All the land in Huddersfield belongs to the Ramsden family, by whom the Cloth
Hall was erected. Six hundred manufacturers attend this hall every Tuesday.
The principal manufactures are of broad and narrow cloths, serges,
kerseymeres, cords, and fancy goods of shawls and waistcoatings, composed of
mixed cotton, silk, and wool.
The neighbourhood of Huddersfield was the centre of the Luddite outbreak,
when a large number of persons engaged in the cloth manufacture, conceiving
that they were injured by the use of certain inventions for dressing cloth,
banded together, traversed the country at night, searching for and carrying
off fire-arms, and attacking and destroying the manufactories of persons
supposed to use the obnoxious machines.
Great alarm was excited, some expected nothing less than a general
insurrection; at length the rioters were attacked, dispersed, a large number
arrested, tried, and seventeen hanged. Since that period not one but scores
of mechanical improvements have been introduced into the woollen manufacture
without occasioning disturbance, and with benefit in increased employment to
the working classes.
The case of the Luddites was one of the few on which Lord Byron spoke in the
Upper House, and Horace Smith sang for Fitzgerald .
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