The Sheffield
Outrages
Contents
Curriculum Links
Background information
Outrages map
The Sheffield Outrages – pupil sheet
Sheffield Outrages sites then and now – pupil
sheet
Trade Unions – pupil sheet
Working Conditions – pupil sheet
The Sheffield
Outrages
Curriculum Links
This section links to
History
Unit 12 How did life change in our locality in
Victorian times?
Unit 18 What was it like to live here in the past?
Geography
Unit 1 Around our school – the local area
Unit 6 Investigating our local area
English
Citizenship
The Sheffield
Outrages
If you owned a business in Sheffield in the 1840s and 1860s you would shake in your
boots if you got a letter from ‘Mary Ann’, for it meant that the newly-formed Unions
believed that you were under-paying your workers or using non-union workers, or worse
still, using the poor people from the Workhouse at very low wages. If you didn’t mend
your ways, then ‘Mary Ann’ would visit you and ‘persuade’ you – a bomb in your
workplace might make you change your ways!
Likewise, if you were a working person and you had not paid your Union fees, then you
might be ‘rattened’ – rattening meant that the belt which drove your grindstone would
be taken so you could not work – and you did not get your belt back until you had paid
your Union fees!
These activities became known as the Sheffield Outrages.
A Grinder at work
at his grindstone
The area along the River Don is where many of the ‘Outrages’ occurred.
Acorn St.
Scotland Street
Globe Works
Kelham Wheel
The Sheffield Outrages
By the middle of the 19th century people were beginning to join Unions.
They paid money to the Unions which then helped them when they were
sick or out of work, and paid for their funeral when they died. The unions
could also try to persuade the company owners (employers) to pay the
workers better money and to make their jobs less dangerous.
Many Sheffielders agreed that the Unions should protect their members’
jobs, but not everyone agreed with the way a few Union leaders
‘persuaded’ people. One of the leaders was William Broadbent of the Saw
Grinders Union, who decided that rattening – taking the belts from
grinding machines so they would not work – was one way of making people
listen to the Union. Here are some other ways he tried to persuade people
to do as the Union wanted.
Do you agree with this way of getting people to do what you want? What
else could they have done to get their ideas noticed?
1843: Globe Works blown up by bomb thrown
through cellar window
1847: Kelham Wheel rattened - leather belts cut to
stop grindstones working
1859: Mr James Linley killed by an airgun while
at the Crown Inn on Scotland Street
1861: Woman is killed by a home-made bomb thrown into the back-toback house of Mr George Wastnidge, a non-union man, on Acorn Street
1866: Mr Fernehough’s house on Hereford
Street wrecked by a bomb
The people who were charged with rattening the Kelham Works
were sent to Australia to do ‘hard labour’ for 7 years.
Do you think this is a fair punishment?
Look on the map to see where the places are
– then walk along the Upper Don Walk to see the remains of the
places that were damaged in the Outrages
Today
Bomb destroys
part of works
Walk along the Upper Don Walk to see the remains of some of the sites
of the Sheffield Outrages
Works ‘rattened’ to
stop grindstones
turning
Wheel pit where
the grindstone
‘hung’
2005
Sheffield Outrage sites in the 1850s and today
Trade Unions
The area around the River Don was very important in the early
days of Trade Unions.
Trade Unions are joined by groups of people who do similar
jobs, to help them to get good pay and safe places to work. In
Victorian times the Union members would pay money each week
to the Union, so that if they were off sick or lost their job,
the Union would give them money to help them survive and keep
them out of the Workhouse (the horrible place where poor
people without jobs had to live). The Union would also help to
pay for a worker to be buried when they died.
A local Sheffield man called William Dronfield, from the
Printers Union, set up a national meeting of Unions to come to
Sheffield to support the File Cutters who were on strike
(which means they had stopped working). The Unions that came
to Sheffield to help the File Cutters joined together and
became the Trades Union Congress, TUC, which is still active
today.
File Cutters ‘stiddies’ in a
typical workshop
Archaeologists digging up the remains of
grinding wheels pits at Millsands by the Don –
remains of the Workhouse in the background
Working Conditions
The Trades Unions helped to make places safer and healthier to work in.
Look at this picture of people sharpening knives in a grinding hull before
fans were used to take away the dust made by the grindstones.
What words describe what it is like to work in this room?
Grinding Hull before fans
Now think of words to describe the room after the Unions helped to
get fans installed to take away the dust from the grinding.
Grinding Hull with fans
The sort of things the Unions had to get people to agree on was:
Were fans really needed?
Who should pay for the fans – the owners or the workers?
What do you think the answers are?