On the report reaching the factory that the mob was coming the works were stopped, and all hands save those detained for the defence of the mill were sent home. The mob, after a short delay in the Market-place, proceeded to the bottom of Wood-street, where the factory was situate, and halted in front of the building, and a score or two of boys, who led the mob, set up a shout, and began to throw stones and break the windows. A number of discharges from the mill followed, but as no one seemed to have been hurt another shout was set up, and the cry went round. “Oh, they’re nobbut fleyerin peawther; they darno shoot bullets,” and the stone throwing was recommenced. Other discharges from the mill now took place, and some of the mob who had experience in such matters remarked that the crack was different, and that ball was being fired. A single moment confirmed this opinion, for several were wounded and three fell dead, on seeing which the mob fled in all directions. In a short time a troop of the Scots Greys were in the town, and they were quickly followed by a company of the Cumberland Militia. The streets and lanes were then cleared, after which the horsemen returned to Manchester, and the militia took up their quarters in the mill. The number of wounded on this unfortunate occasion was never truly known, but it was soon ascertained that four persons, all young men, had been killed – Joseph Jackson, sixteen years of age, and David Knott, aged twenty, both from Oldham, were killed at the end of Chapel-street; John Siddall, of Radcliffe Bridge, aged twenty-two, was killed lower down the street; and George Albison, a young man from Rhodes, was wounded whilst going along the highway, and shortly after bled to death, there being no surgical aid promptly at hand. On my arrival the streets were all quiet, doors closed, and alehouses silent. People’s minds were, however, sadly agitated, and fierce denunciations were uttered against “Burton and his shooters;” whilst very little anger was expressed against the men who had plundered shops. In the coat pocket of one of the killed was found a half-pound of currants, the fruit, no doubt, of such plunder. I state these things because they are facts, and not from any feeling which I now have, one way or the other, except for truth; though at the time I entertained perhaps as strong a dislike to “the shooters” and their employers as did any man in the town. My dear wife and child I found safe at home; but greatly was I alarmed, and exceedingly thankful when I learned that my wife in her curiosity to watch a mob, had gone down to the town, and with another thoughtless woman or two had stood at a window of a cottage nearly opposite to the factory, within range of the shot, and only a few yards from the spot where one man was killed. I gave her a lecture for so doing – the first, perhaps, since our marriage; and, being convinced of her folly, she promised never to transgress in that way again, and I dare say she never has.”
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Rowbottom continues: On Tuesday a very large mob again assembled at Middleton, armed with guns and pistols, and a very large number of colliors, armed with picks, no doubt for the purpose of destroying the weaving factory, but it was guarded by a party of the Cumberland Militia, who were inside the factory. However, the mob set fire to the house of Mr. Emanuel Burton, wich, together with the barn, stable, hay, corn, etc. was consumed to ashes. A party of Scotch greys arrived, and put the mobers to the rout. The Militia sallied forth from the factory, when the greys cuting and firing and the Militia firing, both refusing mercy to the ill-fated mob. John Johnson, a joyner, from Oldham, received a ball through his neck in Middleton Churchyard, of wich he instantly died; he was 23 years of age. A great number where wounded, and some very dangerously. James Taylor, a spinner, shot through the body; Jonathan Buckley, a hatter, shot through the body, both of Oldham; John Neild, a hatter, of Alder Root, shot through the body; one Midgly, arm shattered by a shot, he lived in Hollinwood; and a deal more from this neighbourhood wich I cannot particularise. On the 24th the large weaving factory of Mr. Thomas Wroe, situated at West Houghton, was consumed to ashes by the mob. Bamford says: The morning following the eventful day, I went to my work at Manchester as usual, and in the afternoon we were again startled by the intelligence that a mob larger than that of the day before had visited Middleton, and had burned the dwelling of Mr. Emanuel Burton and those of several of his workmen to the ground. On my way to Middleton that evening, I met individuals on the road who were returning to Manchester with fragments of picture frames and mahogany goods in their hands. The mob had, indeed, been desperately bent on destruction that day; but more wary than on the day preceding, they had divided their forces, and whilst one strong party threatened the factory, and by that means detained the militia at that post, others went to the houses of certain workmen who had defended the factory the day before, and not finding them at home, had piled their furniture in the street and had destroyed it by fire. In this manner the furniture of one cottage at Back o-’th’-Brow and that of two others at the club houses, was destroyed. The mob, it should be understood, were armed with guns, scythes, old swords, bludgeons, and pitchforks. A party of colliers from the neighbourhoods of Oldham and Hollinwood carried mattocks, and with these tools were in the act of knocking the end of a house down when they were called off to another place. For whilst these outrages were in progress at Back o-’th’-Brow and Club Houses another party of rioters set off towards Rhodes, and it was to aid these latter that the colliers were called away. |
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The house of Mr. Emanuel Burton, of Parkfield, was the first object which attracted their vengeance. It had been abandoned by the family, and the mob immediately ransacked the cellars and the larder, the younger ones crunching lumps of loaf sugar or licking out preserve jars, whilst the older hands tapped the beer barrels and the spirit bottles, or devoured the choice but substantial morsels of the pantry or store-room. This part of the business being accomplished, the work of destruction commenced, and nearly every article of furniture was irretrievably broken. Amongst the rioters were two sisters, who might have been taken for young amazons, so active were they in their pillage and so influential in directing others. To some of these around them they were known as “Clem” and “Nan,” two dark haired and handsomely formed daughters of a venerable old weaver, who lived on one of the borders of the township. The two were in a room, the windows of which were hung with light muslin curtains, and a sofa, with a cover of light cotton, was also in the room. “Come,” said one to the other, “let’s put a finish to this job.” And taking up a shred which lay upon the floor, she lighted it at the fire, which had been left burning in the grate. In a moment the sofa was on fire; the sofa set the curtains in a blaze, and sofa and curtains communicated the flames to the floor and window; and at the expiration of an hour probably not a beam nor a board remained unconsumed in the whole building. The next place intended for destruction was the mansion and farmstead of Mr. Burton, sen., at Rhodes, and only a very short distance from the scene which has just been described. A part of the mob was already hovering about the grounds, and some individual had advanced into the yard and began operations, when a tumult and clatter of hoofs caused them to look around, and they beheld the Scots Grays close upon them. Their flight and dispersion was the work of an instant; and this valuable property was saved. Whilst the Greys were dispersing the mob at Park House and Rhodes, others of the same regiment, assisted by the militia, were clearing the rioters out of Middleton, which they did speedily and effectively. In the performance of these services, however, greater severity was exercised than had been the wont of these two corps on the former occasions. A man named John Neild, from Oldham, was shot through the body by one of the Greys, whilst attempting to escape near Alkrington Hall; another man was shot by one of the Scots Greys, and left for dead near Tonge-lane; a woman also who was looking through her own window, was fired at by another of the same party, and a bullet went through her arm.
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But a sergeant of the militia earned deathless execration by shooting an old man named Johnson from Oldham. Johnson had never been nearer the mob or the factory than the Church public-house, where he had sat in the kitchen with the family, and had smoked his pipe and drunk a glass or two of ale. Towards evening, when it was supposed that all the disturbance was over, he strolled into the churchyard, and was standing with his hands in his coat pockets reading the inscription on a gravestone at the steeple end, when a sergeant and private of the militia, having ascended the warren, caught sight of him from among the trees. The sergeant went down on one knee, levelled, fired, and killed the old man dead, the ball passing through his neck. A number of shots were fired at the soldiers during the pursuit, but none of them, I believe, were wounded, except from casualties with their horses. A number of persons were made prisoners during the riot, and subsequently many left the country for a time. The two amazonian damsels escaped seizure, and few of the real leaders were ever prosecuted; whilst several who had little to do with the outrage as I had myself were, on the information of a bad, half-crazed but artful doxey, lodged in jail, tried, found guilty and sentenced to long imprisonments.” Many are the traditions of “Middleton feight.” Had Oldham possessed a scribe who had written ”Tales of a Wayside Inn,” we should have had an entertaining local literature. I heard one of these old tales the other day. Two men from a village near Lees had gone to see the fun, but it was no fun at all. They were suffering from reduced wages, and thought there was a remedy in smashing the machinery, although they did not intend to apply the remedy themselves, but only went to see others applying it. They stood watching events from some coign of’ ‘vantage near the scene of operations in Middleton, when they heard the shots of the military, and the bullets whizzing overhead. They took to their heels across a plantation, and as they fled, the budding leaves of the trees above scattered by the shots of the soldiers dropped on their shoulders and at their feet. Such a visitation was too near to be altogether pleasant. Fear added wings to their feet, and as in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied by them, and they went through byways, running and walking, until they got safely home. But having got home they durst not sleep in their own beds, nor did they till weeks had passed. After some lapse of time and all fear of being apprehended was over, these two began to pay their usual visits to the wayside inn. The village was all agog with their “hairbreadth ‘scape.” And the first time that “Owd feaw” set eyes on them as he was taking his usual pot of beer at the alehouse, he exclaimed in an air of scornful derision, “Scots Greys are coming lads, run.” But it is said they knocked “owd Teaw” off the chair and otherwise wrought summary vengeance. Both Jarvis Winterbottom and Jack Bennet, the two here named, lived to be old men, and will be remembered by many a whilom Leesite and Hey lad who reads these annals. |
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William Rowbottom's Diary as published in the Oldham Standard |
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