English: Frame-breakers, or Luddites, smashing a loom. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In early 1811, a secret society of textile industry workers in Nottingham, England began breaking into textile mills and destroying the new-fangled wide-frame looms that were suppressing weavers' wages and putting so many out of work. Their watchword was, "King Ludd sent me," and so they became known as the Luddites. They ravaged textile mills throughout Nottingham, Yorkshire and Lancashire before London dispatched several army regiments to guard textile mills, and passed the Frame Breaking Act in 1812 making destruction of looms a capital offense.
