Memorial for town martyr

Thomas Helliker was tried and hung on his 19th birthday for his part in the rioting at Littleton Mill in Semington in the middle of the industrial revolution.

Town councillor Jeff Osborn said: "He was a very important figure in the town's history and I think it is important that it doesn't go without being marked."

Thomas Helliker was arrested in March 1802 after anti-machinery riots broke out at the mill.

He was accused of threatening a nightwatchman with a pistol and was acclaimed as a martyr when he maintained his innocence, refusing to name the true culprit.

He was sent to Fisherton jail in Salisbury, where he was tried and later hanged on March 22, 1803.

His fellow cloth workers claimed Helliker's body and carried it back across Salisbury plain to Trowbridge. He is buried in the churchyard at St James' Church.

On his tombstone is a tribute from cloth workers across the country who adopted him as a symbol of their struggles in hugely-changing times.

Part of the inscription reads: "This tomb was erected out of his earnest request by the cloth working factories of the counties of York, Wilts and Somerset as a token of their love to him and veneration of his memory."

The unrest in the industrial sector swept across the country as workers saw their jobs threatened by the onset of modern technology.

Troops had to be stationed in Trowbridge to cope with outbreaks of civil unrest.

Helliker was a shearman's apprentice when, in June 1802, a group of men set fire to Littleton Mill as a demonstration against employers' plans to pay lower wages. When Helliker was arrested his colleagues, who always maintained his innocence, burnt down workshops at the Conigre in protest.

The trade union movement maintains a keen interest in Helliker and holds annual lectures in his memory.

The town council plans to lay flowers at the grave on March 22 and is considering other memorials such as a plaque or a town procession to mark future anniversaries.