Twitter Ye Not - Tolpuddle Martyrs
A regular piece for the Daily Mail Weekend magazine about how figures in history might have twittered or tweeted or whatever, had they the chance, inclination and technology.
On St Patrick's weekend in 1834, six agricultural labourers from a small village in Dorset were found guilty of swearing an oath to a trade union and sentenced to transportation to Australia. Here, we imagine the reaction on Twitter to the fate of those Tolpuddle Martyrs.
I have shown two of the six 'martyrs' - their leader James Loveless and James Hammett. No comtemporary images survive of Hammett so I used a woodcut of fellow martyr James Brine as the inspiration. Loveless holds a spade and both men are restrained by ball-and-chains. They are surrounded by broken rock, part of their gruelling punishment in Botany Bay.
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