The Luddite Trials: Radical Suppression and the Administration of Criminal Justice

"Luddism ended on the scaffold."

—E. P. Thompson¹

After reviewing the historiography of the Luddite rebellions, this article details the process of criminal justice administration at the time of the rebellions. The various legislative acts that comprised the "Bloody Code" are identified and the associated history of capital charges and executions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are examined. Relying on trial records and newspaper and other accounts, results of the Luddite trials are presented and compared with the execution and pardon rates for Assize trials in England and Wales. Providing details of occupations, ages, and charges for those at risk of the mass executions at the Luddite trials reveals the extent of the repressive measures used to thwart Luddite disturbances. Seeking further insight into how the repressive trial outcomes were obtained, Home Office correspondence and other sources relating to the York Special Commission are reviewed to assess trial outcomes during the tenure of Lord Sidmouth as home secretary.

This article uses sources arising from "the Luddite trials" at the Chester Special Commission, May 26–30, 1812, the Lancaster Special Assizes, May 25 to June 2, 1812, and the York Special Commission, January 2–12, 1813, to provide an alternative perspective on an event with a vast historiography—the Luddite rebellions of 1811–13.² In contrast to the numerous narratives concerned with motives and "worldview" of the Luddites, there is a dearth of secondary sources available on the exercise of criminal justice administration at these trials.³ The plethora of primary sources emanating from the propertied upper classes detail how the mass public hangings at the Luddite trials suppressed the destruction of private property and the perceived threat to "public peace" from the Luddite "disturbances."⁴ The array of sources include: parliamentary papers and legislative acts, commission reports, personal letters, Home Office correspondence, reports from sanctioned "news" outlets, and accounts of trial proceedings.

Historiography of the Luddite Rebellions

The long-standing debate among historians surrounding the Luddites is typically "from below," part of a wider debate on possibly revolutionary motivations of rebellious English crowds during the "Age of Revolution."⁵ Recent contributions by Katrina Navickas, Kevin Binfield, Matthew Roberts, Carolyn Steedman, and others have reoriented this debate toward the "places and spaces in which Luddism occurred," and away from the narratives of the older historiography of Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, the Hammonds, and F. Darvall.⁶ The Luddite narrative inspired by Thompson focuses on broader historical processes associated with working-class struggle and the labor movement, diminishing localized features of the rebellions detailed in recent contributions, and, somewhat earlier, by Craig Calhoun.⁷ Explicitly recognizing the sociological diversity of community context, recent contributions to Luddism maintain that concentration on trade unions or political societies is inadequate. "Luddism, and rural resistance more generally, cannot be reduced to … singular frameworks. The agitation was not about the development of working-class consciousness and politicisation of the poor en route to democracy."⁸ Complementing the diversity of geography, politics, and economics, Luddism is seen as invoking a "mythology and shared identity" that facilitated transmission "in a more abstract form than physical organization" involving "a complex web of demands and grievances, regional differences and identities." Diversity of community context is transcended by a common mythology among the Luddites creating a loose "shared identity" across locations.

If definitive interpretation of Luddism is problematic, then using the view "from below" to assess the view "from above" is also problematic. In other words, without enough "words of the rioters" it is not possible to determine whether the terrorizing spectacle of mass public hangings was a reasoned and justifiable response to the Luddite threat consistent with the "rule of law." On the one hand, if the Luddites had "revolutionary objectives," as asserted by Thompson and others, situating Luddism as part of a longer historical process that began with the American and French revolutions and propelled in England by the arrest and acquittal for treason of the leaders of the London Corresponding Society in May 1794, followed by the draconian suppression of revolutionary activities, underpinned by...