ABSTRACT
Trade in 1842, the year of the plug riots, was worse than ever, and the sufferings of the working classes throughout Yorkshire and Lancashire were very great. It was hoped that as summer came on matters might improve, but they grew gradually worse, and at the beginning of August the distress was at its height. The corn laws were then in full operation, and the ports being closed the people throughout the country were starving. In the north it was reported that a fourth part of the population was dying of famine. At Stockport half the masters had failed, and five thousand workpeople were walking the streets, nor were they much better in any of the towns in Lancashire. The Chartist movement had gathered much strength during the past year, and the working classes in all the large towns were in a state of great disoontent and disaffection. The masses of the people were still persuaded that the “People’s Charter” would enable them to secure higher wages and better food, and that for that very reason the “aristocrats,” against whom they inveighed so furiously would not grant it. Another immense petition in favour of the charter was presented in the House of Commons in May, and great meetings were of almost nightly occurrence in all the large towns of Yorkshire. At Leeds the pauper stone heaps now amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand tons, and the guardians offered 6s. weekly for doing nothing rather than 7s. 6d. for stone breaking. Poor rates swelled to 330with dismay’ the heavy drain on their resources. Towards the end of June a meeting of tradesmen and shopkeepers was held in the Bradford courthouse, “to enable them publicly to make known the unparalleled distress which prevailed, and the decay of trade consequent thereon, and to adopt such measures relative thereto as might be deemed advisable with a view to avert impending ruin.”
