sb. (a.) [f. the proper name Lud or Ludd + -ITE.
According to Pellew’s Life of Lord Sidmouth (1847), III. 80, Ned Lud was a person of weak intellect who lived in a Leicestershire village about 1779, and who in a fit of insane rage rushed into a ‘stockinger’s’ house, and destroyed two frames so completely that the saying ‘Lud must have been here’ came to be used throughout the hosiery districts when a stocking-frame had undergone extraordinary damage. The story lacks confirmation. It appears that in 1811–3 the nickname ‘Captain Ludd’ or ‘King Lud’ was commonly given to the ringleaders of the Luddites.]
A member of an organized band of English mechanics and their friends, who (1811–6) set themselves to destroy manufacturing machinery in the midlands and north of England.
1811. Hist. Eur., in Ann. Reg., 93/2. The rioters assumed the name of Luddites and acted under the authority of an imaginary Captain Ludd.
1812. Examiner, 4 May, 277/1. The Luddites at Nottingham, it is said, have relinquished their system of frame-breaking…. The person known by the name of King Ludd is taken and committed to Chester Gaol. His name is Walker; he was a collier.
1816. Byron, To Moore, 24 Dec. Are you not near the Luddites? And down with all kings but King Ludd?
1888. F. Peel, Risings of Luddites, 32. The names they assumed were ‘Ludds,’ ‘Ludders,’ and ‘Luddites.’
1897. S. & B. Webb, Industrial Democracy (1902), 220, note. We need only remind the reader … of such angry insurrections as those of the Luddites in 1811.
b. attrib. or adj. Pertaining to the Luddites.
1812. Gentl. Mag., LXXXII. I. 285/1. The Luddite system. Ibid. (1814), LXXXIV. II. 387/2. The Luddite ring-leader … dropped dead.
1874. Green, Short Hist., x. § 4. 806. The Luddite, or machine-breaking, riots.
Hence Ludditism = LUDDISM.
1830. Fraser’s Mag., II. 426. A bill … for the suppression of Ludditism in Nottinghamshire.
