Sunday 15 April 2012

15th April 1812: Joseph Ardron brings a wounded man to the Culpins at Penistone Green

Between 12 midnight and 1.00 a.m. on Wednesday 15th April, Joseph Culpin received a knock on the door of his house at Penistone Green. He and his wife Mary had not yet gone to bed and were surprised to receive a visitor at such a late hour. Joseph stood behind the door and asked the person what they wanted? - the reply came "to smoke a pipe with you". Mary realised it was her brother, Joseph Ardron, and urged him to open the door.

Ardron was a master cloth-dresser from Dalton and was not alone. The man with him looked tired and the Culpins could see he was not well and was holding his arm strangely. Ardron asked the couple if he and the stranger could stay until daylight, and that his companion was not very well, having recently hurt himself. Ardron said the man worked for him at his cropping shop.

The Culpins only had one bed in their house, but they could see the stranger was suffering and offered it to him that night. Ardron and the stranger shared the bed that night whilst the kindly Culpins stayed up until morning.

The following morning, after breakfast, Ardron and Joseph Culpin went out and when they returned Ardron took the wounded man to his mother's house at Willey Bridge.

This is from Howell (1823, pp.1113-1114). Howell has got the names wrong and didn't expand upon the relationship between Mary and Joseph Ardron (he published the surname as Culpan, and calls Mary 'Martha'): after publishing this article, I was contacted by a relative of Joseph Ardron, Mat Ardron, who pointed the errors out to me which I was delighted to correct.

2 comments:

  1. Joseph Ardron was my fourth great grandfather. James Haigh was his apprentice cloth dresser who was wounded by a musket shot to his shoulder during the raid on Cartwright's Mill. Martha Culpan was really Mary Culpin nee Ardron, Joseph's aunt who lived a mile from his mother's house.
    James was convicted at his trial and hung with four others on April 16, 1813.
    I find great irony in Joseph being a Luddite sympathizer since I was the chief systems executive intimately involved in the development of the world's first Computer Assisted Trading System (CATS) at the Toronto Stock Exchange which went live Nov. 1977. Later it was sold to Paris, Madrid and Sao Paulo as well as copied by many other stock exchanges.
    Mat

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  2. Mat - I've left the names out on purpose to 'build the story' as it were. Please get in touch with me on ludditebicentenary@gmail.com

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