and a diabolical plot was born. The stakes were incredibly high: rebels suffered the horrors of a traitor’s death when found guilty. Some conspirators’ secrets died with them on the scaffold...  

James Gillray, 'End of the Irish Invasion and Destruction of the French Armada'. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-8768 

New Book Contract: Regency Spies

I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve just signed a new book contract with Pen and Sword for their new Social History imprint!

‘Regency Spies: England's Rebels and Revolutionaries Exposed’ will explore the shadowy world of the network of government spies and agents provocateurs which kept watch on Britain’s underprivileged masses during the Napoleonic wars.  The upper classes feared a replay of the French Revolution on British soil: the threat of an armed insurrection or a French invasion was taken very seriously.  Any hint of sedition was ruthlessly suppressed.

The ‘Great War’ against Napoleon had a devastating effect on the British economy.  Taxation reached record levels to pay for the war, and the poorer classes endured great hardship.  Hunger fuelled riots for cheaper food and Luddite attacks on mill-owners, factories and machinery.

The spy network had some famous successes, like the discoveries of the Despard plot, the Pentrich Rising and the Cato St conspiracy.  Sometimes the government’s efforts descended into high farce, like the ‘Spy Nozy’ affair, in which poets Wordsworth and Coleridge were shadowed by a special agent.  But the stakes were incredibly high: agitators risked the horrors of a traitor’s death if found guilty.

The book will tell the stories of the real conspirators against the government, and the tragedies which befell ordinary folk entrapped by agents provocateurs.  The provisional launch date for ‘Regency Spies’ is mid-to-late 2015.

Images from the Library of Congress British Cartoons collection:

Satire identifying reform with revolution by Cruikshank, 1819. 
‘True reform of Parliament: patriots lighting a revolutionarybonfire in new Palace Yard by Gillray, 1809. Sir Francis Burdett is making a speech and waving a bonnet rouge [cap of liberty] shaped like a fool's cap as Horne Tooke lights on fire a pile of acts and charters, as well as a Bible, with a flaming baton labeled "Sedition" while three creatures add to the flames. James Boswell, Samuel Whitbread, Lord Folkestone, and Henry Clifford add documents to the pile as a mob destroys Parliament in the background.

The Risings of the Luddites

The years 1811 to 1813 were marked by great poverty for workers in many trades. The war against Napoleon had led to high food prices and difficult trading conditions.In Nottinghamshire in November 1811, framework knitters protested against cheap, shoddy hosiery by smashing stocking and lace frames. In his maiden speech in parliament, Lord Byron (1788–1824) highlighted the hardships which working families were suffering, but despite his efforts, the government made frame-breaking a capital offence. Luddite activity peaked in the northern counties during April 1812.

In Yorkshire, resentment was running high amongst the woollen croppers or ‘shearmen’. They believed that new ‘shearing-frames’ were taking away their livelihoods. On Saturday 11 April, over 100 Luddites tried to break into Cartwright’s mill at Rawfolds in Yorkshire.
In Cheshire, food riots in Macclesfield on 13 April were followed the next day by attacks on cotton powerloom mills at Stockport. Then on 28 April Yorkshire mill-owner William Horsfall, well-known for his hatred of Luddites, was shot dead.

In Lancashire during the same month, a cotton powerloom factory at Middleton was targeted. Then on 24 April, Wroe and Duncroft’s factory at Westhoughton was torched. Many of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Luddites later died on the gallows.

You can find out more about the Luddites’ stories and why they took direct action in the forthcoming May issue of Jane Austen's Regency World.
Update April 2015: My forthcoming book Regency Spies (which if all goes well with be published by Pen & Sword later this year), will discuss the authorities' hunt to find the Luddite leaders, and the spies who tried to infiltrate the ranks of the frame-breakers.





Images: Interior of John Wood’s cropping shop: headquarters of the Yorkshire Luddites. Rising of the Luddites, Chartists & Plug-Drawers, 3rd edition, (Brighouse, 1895).
Lord Byron. Great Authors of English Literature, W. Scott Dalgleish, (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1899).
Lancaster Castle. Lancashire Luddites were tried and executed here after the 1812 riots. Engraved by T. Higham from a drawing by T. Allom. People’s Gallery of Engravings Vol.2 (Fisher, Son & Co., 1845). Both images from the author’s collection.

The Cheshire Luddites

The spring of 1812 was a time of huge industrial unrest in north west England. Families were starving; food prices had risen to unprecedented levels, and wages had fallen. Wheat had reached the famine price of 152s 3d per quarter, and potatoes (the staple food of the working classes) were three times their usual price. Starving handloom weavers blamed the introduction of steam-powered looms for depressing the cost of their labour.
The workers decided on direct action. In February 1812, arsonists attacked Peter Marsland’s steam loom factory at Stockport, and unsuccessfully torched William Radcliffe’s steam loom factory in March. Manufacturers weren’t even safe in their own homes. In early April, Peter Marsland’s house windows were broken, and the homes of mill owners William Radcliffe and Mr Hindley were also attacked. Macclesfield, too, saw riots by angry cotton workers in the same month. The Cheshire Yeomanry had a full-time job keeping public order. You can find out more about the riots and the rioters’ fate in Regency Cheshire.

Image: Harrison’s Improved Powerloom, exhibited by Harrison’s of Blackburn at the Great Exhibition. Illustrated London News, 23 August 1851.