Mortimer Grimshaw

Mortimer Grimshaw (c. 1826 – 22 December 1869) was an English political activist, strike leader and cotton weaver. He briefly attained national fame in the 1850s due to his part in the Preston strike of 1853–54. A large man whose face was marked by smallpox, he was renowned for his oratory, which earned him the nickname of the "Thunderer of Lancashire".^[1]

The son of a radical public speaker and orator, Grimshaw's early campaigns were centred on the improvement of working conditions for the mill-workers in the village of Royton and enforcement of the Factory Acts. He was an outspoken critic of the Whig Party and an advocate of the Chartist movement, in particular of their anti-Whig alliance with the Tory Party. Strikes among mill-workers began to break out during the early 1850s and Grimshaw was one of the leaders, along with George Cowell, of the strike in Preston in 1853. The strikers were fruitless in their demands for a ten per cent wage increase, and Grimshaw found himself with no further role in the workers' unions. He and his fellow conspirators were charged with conspiring to prevent people working in the mills, although the charges were later dropped.

Following the defeat in Preston, Grimshaw emigrated to the United States, where he became a supporter of the Confederacy. In 1861, he and Cowell attempted to intervene in a strike in Clitheroe but were branded "notorious scoundrels" by the weavers there for their parts in the Preston strike. The following year he joined a small group of Lancashire men who unsuccessfully attempted to rally support for the Confederates in northern England. After a period as a freelance industrial mediator, selling his services to mill owners and working against the unions he had once aligned with, he returned to his job as a power-loom weaver until his death from tuberculosis in 1869. Grimshaw and his activities were the basis for two of the author Charles Dickens' characters.