[3] He was first noticed on 8 October 1808, in the Nottingham Quarter Sessions Records, when as John Gravenor [sic] Henson, he was the subject of a bastardy order for a female child born to Elizabeth Bradwell.
[6] A contemporary described him as "thick set with a short neck, keen small eyes, and a head very broad at the base, rising angularly to an unusual height".
"[8] Led by Henson, the men struck in 1810, but due to weakening exports, the strike collapsed, and he probably spent some time in prison in 1810 as a result of the part he had played.
As a result, when the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in England in 1817, he was arrested on a warrant signed by the Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth and imprisoned in April for seven months in Coldbath Fields house of correction.
[11] The London Courier noted, "This man Henson has long been an object of dread to the well-disposed inhabitants of Nottingham and its neighbourhood, both on account of the leading influence he was thought to have with the Luddites, and his supposed political principles.
"[14] Henson later pulled the leg of Francis Place by suggesting to him that Luddism was a put-up job by the government of the day, to give it an excuse for grinding the people under the heel of military despotism.
Together with George White, a Clerk of Committees of the House of Commons, a bill was introduced by Peter Moore, M. P. for Coventry, which Henson hoped would repeal the Combination Acts, and replace them with a virtual charter of workers' rights.
[19] It was a failure for Henson, against what he saw as the cruel system of free trade, and which he believed would work to the disadvantage of Britain's workers, if competitors were able to secure access to British technology.
[24] perhaps... helps to explain the failure of some of his causes and his isolation in later years..[25] In 1830 Henson wrote The Civil, Political, and Mechanical History of the Framework-Knitters, Vol 1, but only the one volume, down to 1780, was published, due to a lack of public support.
[31] Professor M. I. Thomas thought, in Old Nottingham (1968), that Henson was one of the most important working-class leaders of the first half of the 19th century, and possibly (about 1813–1814) the first full-time paid union official.