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strike. The same course of events followed-blacklegging, intimidation, and surrender. But John Orr, junior partner and acting manager, was a gentleman of determination, and did not mean to give in so easily. He waited quietly, but in the mean time busied himself in erecting houses for his workpeople in the immediate neighbourhood of the mill. The houses were barely ready for occupation, when the workmen realised his intentions, and, without waiting to be challenged, called a lightning strike. Mr Orr engaged new hands at lower wages, housed them in his new buildings, and hired armed watchmen to patrol the place at night. Notwithstanding these precautions, shots were fired through the windows, both of the mill and of the workers' houses, and Orr's was soon in a state of siege. The hands were only safe in the immediate neighbourhood, and dared not leave the premises. Mr Orr was warned that his life was in danger; but he had secured supplies, his mill was working at full pressure, and he considered his position sufficiently satisfactory to get married.

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On the night before his wedding he dined at the house of his future father-in-law, and after dinner was seated in the drawing-room in conversation, when the maid-servant entered, and told him that a person was at the door wanting to speak to him. Entirely unsuspicious, John Orr jumped up and ran downstairs. The girl followed him more slowly, carrying a lamp in her hand, for the lobby was in darkness. He reached the door and called, Who is there?' and in reply three pistols were fired at him, by men standing on the doorstep. In spite of the close range, all three shots missed, for the assassins were confused by the swaying lights and shadows thrown by the lamp in the maid-servant's hand. The three-Cameron, McConnell, and Callaghan -believing that their shots had taken effect-for Orr, from the sudden shock, had staggered against the wall— made off, and betook themselves to a public-house in Paisley, where they met one Morrison, the emissary of the Union, who had employed them, and demanded the 107. promised them for doing the job.' Morrison, not satisfied from their account that Orr was really dead, refused to pay them. In this manner he saved 107., but put a noose round his own neck. The landlord and his

Vol. 248.-No. 492.

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wife had noticed that the men were carrying pistols, and were listening at the keyhole, and overheard the assassins' abuse of Morrison. They were able, not only. to testify against Cameron, McConnell, and Callaghan, but, on a later occasion, to identify Morrison as the man who had employed them. In this case the criminals were all arrested, and were sentenced to transportation and flogging. It was easy to identify them, for they had spent the evening in hunting Mr Orr systematically through the town, having been twice to his home, to the factory, and to several other houses where he was in the habit of visiting.

This occurred in 1820. In 1823, a certain cottonmaster dismissed a man, Fullerton, who had been arrested for some small offence, and took on in his place one William Kerr. Fullerton was a leader of the Union, as Kerr soon found to his cost. The knobstick received several warnings, which he disregarded, and his assassination was determined on. It was the custom of the Union, in such matters, to choose as their emissary a spinner from a different district, for the time being unemployed, for if the assassin was a stranger there was no danger of the victim recognising and denouncing him. The person selected in this case was our friend Morrison. Kerr lived in the upper flat of a house, entered by an outside staircase. Morrison concealed himself near by, on a dark evening, and as Kerr was going upstairs on his return from work, Morrison emerged and shot at him with a pistol. Luckily for himself, the knobstick happened to stumble in the very moment that the shot was fired, and the bullet, instead of striking him in the side, passed through the inside of the right arm and right thigh. Morrison was arrested, and was identified as the man who had employed the three men who attacked John Orr. He was sentenced to a public flogging and a term of imprisonment.

There was, even at this unpropitious time, no difficulty in procuring substitute labour in Glasgow. In the first place, there were always little piecers, growing into their 'teens, who had long experience of machinery, and could be set to a 'pair of wheels' if necessary; and young women employed as carders or cleaners could easily learn the same work. More important was the

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in fact that, even when reduced, wages in Glasgow were che still higher than in the country districts, and men could

always be lured away from the country mills. Lastly, Cal there were among the regular hands individuals who refused to join in the strikes, and even refused to join the Union at all. Whatever motive actuated these men Sp-whether personal ambition, domestic needs, loyalty to their master, or simply perverse independence-it was not cowardice; for they had to face a bitter and unrelenting persecution.

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The first warning would probably be given, in an ostensibly friendly tone, by a fellow-workman: 'I am afraid you will get into trouble, you know, if you go on in this way.' If this were disregarded, an anonymous letter would follow, scrawled upon a piece of dirty paper, adorned with a crude drawing of a pair of pistols, a coffin, or a skull and crossbones, and signed by some such name as 'Captain of the Blood-red Knights,' 'A Thrasher,' or 'Arthur Thistlewood '—the last, of course, after the leader of the recent Cato Street Conspiracy. One such letter, written in 1820, runs:

'SIR,-I hereby intimate to you that unless you instantly leave them wheels which you so unjustly occupy, your blood shall answer for your impertinence; you are considered worse than any Nobstick that ever was in this place, although perhaps you do not think so, but if you do not desist before Saturday next I shall take care that you will neither spin there nor any place else. I do not often bark before I bite' (this is a favourite phrase), 'only I think it right to give you this intimation. I am your friend meantime who gives you such timely notice. If you take it well, if not you may depend to find me what I really am.-A THRASHER.'

A similar letter would, as likely as not, go to the master. Here is one sent to Daniel McNaught, superintendent of Crumbie's Mills, Anderston, where women had been employed instead of men. The chivalrous attitude of the Union towards women labourers requires no comment. The date is Nov. 27, 1822.

'SIR,-I am authorised to intimate jeopardy and hazardous perdicament you stand in at the present time by the operative cotton-spinners and lower class of mankind in and about Glasgow. By keeping them women officiating in men's places

as cotton-spinners and plenty of men going idle out of employ which would I [sic: be ?] accept of them for the same price omitting the List which you knew is trifling, so they present this proposal as the last in corresponding terms so from this date they give you a fortnight to consider the alternative whether to accept of the first or the latter, which will be assassination of Body which you may rely upon no other thing after the specified time is run, for you will be watched and dogged by night and by day till their ends are accomplished, for you well deserve the torturing death that man could invent being so obstinate, more so than any other master round the Town and seeing poor men going about the streets with families starving, and keeping a set of

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I may call them spending their money, drinking with young fellows and keeping them up, so mark the warning well and do not vaunt over it like your foolish neighbour Mr Simpson in Calton with his, for he was soon brought to the test and you will be the same in Murder. A. B. Signed by Captain Bloodthrust void of fear.'

Here is another to a master who employed a knobstick.

'Daniel Macphail, Green Street, Bridgeton, Glasgow. SIR, as you have got a character in your works that is abominable to every man in my authority I am determined to have him out of that. Turnbull is his name so I hope this will save me from going to extremities. Yours with respect. Captain of the Vitriol Forces, Headquarters, Jany. 6, 1823.'

This letter was adorned with the drawing of a flask labelled 'Vitriol.' It was no vain threat: vitriol was the chief weapon of 'Captain Bloodthrust's' gang. There was more than one reason for this. It was a weapon that scarcely ever failed of its mark, and yet it could be used with very little danger to the assailant. Nothing could be easier, even in a crowded street, than to dash the liquid in the victim's face and make off. The movement of the assailant was scarcely noticeable, and the victim was at once rendered incapable. The perpetrators of these outrages were never detected.

Then, it was a weapon so deadly that it caused more terror than any other. A detailed report of two cases of vitriol-burning, by the medical officers who examined them, was laid before the Parliamentary Committee of 1825; but the details are too horrible to be given here. The sufferer was frequently blinded, and sometimes

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permanently incapacitated for work of any kind. The knobsticks must have been men of resolution; for many of them continued to attend their work after being threatened with vitriol, and, in one case at least, rejected the guard that the master offered to provide for safety. Finally—and this was probably the decisive reason— vitriol-throwing was at this time only a misdemeanour, and could not be punished as a serious offence. A man could be hanged for stealing 40s., but he could only be sentenced to a short imprisonment or a small fine for vitriol-throwing, whatever the results. It was favourite weapon of the trade unions all over Great Britain. A few years after this, men on strike in Manchester actually employed vitriol against women acting as blacklegs in a cotton-mill.* The Glasgow spinners do not seem to have gone as far as this; but it was one of their favourite devices against men.

'If you do not attend to this we will serve you like Kenzie Phillips this we swear by the living God,' said an anonymous letter to Gavin Wilson, an Irish knobstick,' in August 1823. We have heard before of Kenzie Phillips. He worked for Henry Houldsworth, the greatest cotton-manufacturer of the district, and he seems to have offended the Union in some unusually serious manner, so perhaps he had acted as informer as well as blackleg, though of this there is no record. He was twice shot at through the window of his own house, and on the second occasion the bullet, breaking the window, scattered broken glass over the terrified children crouching in the bed inside. Then he was waylaid on his return from work, and vitriol was thrown upon him. Face, hand, and arm were burnt to the bone, and the sight of the left eye entirely destroyed. After months of illness, he was discharged from hospital, and Houldsworth took him on again as a spinner. Since my misfortune Mr Houldsworth has been very kind to me,' the wretched man says in his statement of his case. Shortly after his return to work, he was shot at through the factory window, but again escaped unhurt. Finally, the Union men presented to Mr Houldsworth the memorial quoted earlier in this article, in which the dismissal of

* Home Office Records, H.O. 40. 26. Sir Henry Bouverie to Secretary Sir Robert Peel, Oct. 30, 1830.

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