Three Accounts of Peterloo
BISHOP STANLEY
The Rev. Edward Stanley (1779-1849) was the second son of Sir J. T. Stanley, the Sixth Baronet, and Margaret Owen, of Penrhos, Anglesey. His elder brother was the first Baron Stanley of Alderley. As a boy, he had a natural inclination for the sea, but this was not encouraged. For thirty-two years he was Rector of Alderley, in Cheshire. While making himself beloved as a Parish Priest, he found time for many scientific and other interests. His Familiar History of Birds is a standard work; he advocated, and assisted in, the teaching of Science and Temperance at Alderley; and he became one of the first Presidents of the Manchester Statistical Society. Though he declined the See of Manchester, when it was offered him, he accepted from Lord Melbourne, in 1837, the Bishopric of Norwich, and introduced a number of reforms into that diocese. A short memoir of him was written by his son, the famous Dean of Westminster.
At the date of Peterloo, a number of clergymen sat on the Bench of Magistrates for Lancashire and Cheshire, but Stanley stated clearly at the Trial that he was not a Magistrate. He was then forty years of age, and Rector of Alderley, and in his evidence he was careful to say that his narrative of Peterloo was compiled about two months after the event, for private circulation among his friends, and had never been published. It is clear that a copy was in the hands of Counsel who cross-examined him at the Trial in 1822. The manuscript is very neatly written (I should conjecture by Stanley himself) on nine large quarto pages, the plan being drawn by the same hand, and the notes given at the end. I have thought it more convenient for the reader to have the notes thrown to the foot of the respective pages. The manuscript was lithographed, in 1819, by the Lithographic Press, Westminster, and entered at Stationers’ Hall. I found on enquiry that there was one copy in the Manuscript Department of the British Museum (Add. MSS., 30142, ff. 78-83). It is addressed to Major-Gen. Sir Robert Wilson, and sealed with the Stanley crest. The authorship was not known, and the Keeper of the MSS. was glad to be able to add this to the document as the result of my communication. In the Printed Book Department of the British Museum there is a second copy, catalogued under Manchester, with press-mark 8133i. There is no trace of Stanley’s MS. in the Public Records Office. I can find no other copy but the one at the Manchester Reference Library, which is in excellent preservation, and has recently been rebound. Mr. J. C. Hobhouse quoted from Stanley’s narrative once in a speech in the House of Commons. Speaking on May 19th, 1821, in support of a Petition for an enquiry as to the outrage at Manchester, Mr. Hobhouse, following Sir Francis Burdett, said: “The Rev. Mr. Stanley, who watched from a room above the magistrates, saw no stones or sticks used, though if any stone larger than a pebble had been thrown, he must have seen it.” I have not found any other reference to the narrative except that made by Counsel at the Trial, and that is recorded in the Evidence which follows.
Three notes may find a place here. The first two refer to points mentioned by Stanley:—
1. Pigot and Dean’s Manchester Directory for 1819 mentions:
(a) Edmund Buxton, Builder, &c., No. 6, Mount Street, Dickinson Street.
(b) Thomas & Matthew Pickford & Co., Carriers, Oxford Street.
I do not find Mr. Buxton’s “shop,” which is mentioned by Stanley; nor are Pickfords described as “timber merchants,” though timber may easily have been stacked in their yard.
Stanley’s movements on reaching Manchester are not, at a first reading, quite clear. Riding in from Alderley, he seems to have approached by way of Oxford Road, passing (as he tells us) the Manchester Yeomanry, posted at Pickford’s yard. At twelve o’clock, he turned up Mosley Street (very likely to avoid the crowd which was already filling the Square) and in Mosley Street he met the contingent of Reformers coming from Ashton. He then proceeded to Mr. Buxton’s shop, which seems to have been near the lower end of Deansgate. Not finding Mr. Buxton there, he was directed to his residence in Mount Street. The shortest way to Mount Street from Alport would have taken him through the crowd. He therefore approached Mount Street “by a circuitous route to avoid the meeting” (possibly by Fleet Street and Lower Mosley Street, the route afterwards taken by the Hussars), and met Mr. Buxton on the steps of his house.
Stanley evidently knew little of Manchester. He confesses in his narrative that he had not been in St. Peter’s field before or since the tragedy; in his evidence he said: “I know no street,” and stated that he could not locate the Friends’ Meeting-house.
2. Stanley’s estimate of a hundred yards, as the distance from the hustings to Mr. Buxton’s house can be demonstrated to-day to be almost exactly correct. This is only one of many points in his narrative which show what a shrewd, quick, and accurate observer he was. When Mr. Hulton was asked, at the Trial, to estimate the same distance, he conjectured four hundred yards, and this was actually quoted as the distance in one of the standard histories of the period.
For the rest, it seems better to leave Stanley’s extremely lucid account to speak for itself. To annotate it in detail would be to spoil its completeness. As has been stated above, each observer witnessed the scene from his own stand-point. A complete picture can only be obtained by forming a mosaic of the various reports. Stanley’s narrative is that of an outsider, who came upon the scene unexpectedly, and watched the whole with the eye of a statesman and a statistician. Lieutenant Jolliffe’s account gives the view of a young soldier, a stranger to Manchester, who rode in the charge of the Hussars, and afterwards took part with them in the patrol of the town. Mr. J. B. Smith speaks from the point of view of a Manchester business man, familiar with the civic and economic conditions that led to the catastrophe, and his narrative reaches a few days beyond the tragedy itself. Samuel Bamford’s account—too well-known to need repetition here—was written from the stand-point of a local weaver, who had already suffered for his outspoken advocacy of Parliamentary Reform, had a large share in organising the Peterloo meeting, and served a term of imprisonment for his share in the proceedings. An attempt to dovetail these and other Reports into a continuous narrative has already been made in The Story of Peterloo (Rylands Library Lectures, 1919.).
3. Stanley’s Evidence at the Trial, which is here printed immediately after his connected narrative, has been taken from McDonnell’s State Trials, supplemented—where passages are omitted by McDonnell—by Farquharson’s verbatim report, issued by the Defence after the Trial. As a matter of fact McDonnell made use of Farquharson’s version.
The portrait of Bishop Stanley which appears here is from a print kindly lent for the purpose by Lord Sheffield.