By way of counteracting this energetic protest, on the 27th of August Lord Sidmouth communicated to the Manchester Magistrates and to Major Trafford and the military serving under him the thanks of the Prince Regent “for their prompt, decisive, and efficient measures for preservation of the public peace on August the 16th.”
Meanwhile hundreds of persons wounded on that fatal day were enduring dreadful suffering. They were disabled from work; not daring to apply for parish relief; not even daring to apply for surgical aid, lest, in the arbitrary spirit of the time, their acknowledgment that they had received their wounds on St. Peter’s field might send them to prison—perhaps to the scaffold.
A committee was formed for the purpose of making a rigid enquiry into the cases of those who had been killed and wounded; and subscriptions were raised for their relief. After an enquiry of many successive weeks the committee published the cases of eleven killed and five hundred and sixty wounded, of whom about a hundred and twenty were females.
The Rev. W. R. Hay, Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates, was rewarded by being presented to the living of Rochdale, worth £2,000 a year.
Hunt and his companions were committed to Lancaster, and subsequently tried at York, where he was found guilty and sentenced to be imprisoned for two years and a half, and Johnson, Healey, and Bamford to one year’s imprisonment.
The bloody proceedings at Peterloo startled the whole nation. Meetings were held everywhere, denouncing them in the strongest terms. Sir Francis Burdett addressed a letter to the Electors of Westminster, expressing his “Shame, grief, and indignation” at the proceedings, and was prosecuted by the Attorney-General for Libel and was fined £2,000 and imprisoned for three months. Lord Fitzwilliam, for attending a public meeting to express disapprobation at the means by which the meeting at Peterloo was dispersed, was dismissed from his office as Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire.
These proceedings produced a deep impression on the minds of thoughtful men, who began to think we were on the brink of despotism, and that the time had arrived when the country should be no longer ruled by Landowners and Boroughmongers, but by representatives chosen by the people....
