Wednesday 30 December 2015

30th December 1815: Leeds Cloth Dressers' Union Secretary writes a corrective letter to the Leeds Mercury

Following the report of his arrest in the 23rd December 1815 edition of the Leeds Mercury, John Sunderland - the Secretary of the Cloth Dressers' Union (or 'Brief Institution') - wrote to the paper, who published the letter on Saturday 30th December 1815:

TO the EDITOR of the LEEDS MERCURY.
SIR,— I beg that you will correct a Paragraph in your last Paper, by the Insertion the following Statement:—On Monday Night, the Eighteenth Inst. John Sunderland, Clerk to the Cloth Workers’ Brief Institution, was apprehended in the Act of reading a Letter, paying the Sick, &c. and himself and Twenty-Four other Persons searched, along with Five Women, who were applying for Relief for their Sick Husbands. At the same Time the Books and Papers were seized, and all taken away. John Sunderland and others were immediately conveyed to the Black Lion, Mill-Hill, at Nine o'Clock, and there remained till Two the next Day in the Afternoon, without being examined by any Magistrate. The said John Sunderland, Joseph Tillotson, William Anderson, William Hampshire, and Samuel Wheatley, after being examined, were held to Bail, for persuading Thomas Marshall, (the Informant,) to leave his Employers, Messrs. Oates and Hardisty, contrary to the Statute in that Case made and provided.
I am, Yours, &c. 
J.S.

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