This association was formed by Ludlam, or General Ludd, as he was called, a stocking-frame worker at Nottingham in 1811, when prices had fallen. The Luddites, their faces covered with a black veil, armed with swords and pistols, paraded the streets at night, entered the workshops, and broke the machines with hammers. A thousand machines were thus destroyed. Soon the net-workers joined them and made a similar destruction of the bobbin net machines. Although many were punished, it was only with the return of work that the society disappeared in 1817.
Heathcoat represented Tiverton from 1834 to 1859, colleague of Lord Palmerston.
Steam power was first introduced by Mr. J. Lindley in 1815-16, but did not come into active operation till 1820; it became general 1822-23.
McCulloch.
The most extraordinary changes took place in the price of the finished articles. Lace which was sold by Heathcoat for 5 guineas a yard soon after the taking out of his patent can now be equalled at eighteenpence a yard; quillings, as made by a newly-constructed machine in 1810, and sold at 4s. 6d., can now be equalled and excelled at 1½d. a yard; while a certain width of net which brought £17 per piece 20 years ago is now sold for 7s. (1843). Progressive value of a square yard of plain cotton bobbin net:
| £ | s. | s. | d. | ||
| 1809 | 5 | 0 | 1830 | 2 | 0 |
| 1813 | 2 | 0 | 1833 | 1 | 4 |
| 1815 | 1 | 10 | 1836 | 0 | 10 |
| 1818 | 1 | 0 | 1842 | 0 | 6 |
| 1821 | 0 | 12 | 1850 | 0 | 4 |
| 1824 | 0 | 8 | 1856 | 0 | 3 |
| 1827 | 0 | 4 | 1862 | 0 | 3 |