History of the
1826 Uprising

History of the 1826 Uprising

Handloom weavers in the nineteenth century were known to be a hard-working and compliant workforce who faced periodic poverty with stoical resilience. Yet in Pennine Lancashire in April 1826 their patience clearly broke. Faced with a perfect storm of high food prices, low or no wages, the accumulative impact of poverty over several years and the introduction of much cheaper forms of weaving through powerlooms in the mills, the handloom weavers and other ordinary people felt they had no choice but to respond with protest and rebellion.

The significance of April 1826 rising though, has been largely forgotten and the main aim of the WUBC is to work towards the remembrance of this momentous and historically important event.  This page provides a short overview of the uprising and the terrible tragedy of the Chatterton Massacre, 26th April 1826.

On the morning of the 24th of April 1826 thousands of people gathered at Whinney Hill, near Accrington, to devise a desperate plan of action in the face of starvation. There had been agitation by starving weavers across the region in preparation since February of that year but now was the moment of action. Their mission was clear – to destroy all the powerlooms in east Lancashire without the unnecessary destruction of property or any violence to the person.

During the uprising more than 1,100 powerlooms were destroyed by weavers and their associates. From Whinney Hill as many as 10,000 people are believed to have joined the crowd as it headed west towards Oswaldtwistle and Blackburn. On the following day, 25th of April 1826, around 2,000 protestors gathered in Earcroft and over the moors to Helmshore and eventually Haslingden. Their intent was a focused destruction of the powerlooms as a means of sending a political message about their extreme poverty,

On the third day of the uprising, the 26th of April 1826, the soldiers were ready for the protestors. That morning a crowd, estimated of between 3,000 to 4,000 people, made their way from Haslingden and Rawtenstall along the sides of the south Pennine moors to Dearden Clough Mill in Edenfield and then down the steep hill towards the mill at Chatterton. When they arrived at Chatterton Old Lane, the local magistrate and the soldiers were waiting for them. Not long before 11am, the local magistrate, William Grant, read a short extract from the 1714 Riot Act. The crowd did not disperse.

Shortly afterwards, under the orders of Colonel Kearney, 20 riflemen from the 60th Duke of York Own Rifles lined up in two ranks of 10 at the bottom of Chatterton Old Lane and opened fire. The soldiers fired 600 bullets into a crowd of 3,000 people over a period of 15 minutes. In the chaos that followed at least six people were shot dead – James Lord, John Ashworth, James Rothwell, Richard Lund, Mary Simpson and James Waddicar – in what can only be described as a massacre. Remarkably, following the killings the protestors regrouped and continued their quest to destroy further powerlooms. The final day of the uprising, 27th of April 1826, started with just a couple of hundred people, but as the protestors made their way from Tockholes to Water Street Factory in Chorley, they were joined by a much larger crowd.

The numbers of people killed or seriously wounded during the uprising remains unclear.  Newspaper reports give details of additional deaths at Blackburn on 24th April and that further bodies were recovered of those shot at Chatterton on the 27th April.  Anecdotal accounts, passed down through the generations, also indicate that others later died of their wounds, meaning it is possible that the number of dead at the Chatterton Massacre is in double figures. Yet acknowledgement of the true nature of these events has been largely lacking. Even though there is evidence that the events were called the ‘Lancashire rising’ at the time, the language of ‘riot’, obscuring both the motivations of the protestors and the several killings by the state, has come to dominate. 

There is also evidence that this obfuscation was, at least in part, orchestrated – the inquests were closed to the public and media; popular representations of the events published at the time referred to the protestors as ‘rioters’; and 41 people were convicted under the criminal law and initially sentenced to death (although all sentences were later commuted). This potentially all added to the misperception of what were in effect, anti-starvation protests.