A visitor to Holmton, one of the smaller manufacturing towns of the West
Riding, on a certain October morning, about the middle of the nineteenth
century, might have witnessed a strange sight. It was market-day, and a
number of farm people were collected in the market-place, where a brisk
trade in cattle, sheep, and dairy produce was being transacted. Suddenly
there appeared in their midst a farmer holding the end of a rope, the
noose of which was attached, not to a bull, calf or horse, but to the
neck of a girl of nineteen. At this strange sight loud shouts were
raised on all sides, and a stampede was made to the spot where the man
and the girl were standing.

The town was originally merely a centre for the farmers in the
neighbouring villages, but within the last fifty years it had seen the
establishment of the cloth trade in its midst, and the population had
considerably increased. Round about the market-place stone-paved streets
had branched off in all directions, and two-storied stone houses had
been built, in which the rooms on the ground floor served for kitchen
and bedroom, while in the long, low room above hand-looms had been
erected, and wool was spun and woven into cloth.

The shouts of the farm people in the market-place at once brought the
weavers to their windows and doors. Ever eager for any excitement which
should relieve the drab monotony of their lives, they rushed into the
streets and elbowed their way to the market-place.

"What's up?" asked one of them of a farmer's man, as he followed the
sound of the hubbub.