Some of you may have heard of Thomas Helliker, the 19 year old woolworker hanged in 1803 for his supposed part in the burning of Litleton Mill, Semington. It is a sad story rising from the growing worries of poverty for workers during the early years of the industrial revolution in England.

 It was thought that labour saving machinery would result in mass unemployment of workers (in Helliker’s case cloth workers). There were only inadequate poor relief schemes and workers thought it would soon lead to poverty and starvation; organised resistance flared into violence. Read on to find out more.....

Helliker was an apprentice at Naish’s Mill in Trowbridge. Naish also owned Littleton Mill, Semington, which he rented to a Mr. Heath. Thomas Helliker was on strike at the time of the attack.

Home Mills, Trowbridge, 1873 (Ref: K1/150/9)

It was alleged that Helliker held Mr. Heath at gunpoint along with a band of other armed shearmen. The accused man held Heath captive whilst his companions burned the mill. Heath later said that he recognised Helliker either by the sound of his voice, his protruding teeth or his red hair. It would seem odd that an apprentice would be tasked with such an important and trustworthy job during the burning of the mill. Would he have been chosen when he wasn’t even a union member? (only fully trained workers were accepted into the union). Another worker at Littleton Mill who was present with Mr Heath later said that not every man had a blackened face; some just had their collars up. He also stated that Heath did not raise his head once during the events of the night. The protruding teeth that had been mentioned came up in a press report a week after Helliker’s arrest, but Helliker was described by the press at his trial as a ‘good looking youth’. There was also an alibi which was not heard at his trial which stated that Helliker had spent the night of the attack sleeping in a kitchen where he could not possibly have left until the front door was unlocked the following morning (although it has been noted that this alibi may not have been genuine). It was also unusual that Helliker did not confess on the scaffold if he was guilty; this was commonly done at the time as early confessions often lead to life transportation and may be one indicator of his innocence.  It is interesting to know that Heath received a £500 reward for his information.

 Helliker was highly literate and intelligent, which was proved by the letters and poems he sent to his mother from Wilton prison, where he was taken until his trial. He was then hanged in front of Fisherton Gaol on Tuesday, 28^th March 1803, still pleading his innocence.

 Many years later there was a death bed confession by a man who said he was the one who had held the pistol to Mr Heath’s head.

 Tellingly, shearmen from his home town carried his body for 30 miles over Salisbury Plain in a handsome coffin. There was a procession of people following it. When the procession arrived at the outskirts of Trowbridge ‘girls dressed in white and hundreds attended the ceremony’, some from cloth manufacturing centres as far away as Yorkshire. Unusually for a ‘criminal’, he was buried by the curate in St. James’ churchyard (the vicar was 'conveniently absent') where a memorial tomb still remains. It is inscribed ‘This tomb was erected at earnest request by the cloth making factories of York, Wiltshire and Somerset as a token of their love for him and veneration of his memory. He was condemned for an offence against law, of which he was afterwards believed to be innocent, and determined rather to die than give testimony which would have saved his own life but forfeited the lives of others’.

 His fellow cloth workers regarded him as a martyr. He is seen by many today as an early trade unionist. A newspaper in 1803 noted that ‘a severe example was necessary to restore a due reverence for the laws’…

Staverton Cloth Mill Plan, 1897 (Ref: 415/125). The rack fields were situated on the right hand side.