Ned Lud is the person that forms the basis for the character of "King (or Captain) Ludd" who was supposedly the leader and founder of the Luddites.
No proof to his existence has been found, but he is often thought to have come from the village of Anstey, just outside Leicester, where he broke two stocking frames in a rage. The incident is identified as being in 1779, rather than at the time of the Luddites in the 1810s. The act was one of frustration, rather than an act of vandalism against the technology that the stocking frames represented: that technology had been in existence for almost two centuries. His action – carried through the years in folk memory – was thus mischaracterised by the Luddites.
Ned Lud or NedLudd is the person that forms the basis for the character of "King (also known as Captain or General) Ludd" who was supposedly the leader and founder of the Luddites.
No proof to his existence has been found, but he is often thought to have come from the village of Anstey, just outside Leicester, where he broke two stocking frames in a rage.
The character of NedLudd was commemorated in the folk ballad "General Ludd's Triumph".
The Luddites were a social movement of English workers in the early 1800s who protested — often by destroying textile machines — against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution that they felt threatened their jobs.
The movement, which began in 1811, was named after a probably mythical leader, NedLudd.
The original Luddites claimed to be led by one NedLudd (also known as "King Ludd", "General Ludd" or "Captain Ludd") who is believed to have destroyed two large stocking frames that produced inexpensive stockings undercutting those produced by skilled knitters, and whose signature appears on a "workers' manifesto" of the time.
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