Luddites

Luddites, bands of workmen who went about the midland counties of England between 1812 and 1818 destroying machinery, to the introduction of which they attributed the want of work consequent on the commercial depression. They took this name from one Ned Ludd, a Leicestershire idiot, who had in a passion destroyed some stocking-frames thirty years before, and their outrages commenced at Nottingham in November 1811, and extended during the following spring and summer through the counties of Derby and Leicester, and through Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire. In July 1816 they broke out with greater vigour, and destroyed every lace machine in Loughborough, while their leader openly declared his readiness to march 100 miles to destroy any machinery working under price. In October of the same year another party broke thirty machines in Leicester; but soon after, the riots of the Luddites are lost sight of in the wider and more formidable political riots which marked this period, and make the social history of 1816 little more than a long catalogue of disturbances. See The Risings of the Luddites, Chartists, and Plug-drawers, by Frank Peel (2d ed. 1888).