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On 3 April 1832, a twelve-year-old girl visited her grandfather's house, a public house known as Bill's o'Jack's on the edge of Saddleworth Moor, only to find her uncle dying on the floor of a room saturated with blood. Upstairs, her grandfather lay in his bed having suffered mortal injuries. Neither man lived long enough to explain what had happened. The story of the murders of William and Thomas Bradbury quickly spread throughout the local area and beyond, precipitating a frantic hunt for suspects. No-one was ever charged and the case remains unsolved, but the story never quite went away, becoming a legend that long outlived those directly affected. The Bill's o'Jack's Murders took place a...
In many North of England towns, like Manchester and Oldham, violence was never far below the surface during the disturbed times of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, with cotton mill owners pitted against their operatives and worker against worker. Sam Johnson was a 17-year- old cotton spinner apprenticed to his father at Greenbank Mill when three over-zealous Oldham constables raided a union meeting and arrested two union men. The end result was a huge riot involving thousands of Oldham workers and a partly successful attempt to demolish the Bankside Mill on Manchester Street and adjacent workers' homes. One onlooker was shot dead. The subsequent random arrests when the mi...