Note 313 — Chapter IV

Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, October 1851. The years 1847-8 had witnessed many strikingly vindictive prosecutions of Trade Unionists. Besides the case of the engineers, to which we shall refer hereafter, twenty-one stonemasons of London were indicted in 1848 for conspiracy, but, after repeated postponements, the prosecuting employer failed to proceed with the case. The Sheffield razor-grinders stood in greater jeopardy. John Drury, and three other members of their society, were tried and sentenced to ten years’ transportation at the instance of the Sheffield Manufacturers’ Protection Association on the random accusations of two dissolute convicts that they had incited them to destroy machinery. This monstrous perversion of justice aroused the greatest indignation. Public meetings were held by the National Association of United Trades. The indictment was quashed on a technical point, but a new one was immediately preferred against the defendants. The local feeling was, however, so great that they were finally, after a year’s suspense, released on their own recognisances (July 12, 1849). A Sheffield Trade Unionist declared that “the tyranny of the employers had been so great,” in perverting the local administration of the law, “that the men laid their grievances before the Government. Sir George Grey ordered an inquiry.... Twenty cases of parties who had been convicted by the magistrates were brought before a Board of Inquiry, seventeen of which were quashed” (Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, November 23, 1848).