Tolpuddle Martyrs

Tolpuddle Martyrs, six English farm labourers who were sentenced (March 1834) to seven years’ transportation to a penal colony in Australia for organizing trade-union activities in the Dorsetshire village of Tolpuddle. Their leaders, George and James Loveless (or Lovelace), had established a lodge of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers during the great national wave of trade-union activity in 1833–34.

The Whig government, alarmed at the dimensions of working-class discontent, arrested six Tolpuddle labourers—the Loveless brothers, James Brine, Thomas Stanfield and his son John, and James Hammett—ostensibly for administering unlawful oaths but actually for combining to protect their already meagre wages. Convicted and sentenced by a hostile judge and jury, the six men became popular heroes.

There was an immediate public reaction in all parts of the country, particularly in London, where there were large-scale demonstrations in which many future Chartist leaders took part. The government largely ignored popular sentiment, and it was not until March 1836 that the sentences were remitted.