Echoes of Old Lancashire

by William E. A. Axon

But war brought its usual concomitant of want, and the sufferings of the people led to deep-seated discontent. The weavers called a meeting for the 24th of May, 1808, to ask for the establishment of a minimum rate of wages. The meeting was resumed on the following day, and although it was quite orderly, the Riot Act was read, and the military were ordered to clear the ground. One of the weavers was killed, several were wounded, and several arrested. Colonel Hanson, the commander of a local volunteer corps, tried to persuade the men to disperse by a promise that their interests should be looked after. This was giving “encouragement to the rioters,” and for this he was sentenced to a fine of £100 and six months’ imprisonment in the King’s Bench. Meanwhile the policy of the Government increased the distress of the nation, so that in the cotton districts the people were half-starved, and a scanty dinner of oatmeal and water was too often the only meal in the four and twenty hours. A town’s meeting was called for 8th April, 1812, to thank the Regent for retaining the Anti-Reform Ministry of Castlereagh and Sidmouth. The reformers immediately issued placards calling upon the public to attend. The promoters of the meeting, alarmed at the thought of opposition, now announced that it would not be held, as the staircase was too weak to sustain the pressure of a crowd. People assembled for the expected meeting, and the Exchange was soon surrounded. No authentic account of the beginning of the riot has appeared, but the present writer was informed by an eye-witness that the last touch was put to the anger of the populace by a merchant who afterwards made himself an evil reputation. He was standing at the door of the Exchange, and as a chimney-sweep passed by he struck the lad’s black face with his walking-cane. The populace forced their way into the room, the furniture was destroyed, the windows broken, and the military had to be called out before the place was cleared. This was followed during the next fortnight by food riots and by machine breaking. The authorities, instead of seeing in the existing discontent the symptoms of evils needing remedy, treated every expression of a desire for reform as a crime to be punished with merciless severity. Spies were actively at work fanning the disaffection of the operatives in order to betray them if they could be inveigled into illegality. In 1815, the Corn Law was passed whilst the House of Commons was guarded by soldiers. The Manchester meeting held to protest against its passage was presided over by Mr. Hugh Hornby Birley, who was then Boroughreeve. In 1815, a number of the Radical reformers, chiefly of the artisan class, resolved to adopt an address to the Prince Regent and a petition to the House of Commons in favour of peace and Parliamentary reform. They met at the Elephant, in Tib Street, but hearing that the meeting was likely to be broken up they adjourned to the Prince Regent’s Arms, in Ancoats. John Knight, who was their recognised leader, had just concluded a speech when the room was entered by the famous “Jo” Nadin with a blunderbuss in his hands, and followed by a number of soldiers with fixed bayonets. The reformers were arrested and marched, with their hands tied, to the New Bailey. They were taken before the Rev. W. R. Hay, who, with the gross partiality for which he was notorious, refused to allow Fleming, the spy-witness, to be cross-examined. They were tried at Lancaster in the following August, when Nadin, the constable, admitted that he had sent Fleming as a decoy, and that the spy had asked to be “twisted in”—that is, to be sworn as a member of a seditious society. All who were found in the room were included in the common indictment, and thus could not testify in each other’s behalf. Fortunately Nadin had been too precipitate, and one man escaped his notice. He testified that no oath had been administered, and it was further shown that the two men said to have put the oath to the spy were elsewhere at the time. The thirty-seven prisoners were defended by Brougham and Scarlett, and triumphantly acquitted. They had, however, been in prison for three months, they had been taken from their homes and daily avocations, and it was by the merest good luck that they had escaped transportation.

The writings of William Cobbett had great influence upon the working classes, and his incessant cry for reform met with sympathetic response. The Sunday schools had given elementary instruction to the stronger brains, and native shrewdness, tutored by suffering and hardship, had made them into intelligent politicians. They knew where the shoe pinched, and in spite of some errors of judgment had a clearer conception than their “betters” of the remedy. Sam Bamford, the weaver-poet, was the secretary of a political club at Middleton for Parliamentary reform as a means of obtaining the repeal of the Corn Laws and other desirable objects, and similar clubs existed all over the county.

In 1816, the Ministers suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, and took other measures for burking public discussion. At the “blanketeer” meeting, held at St. Peter’s Fields, 10th March, it was decided that the men should march to London to petition, each with a blanket on his shoulder for protection from cold in the night. The meeting was dispersed by the military, many were arrested, and those who had started on their way to the Metropolis were pursued. The “blanketeers” were overtaken on Lancashire Hill, Stockport, where more were arrested, more wounded, and where one cottager was shot at his own door. It is only fair to the military to state that they showed far more moderation than the magistrates. A few of the “blanketeers” reached Derby. The spies were now at work, and Bamford tells how one of these invited him to join in making a “Moscow of Manchester.” The muddle-headed authorities accepted without inquiry all that their infamous agents told them, and after the arrest of Bamford and others at Ardwick, the Rev. W. R. Hay assured his awe-struck hearers that when these men were tried “purposes of the blackest enormity must be disclosed to the public.” After being taken in irons to London—one of them being an old man of seventy-four—and examined by the Secretary of State, they were discharged, and not even put upon their trial. Yet this “plot” was the chief argument used by Sidmouth for a further suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Castlereagh cynically avowed that they had sent Oliver the spy “to see what was going on.” The Lancashire men were warned in time, and Oliver, though he tried hard, had no success here. In Derbyshire, however, he fomented an “insurrection,” and those whom he had first incited to sedition he afterwards betrayed to the scaffold. In 1818, the Manchester reformers sent a petition to the House of Commons, in which they asserted that there never had been in this neighbourhood any reason for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, denounced the work of the spies, and asked for an inquiry into the action of the magistrates at Manchester. Bamford and others who had been arrested also petitioned; but Mr. George Philips’s motion for an inquiry by a Committee of the House of Commons was rejected by 162 votes against 69, and the Ministry obtained an Act of indemnity for all their proceedings. Mr. John Greenwood managed to exclude the name of Mr. J. E. Taylor from the list of the Salford assessors because he was a moderate reformer, and asserted that he had written a handbill leading to the destruction at the Exchange in 1812. Mr. Taylor, unable to obtain any retraction or explanation, denounced him as “a liar, a slanderer, and a scoundrel.” For this an action for libel was begun. Mr. Taylor defended himself, and the jury came to the conclusion that the plaintiff was “a liar, a slanderer, and a scoundrel.” Mr. Taylor’s acquittal was chiefly due to the foreman of the jury, Mr. John Rylands, of Warrington, who, resolutely putting aside all legal cobwebs, declined to punish a man for telling the truth.

The year 1819 was an important one for the cause of reform. There was a meeting in St. Peter’s Fields in June, when the people, to embarrass the Government, decided to abstain from excisable articles as far as possible. Roasted corn was to take the place of coffee, sloe leaves to be substituted for tea, and the use of spirits and ale was to be abandoned. The “loyal” inhabitants placarded the town with incentives to drinking, and an attempt was made to pay for this poster out of the church rates. The people had lost hope of obtaining reform by petition, and the notion was broached of appointing a representative to claim a seat in the House of Commons. The reformers of Manchester therefore called a meeting for the purpose of electing “a legislatorial attorney and representative” for the town. This assembly was called for August 9th, but the magistrates declared that it would be illegal, and the intention was abandoned. The reformers then presented a requisition, signed by 700 householders, asking the Boroughreeve to call a town’s meeting. He refused to do so, and it was then decided to hold an open-air meeting in St. Peter’s Fields for the purpose of petitioning for a reform in Parliament. The reformers from all parts of Lancashire were expected to be there, and at Middleton and elsewhere they were drilled into the proper method of marching so that there might be no confusion. The authorities professed to regard these harmless marchings with sticks and broom handles as the presages of revolution. The procession that filed into St. Peter’s Fields on the morning of the 16th August, 1819, was largely composed of young men and young women of the artisan class, dressed out in their Sunday best. They had many flags with them. There were from sixty to eighty thousand people present to give a welcome to Henry Hunt, whose handsome form and power of speech made him at that time the idol of the Lancashire workmen. Loud were the cheers of the multitude as he rode up to the hustings—which had been placed where is now the south-east corner of the Free Trade Hall. The white hats—then the symbol of Radicals—were waved in the air, the men hurrahed, and the women smiled as the hero of the hour approached. The magistrates, perhaps honestly alarmed, but weak and vacillating, now determined to arrest the ringleaders in the face of the assembled multitude. There was not the slightest occasion to fear any riot or disturbance, and active precautions had been taken to overawe the reformers. On the field, in readiness for action, were six troops of the 15th Hussars, a troop of Horse Artillery with two guns, part of the 21st Regiment of Infantry, some companies of the 88th Regiment, above 300 of the Cheshire Yeomanry, and about forty members of the Manchester Yeomanry—sworn foes of reform. As the immense multitude listened in intense silence to the opening sentences of Hunt’s speech, the Manchester Yeomanry, under the command of Mr. H. H. Birley, appeared on the outskirts of the crowd, and were received with shouts. Without one word of warning they set their horses in a gallop, and with their bright swords flashing in the air, they dashed into the crowd, striking right and left with their sabres with all the energy of madmen. They became scattered over the field, and were literally wedged into the palpitating mass of humanity which they were attacking. The Hussars were now ordered to the attack, and for the most part drove the people with the flat of the sword, but the edge also was used. When the yeomanry were extricated they wheeled round and dashed again into the crowd wherever there was an opening, cutting and slashing at all who came before them. In many parts the panic-stricken crowd was literally piled up in heaps. For attending a perfectly peaceable meeting to ask for a reform in Parliament, which had then no representatives of the great towns, and was largely filled by the owners of pocket-boroughs and their nominees, for thus asserting their rights as Englishmen to discuss their grievances, ten men and one woman were killed and 600 were wounded. The man chiefly responsible for this slaughter was the Rev. W. R. Hay, who is said to have read the Riot Act from a neighbouring window, but, if so, did it in such a manner that it was never heard by the crowd. The peaceful nature of the assembly was shown by the number of women and of old men who were in it. Poor old Thomas Blinstone, at the age of 74, was rode over by the yeomanry, and had both arms broken, and said he, “What is wur than aw, mester, they’n broken my spectacles and aw’ve never yet been able to get a pair that suited me.”

The “Peterloo Massacre” was a baptism of blood for the cause of reform, and the Tory victory was worse than a defeat, for it excited the indignation of all England against those who had caused the slaughter of their fellow-subjects for demanding admission within the pale of the Constitution.

The Rev. W. R. Hay wrote to Lord Sidmouth on the night of Peterloo giving his version of the affair. At the same time Mr. J. E. Taylor and Mr. Archibald Prentice each sent a plain account of the disgraceful conduct of the magistrates and the yeomanry. These appeared in London papers, and the accuracy of their narratives was amply confirmed by Mr. John Tyas, the representative of the Times, whom blundering “Jo” Nadin had taken into custody as one of the dreaded conspirators. The effect was to rouse a storm of indignation before which even the obtuse magistrates quailed. On the 19th, a hole-and-corner meeting was held in their interests at the Star Inn, when thanks were awarded to the justices and the yeomanry. This was responded to by a protest signed by 4,800 of the merchants, manufacturers, and others of the “respectable classes,” in which the meeting just mentioned was described as a private one, and those who had thus falsely claimed to speak for Manchester were invited to call a public meeting. On the 27th, Lord Sidmouth conveyed the thanks of the Prince Regent to the magistrates and military “for their prompt, decisive, and efficient measures for the preservation of the public peace.” Mr. Hay and his friends had need of sympathy, for they were the objects of general execration. Meetings all over the kingdom were held, at which their sanguinary interference with the right of public meeting was denounced. The sympathy felt with the working men reformers was not confined to one class. The Duke of Hamilton subscribed to the fund for the relief of the sufferers. Earl Fitzwilliam was dismissed from his post of Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding for his energetic protest against Peterloo. Sir Francis Burdett made a still more vigorous protest, and his letter to the electors of Westminster led to his imprisonment for three months, and the infliction of a fine of £2,000. Shelley, writing to Peacock, exclaims, “What an infernal business this is of Manchester! What is to be done?” What he did was to write his “Mask of Anarchy,” in which he made a call to the nation:—

“Rise like lions after slumber,

In unvanquishable number;

Shake your chains to earth like dew,

Which in sleep had fallen on you;