Yorkshire Almanac Leeds textile workers celebrate the banning of exports of live sheep

1 July 1788: Leeds textile workers celebrate the banning of exports of live sheep

William White. 1837. History of the Town and Borough of Leeds. History, Gazetteer, and Directory, of the West-riding of Yorkshire, With the City of York and Port of Hull, Vol. 1. Sheffield: William White. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

[At the First White Cloth Hall] were great rejoicings and a grand procession of workmen, on July 1st, 1788, as a testimony of gratitude for the passing of an act to prevent the exportation of live sheep and wool, in which the French had encouraged an illicit trade, for the purpose of robbing the English clothier of his staple. A speech, written for the occasion, and delivered by a woolcomber on horseback, at the head of the procession, concluded with “may we never want a Pitt for the French to fall into.”

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

TBC. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to identify the legislation in question.

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Comment

TBC. I’m afraid I haven’t had time to identify the legislation in question.

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29 September 1830: Tory Radical Richard Oastler: “free” white workers in the Bradford mills are worse off than their enslaved black counterparts in the colonies

9 June 1758: Entry into law of the first dedicated railway enabling act, for Richard Humble and Charles Brandling’s wagonway from Middleton Colliery to the Aire at Leeds

27 January 1830: William Cobbett rides from Leeds to black Sheffield

1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway terminates the threat to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington

4 May 1807: Lord Milton welcomes 10,000 to his 21st birthday barbecue at Wentworth Woodhouse, Rotherham, during his campaign to be elected MP for the Whigs

20 September 1819: Flags and fasces at a procession from Briggate to Hunslet Moor to protest the Peterloo Massacre

30 May 1835: Alfred Austin, future poet laureate, “Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum,” is born into rural splendour at Ashwood, 48 Headingley Lane, Leeds

14 April 1843: John Nicholson, “the Airedale Poet,” “the Bingley Baron,” dies after falling into the Aire while drunk

15 August 1805: The Sheffield volunteer infantry depart to fight Napoleon on the beaches

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Comment

A lovely but puzzling footnote:

At the commencement of the French Revolution, similar associations were again formed in various parts of England, for the protection of liberty and property “against republicans and levellers;” and amongst them was the Sheffield Armed Association, commanded by Captain Samuel Robinson, and consisting of about 160 men, who obtained amongst their fellow townsmen, the cognomen of Peep-a-day-boys, or Stoop-and-rail-men, from their appearing regularly on the parade ground at the early dawn of morning, not with fire-locks, but with wooden guns.

It seems the beacon was lit by mistake, by an out-of-control stubble fire (Montgomery 1855).

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