Swing Riots
Joseph Foljambe's "Rotherham plough" of 1730 was the first commercially successful iron plough. The threshing machine, invented by the Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle in 1784, displaced hand threshing with a flail, a laborious job that took about one-quarter of agricultural labour. It took several decades to diffuse and was the final straw for many farm labourers, who faced near starvation, leading to the 1830 agricultural rebellion of the Swing Riots.