Talk:Ned Ludd

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The following was moved from the subject page to here on October 29, 2002, until such time as some intrepid Wikipedian dares to create a context and lead-in for it. Methinks something got cut off here. -- Stormwriter


 * the first threatening letter from General Ned Ludd) to employers. However what such problems could lead to such harsh actions? Starting off in Nottingham, workers upset wage reductions and feeling unappreciated by employers, began breaking into factories at night and destroyed the new machines that the employers wanted the workers to use. Inside three weeks, more than two hundred stocking frames were destroyed. In March 1811, the amount of night-time attacks happening got seriously out of hand which meant four hundred constables were set out to protect the factories.

Reminds me of this:
 * In the early months of 1811 the first threatening letters from General Ned Ludd and the Army of Redressers, were sent to employers in Nottingham. Workers, upset by wage reductions and the use of unapprenticed workmen, began to break into factories at night to destroy the new machines that the employers were using. In a three-week period over two hundred stocking frames were destroyed. In March, 1811, several attacks were taking place every night and the Nottingham authorities had to enroll four hundred special constables to protect the factories. To help catch the culprits, the Prince Regent offered £50 to anyone "giving information on any person or persons wickedly breaking the frames".

--Ed Poor

no source for "captain" Ludd
I've never seen the name "Captain" Ludd in a period document. It's always "General Ludd" or "Ned Ludd" or "Captain Swing". This should be removed unless somebody has a verifiable period source. If there is such a source it needs to be added to the article - because I want to read it! ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.153.180.229 (talk) 21:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Use of Ludd as the surname
An anon changed Lud to Ludd in the article, which I reverted. Pynchon references the Oxford English Dictionary as the source of the name. Until another reference of similar character is provided, I don't think Ludd is an option. Noisy | Talk 20:18, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)


 * I am sorry, but Google search shows 19,000 hits for Ned Ludd and only 900 for Ned Lud. Britannica uses Ned Ludd. At the very least, the article should mention both spellings, at best, I'd recommend moving it to Ned Ludd. Feel free to adapt the Pynchon reference as a note, of course. As for bio-stub, I think it looks better after main article, not forgotten at the bottom. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 11:21, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * A Google websearch a few moments ago gave 116,000 to 31,500. See my contribitution below, with reference to the fiery letters sent by machine breakers, as collected by Professor Kevin Binfield, and to the Oxford English Dictionary. Gretchenrobinson (talk) 17:17, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Ludd is the common name used to denote the person of Ned Ludd after whom the Luddite movement was named. Although it does appear as Lud in some accounts, Ludd is far and away the predominant form of the surname in British Home Office records, newspapers and songs of the time, 1811 to 1812. The height of the Luddite movement was the attack on Cartwright's Rawfold Mill in April 1812 and commentators and historians, including myself, use Ludd. The Huddersfield Luddite Movement was the boldest and most accomplished, but it disintegrated after the abortive attack on the Mill. Ludd is the scholarly option, yet the unscholarly may opt for Lud for reasons never explained satisfactorily other than on grounds of vagrant personal preference. I was born in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire and was taught about Ludd [double 'D'] at school sometime in 1948. I have researched widely for a book I am in process of writing ready for the 1812 efflorescence of Luddism in Huddersfield and find only rare references to 'Lud' and then only as a footnote.

I agree that Ludd is not no0wn as Captain, holding always the title of General or, in some instance, King. Captain Swing was not Ned Ludd, but a Chartism appearing some score of years after Luddism subsided.

User:Ronnie Bray User_talk:Ronnie BrayTalk 72.208.102.199 (talk) 02:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC) 7.40 pm 7 July 2011 (MT) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.208.102.199 (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2011 (UTC) (72.208.102.199 (talk) 02:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC))


 * Your work on the Luddites in Huddersfield in Yorkshire sounds very interesting, but see my contribution below and the references to "Ned Lud" in the Midlands which at least to judge from Kevin's Binfield edited volume sound as though they predated the sending of letters referring to "Ned Lud(d)" in Yorkshire. Gretchenrobinson (talk) 17:36, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Illiteracy
This article is illiterate. Since when did "inspirated" become the past tense of "inspire"? Also "inspirated the folkloric character..." "Folkloric" is not some clever neologism, it is just the work of a pretentious imbecile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.97.89 (talk) 12:23, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * For someone protesting against bad grammar and other errors, you seem to be oblivious to the true meaning of "illerate". Also, you're welcome to correct articles whenever you see errors. Jalwikip (talk) 11:24, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * For a someone trying to out-smartarse a supposed smartarse, you seem to be oblivious to the fact that words can have more than one meaning, that there is no "true meaning" (meaning being decided by use), and that illiterate (your spelling mistake here is really multiply ironic) really does have that meaning and the IP made no mistake (except for missing the fact that folkloric is really the usual adjective belonging to folklore, although folklore character, character of folklore or the like would work here too), see Wiktionary. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:24, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Fictional character?
At least one source (see here, section "Why These Factual Errors Matter") claims Ned Ludd to be a fictional character. This doesn't seem to be explicitly mentioned in this article, and perhaps it should be added if there are more sources. Jalwikip (talk) 11:25, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * More detail found is here, which is referred to in the source you give (and from where I'm just coming, too). Unfortunately, all of them are blogs, but I'd argue (also keeping User:Tom Morris/The Reliability Delusion in mind) that being published on a blog and thus not independently edited, much less formally peer-reviewed, does not make this conference report an a priori unreliable source for what happened on the conference, and what Droge claimed and argued there, which is very much relevant to this article. Of course, having Droge's paper would be much preferrable, and this article would likely profit very much from it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:17, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, see this entry on the same blog for more detail, especially in the discussion. If there is no evidence that Ned Ludd is a historical character, we should not hide this fact from the reader. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:26, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Spelling of the surname - "Lud" or "Ludd"
I have looked into the question of whether we should use "Lud" or "Ludd". Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus is right that preceded by "Ned", "Ludd" is the more common spelling in the websites that Google brings to the attention of those who use its websearch engine, and nowadays it is the commoner spelling more generally, but nonetheless the form used on many of the machine breakers' fiery letters was "Lud". Sending these primary documents to targeted individuals was precisely how the notion of "following Ned Lud(d)" - however the name was spelled - became widely known. This is by no means "original research", and many of the writings of the Luddites are available for example in Professor Kevin Binfield's edited volume Writings of the Luddites (John Hopkins University Press, 2004).

Binfield organises the documents into three groups, according to whether they appeared in the English Midlands, the North West of England, or Yorkshire, and within each group he sorts them chronologically. I haven't examined all of them, but I've looked at 17 in each group so as to get a sample of more than 50.

Midlands

M1 (Nov 1811): ref to "Edward Ludd";

M2 (8 Nov 1811): ref to "Ned Lud";

M3, M4 - no ref to "Lud" or "Ludd" (below, "no ref");

M5 (16 Dec 1811): ref to "Ned Lud";

M6 - no ref;

M7 (21 Dec 1811) - ref to "Ned Lud";

M8 (23 Dec 1811) - there are different versions: refs to "King Lud" and "King Ludd";

M9 - no ref;

M10 - ref to "Ned Lud's Office, Sherwood Forest";

M11 (1 Jan 1812) - ref to "Edward Lud" and "Ned Lud's Army";

M12, M13 - no ref;

M14 - ([before 5] Jan 1812) contains the ballad "General Ludd's Triumph";

M15 - (late Jan or early Feb 1812) ref to "Nedd Ludd";

M16 (7 Feb 1812) - ref to "General Lud";

M17 - no ref.

(Further documents follow.)

North West

N1-N4 - no ref;

N5 - (26 Apr 1812) ref to "General Ludds [sic] Command";

N6, N7 - no ref;

N8 (30 Apr 1812) ref to "Eliza Ludd";

N9 (30 Apr 1812) - ref to "Ludd";

N10-N14 - no ref;

N15 (15 May 1812) - ref to "Luddites";

N16 (23 May 1812) - ref to "Ned Ludd";

N17 (27 May 1812) - ref to "Lt de Luddites".

(More follow.)

Yorkshire

Y1-Y3 - no ref; Y4 - (Mar 1812) ref to "General Ludd";

Y5 (9 or 10 Mar 1812) - ref to "Ned Ludd";

Y6 - no ref;

Y7 (20 Mar 1812) - ref to "General Ludd";

Y8 (8 Apr 1812) - ref to "those people Caulled Luds";

Y12 (13 Apr 1812) - ref to an engagement between "the Luds & the Army", and several other references to "Luds";

Y13 - no ref;

Y14 (1 May 1812) - ref to "Edward Ludd" and "General Ludd";

Y15, Y16 - no ref;

Y17 (July 1812) - ref to "Liberty and Ludd".

(More follow.)

In these 51 documents, there are 13 refs to "Ludd" and 8 to "Lud", counting multiple appearances in a single document only once. And if we take only the earliest documents, up to the end of Feb 1812 - which are all from the Midlands - there are in fact more instances of "Lud" (7) than "Ludd" (5).

Preceded by "Ned" or "Nedd", we get in the entire sample:

"Ned Lud" 4;

"Ned Ludd" 2;

"Nedd Ludd" 1.

I also looked in the Oxford English Dictionary under "Luddite". The first source there is to Pellow's Life of Lord Sidmouth (1847), in which the original frame-breaker (c.1779) is referred to as "Ned Lud" and later nicknames ascribed to Luddite leaders (1811-1813) are given as "General Ludd" and "Captain Ludd".

The conclusion I draw from this is that the spelling "Lud" - and in particular in the name "Ned Lud" - ought to be mentioned in this article. I suspect that if somebody has the time to look at all of the remaining documents collected by Professor Binfield as well as the 51 I looked at, the name of the original fellow may be found to be recorded more commonly as "Ned Lud" than as "Ned Ludd". But in any case it is not advisable to exclude "Ned Lud" from mention here.

I will await other people's responses before editing accordingly. Gretchenrobinson (talk) 17:12, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Also note that the first four references to "Ned Lud(d)" collected by Professor Binfield (8 Nov 1811 to 1 Jan 1812) all use "Ned Lud", not "Ned Ludd". Gretchenrobinson (talk) 17:31, 5 November 2018 (UTC)


 * As it stands, the article refers to the Nottingham Review piece of 20 December 1811 ("Ned Ludd"), which is cited here as the earliest reference to "Ned(d) Lud(d)" that the researcher has found, but note that the sources I cite above giving "Ned Lud", taken from Kevin Binfield, predate this. Gretchenrobinson (talk) 17:53, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Etymology
I suspect that the Welsh 'Ludd' is just coincidence. The writer demonstrates no connection between the Welsh Ludd and Ned Ludd. Snugglepuss (talk) 09:38, 29 August 2022 (UTC)