A Peppered Past

MOTHS AND MOTHERS

Like Margaret Drabble who recently published an assessment of the matrilineal genes and memes that she inherited from the family of her mother, Kathleen Marie Bloor, I have come to feel an affinity with a moth.

Ms Drabble has titled her semi-fictional exploration of family history and the cascading intergenerational quirks of its female members, ‘The Peppered Moth’ – presumably because a moth is a moth and a Bloor is a Bloor, even though both may seek to change their spots to fit in.

The novel deals with difficult relationships - between parents and offspring, and between family and a sense of place. Away from the grime and gloom of South Yorkshire, the youngest in the line of ‘Cudworth’ women, Chrissie (Margaret’s self representation), comes to life in a perverse, wicked, rebellious streak, drawn to "lust, adultery and alcohol".

But fighting off the family curse of depression which has darkened the lives of her womenfolk, the fourth generation narrator finds it difficult to avoid a harsh, dismissive, censorious tone in assessing her forbears. In fact, she finds it hard to avoid sounding like her mother. And left to settle in Sheffield once more, no doubt the darkness would come to predominate in adjusting to nature.

So moths and mothers make an interesting counterpoint.

Let’s start by talking about the moths. The Peppered Moth (Biston betularia) is a dowdy, night-flying moth that used to haunt woodland trees in a greyish-white that blended well with lichen-covered bark.

When the early 19th century collectors first identified it, it was a predominantly light-winged with black speckles. But in 1848, a black variant was identified in Manchester that blended in much more effectively with the increasingly soot-stained trees of industrial Northern England.

By 1895, 95% of the Lancashire peppered moths were black – and this dark form then spread across Britain until the lighter form began a resurgence following the 1956 Clean Air Act.

The shift in hues in response to camouflaging and predation was seen by evolutionists as a clear vindication of the theory of natural selection, though disputes arose on the validity of the science and creationists seized the opportunity to argue that, as their had always been lighter and darker forms, proportionality was the only issue.

But Mike Majerus, Professor of Evolution at Cambridge University recently spent seven years repeating the earlier studies on the predation of the peppered moth. He compiled enough visual sightings of birds eating peppered moths to show that, in rural Cambridgeshire, the black form was significantly more likely to be eaten than the peppered now that air pollution had declined.

“The peppered moth story is easy to understand,” he explained, “because it involves things that we are familiar with: vision and predation and birds and moths and pollution and camouflage and lunch and death. That is why the anti-evolution lobby attacks the peppered moth story. They are frightened that too many people will be able to understand.”

Adding: “If the rise and fall of the peppered moth is one of the most visually impacting and easily understood examples of Darwinian evolution in action, it should be taught. After all, it provides the proof of evolution.”

And more recent research by Ilik Saccheri, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Liverpool, UK, and his colleagues has shown that show one mutation from a single ancestor causes increased dark pigment, called melanism, in the typically light-coloured moth.

Saccheri's team used a genetic technique called linkage mapping to search for the gene responsible. A linkage map puts traits in groups according to how often they are passed on to the next generation together, which indicates how close together they sit on a chromosome. The closer the traits are in the genetic sequence, the less likely it is that they will be separated during sex-cell division, and the more likely it is that they will be passed on together.

To make the map, Saccheri and his colleagues twice crossed a dark male moth with a light-coloured female; the result was 132 offspring with varying traits. The traits most often inherited alongside dark coloration were matched up with genes of the silkworm (Bombyx mori) — a closely related moth species with a sequenced genome.

The locations of the genes for the traits pointed to a narrow region on chromosome 17, where the scientists say that a single gene variant is probably responsible for the peppered moth's melanism, although they don't yet know exactly which one it is.

Once the chromosome region was identified, the researchers examined moth samples collected all over Britain between 1925 and 2009. The same group of gene variants huddled in the chromosome region closest to the mutation in the dark moths, providing strong evidence that natural selection had acted recently on an advantageous mutation from one individual. If a mutation had been in the population for a longer time, or had come from multiple individuals, the selection of traits that were inherited together would vary more widely.

"It's not just the one mutation that has been swept through the population, it's that whole chunk of chromosome that has hitch-hiked," says Saccheri.

"It's a big breakthrough as far as peppered moths' industrial melanism is concerned," says Laurence Cook, a retired population geneticist from the University of Manchester, UK. He has been studying the peppered moth since the 1960s. "We've been going on for an awfully long time knowing just the classical Mendelian genetics."

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE SHORROCKS

Like Margaret Drabble, I have Northern English ancestors and a somewhat quarrelsome relationship with my family’s matriarchy. As my mother used to say ‘You can’t kill squitch’ (i.e. invasive couch grass). As if anyone would dare try?

But in my case it is the male-line ydna rather than the female-line mitochondrial dna that is of most interest from a genetic and behavioural point of view. I never knew my father as he was killed in the RAF in 1943 before I was born and, as my mother pretty much turned her back on his family, I grew up knowing very little about the ‘Johnsons’.

But as with the Peppered Moth, genetic techniques have uncovered a story about evolution – the evolution of my Johnsons from the Shorrocks family of Salford. In a similar effort to avoid being conspicuous – my grandfather changed his name when he left the North around 1905 (though oral history confirms that he could not divest himself of his cloth cap and pipe). Regardless, he could not change the genetic signature that he passed on to succeeding generations.

So we can match the darkening of the moth over the 19th century with the history of my family – though in our case, the change of hue and spots was much more abrupt.

As recounted by Derek Antrobus, pre-industrial Salford was ‘a pretty town with orchards, market gardens and homes of quite prosperous people arranged around a street called Greengate where the market square was to be found’. In 1773, its population was less than 5,000 – but this modest, historic town was already growing and my paternal ancestors who moved there from Blackburn were among the early immigrants.

In 1764 William ‘Sharrock’ married Sarah Rix at Prestwich, and a 1797 Trade Directory record William as a Calico-glazier, living Wood Street, Salford. William and Sarah had two sons, Richard (b 1788) and James (b 1793).

By 1801 the population of Salford had reached 29,495 and it was over 40,000 when James married Elizabeth Butterworth in 1815 (as James Shorrocks). The marriage certificate records James as a Brushmanufacturer, and Pigot’s 1821 Trade Directory shows that James and his brother Richard were joint owners of a workshop at 22 New Bailey Street, Salford.

By this time, Salford had become one of the first sparks off the anvil of the Industrial Revolution. Following the opening of the Bridgewater Canal in 1761, which halved the price of coal, and the development of the steam engine and textile machinery, urban growth caught fire, engulfing the old town. As described by a contemporary of James:

‘Houses have now displaced the verdure in all directions, and the pellucid character of the river has been destroyed by chemical refuse, and although the old localities still retain their favourite names – names suggestive of ‘Flora and the countrie green’ – they form so odd an amalgamation with the new streets to which they are wedded that the contrast raises our mirth along with our melancholy.

Wheat Hill has not an ear of corn to bless itself withal; Springfield has lost every trace of the vernal season; Garden Lane, Posy Street, Blossom Street and the Old Orchard lead to anything rather than fruit and flowers. Even Paradise [Vale] and Paradise Hill are shorn of their primeval attractions; and as to the Green Gate that once guarded Salford’s pastures – where shall we look for that?’

Later, by the time my great, great grandfather Walter Shorrocks was recorded as a 15 year old in the 1841 Census, the population of Salford had reached 91,361. And when my great grandfather Robert Edwin Shorrocks was recorded as a 7 year old in the 1861 Census, the population was 148,740 – with Walter living with his wife Ann (nee Collinge) and their three sons at 21 Islington Street, Salford, employing 2 workmen in the brush manufacturing workshop attached to the dwelling.

As contemporary photographs and the comments of Friedrich Engels make it all too clear, by the mid-1800s, the pleasant town known to William and James had become overcrowded and squalid in many areas. New rail connections in 1841 and 1881 and the opening of Salford Quays on the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 accentuated the process.

By the time my grandfather Harry Shorrocks was recorded a 2 year old in the 1881 Census, (living with his father Robert who managed the brush stocks as a warehouseman and mother Fanny Eliza [nee Mallinson]) the population of Salford had reached 228,822.

It was over 300,000 in the Dirty Old Town when, as a young man Harry turned his back on Salford forever, settling in South London under his new alias Harry ‘Johnson’.

MOTHS AND FATHERS

There are many young people who run away and start afresh. But going further and changing one’s surname is an act that has repercussions beyond the immediate and personal. It affects all those who come later.

It raises possible limitations to our rights of reinvention.

Coming to the end of his life, Harry must have mused that no harm had been done. His three sons had produced what looked like a final total of four grand-daughters and it would have looked as though the Shorrocks name and ancestry were safely moribund. Then I popped up as a posthumous child, just a year before he died in June 1945.

But as the grandson who was cut free from his family history, I take exception to the fact that my father and his brothers and I were forced to fly, so to speak, under false colours.

Then there are the many, many hours of family history research that I spent dredging through the Johnsons in the Censuses looking for brush manufacturers. And the subsequent loss of my adopted brush manufacturing Johnson family of West Ham – and the embarrassing illegitimacy of my relationship with some of their lovely descendants the Bosleys.

So what drove Harry to turn his back on all that he knew and seek anonymity in London? We’ll never know – but we do know that he died as overweight and probably alcohol dependent. And that he had a reputation within my mother’s family as someone who became animated and inappropriate at any Bit of a Do, trying too hard to impress the ladies.

Or another way of putting it is that, like Chrissie the Margaret Drabble self-insert, he had a ‘wicked, rebellious streak, and was drawn to lust, adultery and alcohol’. Come to think of it, that covers some episodes in my own life.

So an independent streak to the caterpillar can be seen later as selfishness and self-indulgence in the post-pupated moth.

Getting back to my mother, on bad days she saw my grandfather rather than my father born again in me – particularly if I was going through a stouter or more exuberant spell. ‘You are just like your grandfather Johnson’ was sure to bring me to heel.

But like so many of the participants in the ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ series, I have found a sense of resolution and affinity in re-establishing my more distant family links. Looking back, something always seemed to be calling me from the past.

And what of my younger boys – are they, like the Peppered Moth, in the process of returning to ancestral type?

This is a hard question. As with any empirical work in the social sciences, it is difficult to avoid the observer intruding on the experiment.

In fact my own role in the story is now centre stage. Looking back over the last 200 years or so from the marriage of James and Elizabeth Shorrocks in 1815 to the present, you have a neat division between a Shorrocks century and a Johnson century – and I have been around for a third of the overall total.

I would like to think that my boys have inherited Shorrocks virtues and avoided Shorrocks vices but the likelihood is that they will see their lives much more in terms of the present day – focussing on reinvention in the light of the genes that I exhibit and the memes that I have spun.

But the family home is now called ‘Shorrocks Hey’ and my younger boys and I sometimes sing a little song going to school in the car based on a Bob Marley classic - ‘I shot the Shorrocks - but I did not shoot the deputy’. And Sam my eight year old has expressed dissatisfaction at being given his mother’s surname and flagged some interest in renaming himself Sam Shorrocks when he gets older.

As for the thirty and twenty-eight year old sons, they have, for the time being, rejected their father’s mutation into a Kiwi and dissolved back into the life of London - perfectly camouflaged.

The Middling Sort - the Mallinsons of Calderdale

THE MIDDLING SORT

One of the fascinating and sometimes slightly disturbing dimensions of family history is the discovery of shared space fractured by time. This is the realization that one has visited, lived in or worked in a town or locality that has already been the setting for the lives of previously unrecognized ancestors.

Hence we find that we have walked in the lost imprint of ghostly but familiar past steps.

In the period 1984 to 1991, I worked as a University Lecturer at Bradford University in West Yorkshire. During this spell, I started a family and we made visited many of the towns and historic sites, as well as making frequent trips to the magnificent Yorkshire Dales.

I became acquainted of course with the Bronte Country and pondered on Victorian life in the mill towns – including of course the role of the sweeping but still grimy and grim landscapes in moulding character and culture.

On one occasion, I remember a visit to Halifax and its extraordinary Piece Hall built in 1779 (pictures above).

I did not know then that I have a real connection with the area and the evolution of the Industrial Revolution in West Yorkshire.

Recently, following my research into my family, I have discovered that I was walking in the steps of the Mallinson branch of my own family.

My father’s paternal great grandfathers were Walter Shorrocks born 1824 (married Ann Collinge) and William Wheelhouse Mallinson born 1831 (married Eliza Jackson). Both families were from what has been termed the ‘Middling Sort’ touched by the Industrial Revolution – that is they were Northerners who ran their own small businesses.

The Shorrocks’ were Brush Manufacturers in Salford, Lancashire and it appears that the Mallinsons were Wire Drawers and Wool Manufacturers in West Yorkshire.

The oldest Mallinson ancestor that can be traced is Joseph who must have been born around 1780 – he is recorded in a marriage certificate as having been a ‘Manufacturer’ in Rastrick but the 1841 and 1851 censuses suggest that he had close relatives who were Wire Drawers living in Hipperholme cum Brighouse.

Joseph’s son Daniel was born 25th November 1806, in Rastrick, West Yorkshire and he died 29 April 1861, at his home 34 John Street, Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire. It seems that he was a Book-keeper by profession. He married my great great grandmother Elizabeth Wheelhouse 19th June 1828 in St Bartholomews Church in Colne, Lancashire (Elizabeth’s father Stephen is recorded as a Corn Miller in Rochdale in the 1841 census).

William Wheelhouse Mallinson married Eliza Jackson in 1854 – she was the daughter of William Francis Jackson who was a stationer. Like his father, William was also a book-keeper. His only child Fanny Eliza Mallinson (my great grandmother) was born in Salford in 1856. She is recorded as the only child of William and Eliza Mallinson in the 1861 census and it appears that her father died when she was 12 years old. By the time of the 1871 census, her mother had remarried to a Henry Hargraves and she is recorded as his step-daughter.

There was obviously a synergy within families between the craftsmen and entrepreneurs on the one hand and the book-keepers and clerks on the other.

Within the businesses it was vital that there was someone who could handle the paper work associated with ordering inputs, invoicing sales and tallying returns. And the roles were often interchanged. For example, my great grandfather Robert Edwin Shorrocks is variously recorded in the censuses as a Foreman Brush Manufacturer, Book-keeper, and Brush Salesman.

But all of them felt themselves to be of the Middling Sort – that is from an independent lower middle class bound together by sayings such as ‘Love your enemies, trust but few – and always paddle your own canoe’ (this motto was prominently displayed on the broken earthenware pot that housed the pens and which sat on the window sill of the kitchen at the farm where I grew up).

RISE OF THE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY IN CALDERDALE

The production of woven textiles was at the heart of the Calderdale economy from as early as the 12th Century. Apparently, in the south porch of the medieval Parish Church of St. John’s Halifax, there is a grave cover, dating from around 1150, depicting a pair of cropper’s shears, which provides the earliest surviving evidence of the textile industry in the area.

The poor quality of the topsoil and the cold and wet Calderdale climate created unfavourable conditions for arable farming but proved to be ideal land for sheep grazing and this stimulated the development of woollen textiles production as a supplementary economic activity to subsistence agriculture.

The evolution of a distinctive dual economy of farming and textiles on the uplands surrounding the valley of the river Calder was assisted by another geographical advantage, a proliferation of swift-flowing moorland streams, which provided abundant supplies of soft water for the dyeing and finishing of the woollen cloth.

In the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, cloth was produced by handloom weavers from hand-spun yarn in their own cottages. The production was labour intensive and involved the whole family. The process began with the shearing of the sheep. The raw wool was first picked clean and then greased to protect it during the abrasive carding and spinning operation.

Carding untangled the knotty mass of wool with special cards studded with iron pins which teased and fluffed out the fibres. The resulting fleecy slivers were then spun into yarn on the great wheel by the women and children – as many as half a dozen spinsters would be needed to keep one weaver working full time. When farm work allowed, the men would weave the yarn prepared by their families.

The cards required pins which were produced by Card Makers who were also often Wire Drawers, as the wire-making process could be adapted to producing combing pins.

At the time of the construction of the Piece Hall in Halifax in 1779, improvements to handloom technology, notably the invention of the Flying Shuttle in 1773 by John Kay, allowed a cloth maker to prepare and weave a ‘piece’ of kersey (a coarse, narrow woollen cloth – one of many different types woven) in time for the weekly market.

After the cloth had been woven, it was taken to a water-powered fulling mill, where it was pounded, scoured and textured by heavy wooden stocks, before being hung outdoors on tenterframes to dry.

The ‘piece’ of cloth represented a significant value and this led to a daunting penalty in the Halifax area for anyone caught stealing cloth from tenterframes. Thieves were subject to summary trial and execution on the Halifax Gibbet, a notorious mechanical guillotine, prompting the town’s inclusion in the well known ‘beggars litany’ – "From Hell, Hull and Halifax, may the good Lord deliver us".

Weavers in Halifax and the Calder valley specialized in making kersey which was a relatively coarse but hardwearing and inexpensive fabric that was always in high demand. Because it was so hard wearing, it was used extensively for military uniforms. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Napoleon’s armies were reputed to have been clad in kersey fabric produced in the Halifax region.

The importance of the domestic and export trade in textiles can hardly be overestimated. By 1700, the British textile industry accounted for 70% of all domestic exports and employed more people than any other industry. At that time, the estimated total value of the national production was £5 million, of which West Yorkshire production was put at £1million, i.e. 20%, significantly larger than any other area of the country.

By the early 1770’s, national production had doubled to £10 million, with growth being most marked in the West Riding of Yorkshire, increasing to £3.275 million, i.e. 33% of total manufacture. Within this, the Halifax area was the pre-eminent producing zone in the region, meaning that Halifax was at the pinnacle of this key element of the national economy. The vast majority of its citizens were engaged in the production and marketing of locally produced woven textiles.

DANIEL DEFOE’S DESCRIPTION

Daniel Defoe writing in 1724 comments on the Halifax of his day as follows:

‘The houses and farms are scattered across this landscape, each farm having a few small enclosures . . . from two acres to six or seven acres each.

‘The air is fresh and sharp, but good and wholesome, not subject to any epidemical diseases to corrupt its salubrity; a true specimen (evidence) whereof may be received from the clear and sound complexion of the natives, together with their compact and well-built bodies.

'Their tempers and dispositions are debonnair and ingenious, generally inclined to good manners and hospitality, giving civil and respectful reception not only to strangers, but unto all others with whom they have occasion to converse.

'On Saturday mornings merchants from Leeds or their factors do buy great quantities of white dressed kersies, which they transport to Hamburg and Holland. Furthermore, for the more effectual providing of the cloth trade, there are in this town three market days, chiefly for corn and wool (that is to say, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays).

There, tradesmen may be plentifully furnished, both to manage their callings and to make provision for their families), at which times very great returns are made, which may sufficiently discover the vastness of the cloth trade, which hath here been managed, and is still carried on, through the blessing of God upon men's honest endeavours.

'Nothing remains more worthy of the reader's consideration than a short description of the benefit which accrues to the town by the small river which skirts it at the east end. This river hath its current from two small rivulets, which unite at a place called Lee-Brigg, about a quarter of a mile from the town, and run in a semicircle stream from that place to the river Calder, which may contain in length not above four miles.

'During which space there is erected or the use and service of the town, in the carrying on of their trade, twenty-four mills all of them constantly carried about by the strength of the stream.

'Namely, eight fulling mills to prepare raw cloth for the dressers; two woollen mills for grinding all sorts of wood that is used by dyers, whose trade it is to dye both wool and cloth; one paper mill, chiefly employed in making such paper as is proper and useful to cloth- workers; one shear-grinder's forge, managed by an accomplished workman, for making and grinding of shears for the use of the cloth-dressers; and one mill for the friezing of cloth, which is so well performed that few come nigh it for fineness and firmness of work.

Defoe also illustrates the complex patterns of trade that developed within England as West Yorkshire’s successful specialization in exports stimulated domestic demand:

'Their corn comes up in great quantities out of Lincoln, Nottingham, and the East Riding; their black cattle and horses from the North Riding; their sheep and mutton from the adjoining counties every way; their butter from the East and North Riding; their cheese out of Cheshire and Warwickshire; more black cattle also from Lancashire; and here the breeders, the feeders, the farmers, and country people find money flowing in plenty from manufactures and commerce.

Thus this one trading, manufacturing part of the country supports all the counties round it, and numbers of people settle here "as bees about a hive."

THE PIECE HALL

The story of the Piece Hall is told as follows by local historians:

‘At the close of the first American war, when trade again began to advance rapidly, the old piece hall of Halifax became insufficient for the wants of the town, and about the year 1780-5 a much larger and handsomer piece hall was erected. It was built of free-stone, stood in the lower part of the town, and was erected at a cost of £12,000.

This hall is a large quadrangle, occupying the space of 10,000 square yards. It has a rustic basement story, and above that two other stories fronted with colonnades, within which were spacious walks leading to arched rooms, where the goods of the respective manufacturers in the unfinished state were deposited, and exhibited for sale to the merchants every Saturday, from ten to twelve o'clock.

This building was considered to unite elegance, convenience, and security. It contains 315 separate rooms, and has the merit of being proof both against fire and thieves’.

‘When it was built, the Piece Hall was a highly visible statement of the great wealth, pride and ambition of the cloth manufacturers. Although built for trade, it also embodied the most cultured sensitivities of the Enlightenment; these bluff northern manufacturers deliberately chose a design for their building which adapted the neo-classical orders of architecture derived originally from the Romans, illustrating their fascinating mix of purpose and idealism’.

WHEERE THER’S MUCK, THER’S BRASS

Taking up the story:

‘About the beginning of the nineteenth century the steam-engine, and a great variety of new and improved machines for spinning and weaving cloth, began to be introduced in this part of the country. From the abundance of water-power, the introduction of steam was less rapid here than in some other places.

Fortunately for Halifax, it possessed abundant supplies of coal as well as of water, and gradually the steam-engine established itself here as the rival, the ally, or the successor of the water-mill.

The check given to the industry of Halifax by the change in the motive power soon passed away, and in the year 1821 the population of the town, including those parts of it which extend into the townships of Northowram and Southowram, had risen to 14,064 persons, of whom 12,628 were in the township of Halifax.

At that time, 1821, the population of the wider parish of Halifax amounted to 93,050 persons, having considerably more than doubled during the sixty years which had elapsed from the commencement of the reign of King George III in 1760, when it amounted in round numbers to 40,000 persons.

It is also central that many of the inhabitants were Dissenters, with Quakers being a prominent group in the 17th century and Methodists being important in the 18th century. Both of these churches emphasized self-reliance and modest living.

They also put great store on education - and the need to provide small businesses with family members who could keep the books.

So the immense wealth generated by the wool industry in the 17th and 18th centuries was built to no small degree on the frugality and thrift shown by the inhabitants of West Yorkshire.

From the trade grew complex systems of consignment ordering and consolidation and payment. London provided the apex of these chains of advances and payments as it was well-placed to store and ship orders to Europe and the American Colonies (receiving inward movements by canal and pack-horse).

At the same time, the financial surpluses generated by the wool trade fuelled the rise of modern banking and accounting. As the industry moved from water power to coal powered textile mills, economies of scale became attractive and overdraft facilities were provided to fund innovation and larger plants. Cheque accounts were also developed to facilitate financial settlements.

At the local level, the habit of saving was reinforced by the development of building societies (e.g. Halifax, Bradford and Bingley, and Leeds) to provide revolving funds for the purchase and construction of new houses for members.

Cooperative societies were also formed to pass on economies of scale in the purchase of household necessities (e.g. the Rochdale Pioneers) and simple saving accounts (e.g. the Penny Bank) were also provided.

RISE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

John Smail has analyzed the complex social and economic interrelationships that underpinned development. These include:

• A self-reinforcing history of innovation and willingness to adopt new manufacturing practices
• The emergence of a business-friendly and business-like popular culture
• The development of a complementary money market
• The emergence of more demanding patterns of consumption that percolated down from the elite.

Smail also draws attention to what may be termed investments in 'Social Capital':

‘One of the most striking features of Halifax's history in the decades after 1750 is the host of associations that were formed to accomplish specific projects - to reorganize a workhouse, build a canal, start a library.

As John Brewer has noted, such voluntary associations were a new political form in the eighteenth century, and they enabled provincial merchants, tradesmen, and professionals "to exercise collectively an influence in the community far beyond that conferred by their individual incomes."

They were therefore a form particularly suited to the needs of the commercial and professional elites in places such as Halifax. Since English society denied this group structured opportunities to exercise their influence and meaningful acknowledgment of their social prestige, they had to create their own institutions and these institutions helped to create class identity’.

Smail goes on to sketch the widening chasm which separated the widespread Middling Sort of the 17th century (the large and loosely defined congeries of independent rural artisans and small landholders) from the true upper Middle Class that developed as large-scale manufacturing gradually reduced the descendants of most of the original families to the status of wage labourers working for large-scale textile firms.

Well in a of course, there is some truth in this interpretation even though it has a somewhat Marxist ring.

But there is another reality that comes through family history. That is that the thrift, enterprise and self-sufficiency of the 17th century artisans formed a foundation for some of the best strands in modern society – in terms of both their notions of what can be achieved by self-help and their commitments to building a civil society.

And these ideas also live on in families that pay their way, and in middle-way politics where caring about community is balanced with caring about cost.


POSTSCRIPT - THE YORKSHIRE LUDDITES

From 1812-13 much of the West Riding was the scene of riots, murder and pitched battles as bands of armed Luddites went on the rampage. In Yorkshire the majority of Luddites were croppers, tough and highly skilled men who earned good wages cropping and finishing wool using heavy hand-held shears.

In a time of economic depression and food shortages, the livelihoods of the croppers were threatened by the invention of new shearing machines that made their once-prized skills obsolete.

In February 1812 unemployed croppers began to hold secret meetings and form societies to plan attacks on the hated frames. The meetings were held at the St Crispin Inn, Halifax with the connivance of the landlord John Baines, who hoped to turn the local discontent into a revolution that would topple the monarchy.

New recruits were obliged to swear an oath of secrecy known as ‘twisting in’, and throughout February, March and April Luddite disturbances became increasingly frequent. Mills and workshops all over the West Riding were attacked, and the hapless owners had to stand aside as their new frames were destroyed by gangs of men armed with sledgehammers and crowbars.

In April a gathering of Luddites led by a cropper named George Mellor descended upon Rawfold’s Mill in the Spen Valley, but were driven off by musket fire. Several Luddites were wounded, two later dying from their injuries, and the defeat brought about a change in Luddite strategy.

Up until now they had confined themselves to attacking the frames and leaving the owners unmolested, but the hard-nosed Mellor gave his followers new orders: ‘Leave the machines but shoot the masters’.

This led to the murder of a mill owner named William Horsfall, who had unwisely denounced the Luddites as cowards and sworn that he would ride up to his breeches in their blood. On the afternoon of 12th April Mellor and his cronies William Thorpe, Thomas Smith and Benjamin Walker lay in wait for their man in some woodland on Crosland Moor. When Horsfall rode by on his way home from Huddersfield market the gang burst out of cover and shot him dead.

The murder of Horsfall changed the character of the Luddite disturbances, and from then on they became increasingly violent. Following the assassination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Percival, at Westminster in May a new government was formed that took a merciless attitude towards civil disorder. Troops were poured into West Yorkshire and by the summer of 1812 over a thousand red-coated soldiers were stationed in the area.

George Mellor and his gang were soon captured and subjected to a show trial at York. Though there was little doubt that Mellor was guilty, his case became notorious for the corrupt methods used against him. The end came when one of the gang, Benjamin Walker, turned king’s evidence and supplied damning evidence against the rest of the gang. Thirty-six hours after conviction (which meant no time for an appeal) he, Thorpe and Smith were executed before a silent crowd.

Sixty-three other Luddites were tried before the same Commission and another fourteen executed. Others including the republican host of the Crispin Inn, John Baines, were sentenced to be transported to the colonies, and there were only seven acquittals.

The heavy sentences demonstrated that the Luddites were considered to be more than mere criminals, and that the government was determined to crush the threat they posed to the established order - as was done with the Peterloo Massacre of Chartist demonstrators in Manchester in 1819 and the containment of the agrarian Swing Riots that followed in the southern and midland counties of England in 1830.

But the ideals of these movements lived on in accumulating demands for the extension of the voting franchise and the foundation of modern labour unionism.