Introduction

Summary

Early in the morning of Friday, January 28, 1820, a night watchman at the Broomward Cotton Mill in Glasgow discovered a fire in the carding room. He:

gave the alarm, and, on going to the spot, found that some Person or Persons had, by getting up on a tree opposite to, and within three feet of the east side of the Mill, thrown in, through the opening pane of one of the windows, a Paper Bundle or Package, filled with Pitch and Gunpowder, and dipped in Oil, which had exploded, and set Fire to a Basket full of loose Cotton, which communicated to one of the Carding Engines, and which, unless it had instantly and providentially been discovered and got under, must have consumed the whole Building.

James Dunlop, the owner of the mill, was probably not surprised. The motives of the arsonists were no mystery. On January 31 the Glasgow Herald reported:

This fire, there is good ground to believe, has been occasioned by a gang of miscreants who, for some time past, have waylaid, and repeatedly assaulted and severely wounded, the persons employed at the Broomward Cotton Mill, who are all women, with the view of putting the mill to a stand, and throwing the workers out of employment.

A few years later twenty-five mill owners from Glasgow petitioned the Home Secretary Robert Peel to extend the anti-union Combination Laws to Scotland. Their petition describes this case in more detail.