Image courtesy of Manchester Histories. The Peterloo Massacre 1819 George Cruikshank 1792-1878 Contributor: Manchester Art Gallery (1924.36)
As I approach my seventy-fifth birthday, I thank God I have made it to this age. It’s true to say I have led a more privileged life than many of the working men around me, but I have also had several spells in jail, where rats were my cell mates and thin gruel my nourishment.
I have spent five decades being outspoken about what I see as the injustice afforded ordinary men, while the fat landowners – just two per cent of the entire population– sit in their big mansions eating the sheep off our hills, dressed in the finest cotton spun and woven in our mills, and voting for their friends to guarantee their gluttonous lifestyle.
When I look back over my long life, the day we marched into Manchester to what has become known as the Peterloo Massacre stands out as both the best and the worst of days. It was the sixteenth day of the eighth month, 1819. I was already a mature man with my own family.
I earned my living by selling books. I confess I spent more time reading than selling; an obsession that had often got me into trouble when I should have been working. One of the philosophers whose works I read was Thomas Paine. One sentence still stays with me from those readings: ‘When all other rights are taken away, the right of rebellion is made perfect.’ It was as a result of this and other stirring passages that I felt called to become one of the leaders in the movement to break up the new machines that had taken the livelihood of many a good man. I had had an education, and so unlike some of those affected I knew how to speak and write, to get across the message. But the decision to throw my hat into the ring was not made lightly. I had to earn my living and take care of my family. As someone who was generally respected and a family man, what I had to lose was my reputation – and my freedom.
My concern about new machinery was overtaken by a general sense of injustice, that the men hereabouts whose livelihoods were being threatened had no say in how our country is governed, and no representation in parliament. I got talking to others who felt as passionately as I, drinking many a pint of ale as we animatedly discussed how wonderful it would be, if all the towns and villages within a day’s walking distance could send men, women and children to march into Manchester and demonstrate the strength of our feeling! I hardly dared believe it was possible, and yet what started out as a drunken idea slowly became a reality. A date was set. Word went round all the ale houses, churches and mills, jumping from one town to another like a spreading moorland fire. And so it was that on the sixteenth of August, 1819 an unimaginable sixty thousand of us walked, some carrying babies and small children, to St. Peter’s Fields. Each and every one of us was dressed in her or his Sunday best (with some ardent ladies dressed in white), many without shoes or with the soles hanging off. Despite my advancing years, I led the Oldham contingent.
The atmosphere was intoxicating, like a celebratory picnic. There were bands playing, and people were dancing as we marched; we had rehearsed it for weeks on the hills so as to effect an orderly but enjoyable arrival into the city. Once there, one of the women started singing, and in the blink of an eye the whole crowd joined in song, out of time and out of tune but that didn’t matter for we were one, united in our purpose. There were many banners bearing words like REFORM, UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, EQUAL REPRESENTATION and, I suspect with a woman’s touch, LOVE. Many of the banner poles were topped with the red cap of liberty. I have never known anything like it, before or since. I felt in that moment we were invincible. Little did I know what was to come.
Henry Hunt was our main speaker, and despite our crude platform of a simple cart he was very warmly received, as I knew he would be. Sadly, Cartwright was too frail to attend. When I stood up to speak, the crowd cheered and clapped. I must confess I felt as if I had drunk a few pints of ale, which I had not. My carefully prepared speech could never be delivered with the same gusto as more natural speakers like Henry Hunt, but was nevertheless passionate despite my hands trembling as I held my papers. My voice cracking as I shouted towards the back, hoping some of the swollen crowd could hear me, I raged about how few people there are, voting for those that make rules like the Corn Laws that mean they can no longer afford the flour with which to make their bread. I must have managed to reach some of them, because before me was a sea of hats thrown up in the air as the crowd roared, like waves hitting the rocks. But at no point did anyone behave improperly.
Local magistrates watched from a window near the field. I think they must have panicked at the sight of our orderly but very large assembly. I later learned that they read the riot act, ordering the crowd to disperse. Of course, this had little effect because so few could hear them, and so they sent in the drunken Salford Yeomanry led by Captain Hugh Birley and Major Thomas Trafford to arrest Henry Hunt and a few others. For some reason they left me alone, though I paid the price later. I witnessed the crowd courageously link arms to try and stop the arrests, despite the fact that they were tired, hot and thirsty. In response, the Yeomanry charged towards the hustings, brutally knocking down a woman and child. They proceeded to strike down banners and people with their swords.
Nearby, on Mount Street, was the Quaker Meeting House. It was a newish place, built in 1795. The Quakers were vocal against the slave trade and we thought them to be generally welcoming to the working man, having set up adult schools. And so, when the Yeomanry began to charge, some people fled to them for sanctuary, and stormed the doors. They were the lucky ones, saved for a while at least from the horror that ensued, though some cavalry pursued, pinning a few unfortunate souls against the boundary wall.
The Yeomanry knew some of our number and had some old scores to settle. I heard one officer call out on seeing a reporter from the Manchester Observer, ‘There's Saxton, damn him, run him through.’ Unsurprisingly, there was panic when they charged but I suspect the powers that be, sitting in their nice comfortable watchtower wilfully interpreted this as the crowd attacking the yeomanry. And so, they were joined by 600 of the 15th Hussars led by Lieutenant Colonel Guy L'Estrange on horseback, with clubs and sabres drawn. They killed at least fifteen people, badly injuring many hundreds of others. The screaming from the women and children slashed into my ears, and at that moment I felt utterly powerless to help them. I still have dreams of the horror, in which I am desperately trying to get to the woman and her child. I can see their severed heads and limbs cast away from their bodies, and I am desperately trying to find all the pieces so that I can put them back together and will life back into them. But I am held back by some invisible force.
If there was anything good to come out of that day, it was that the massacre made a lot more people aware of our cause. Those brave souls did not die in vain. And I have to say there were unlikely heroes among the military. One cavalry officer attempted to strike up the swords of the Yeomanry, crying ‘For shame, gentlemen: what are you about? The people cannot get away!’ But he was a lone voice, and God knows what became of him later. The majority of them joined in the attack, with a terrifying blood lust on their faces.
By two o’clock in the afternoon the carnage was over, the field left full of abandoned banners and dead, twisted and severed bodies - including the woman and child. On my return home, I said a fervent prayer for their souls. We published the names of all the dead and injured we could find, and raised money for the families but some were reluctant for us to use their names as they were afeared of what might happen if their employer found out they had been there. The numbers I have given you here must therefore be taken as a gross underestimate.
Some of the people who were arrested included journalists, but some of their number went on to report the event. They too were subsequently jailed. I thought I had got away with it, though I knew not how. I was, of course, arrested later in the comfort of my own home. All of the speakers and organizers including myself were put on trial, at first under the charge of High Treason, but this was reluctantly dropped by the prosecution.
We discovered later, that the soldiers’ sabres were freshly sharpened just before the attack, suggesting it was premeditated. What still sticks in my craw is that the Hussars and Magistrates received a message of congratulations from the Prince Regent, and were cleared of any wrong-doing by the official inquiry. The response from government was to pass the Six Acts, which severely curtailed the public’s freedom to meet and protest.
Print was similarly constrained, but I am a great believer in the power of the written and spoken word. Someone once said that the pen is mightier than the sword. The Times newspaper account caused widespread outrage. A petition with 20 pages of signatures was raised, testifying to the fact the meeting had been peaceful until the arrival of the soldiers. The businessman John Edward Taylor went on to help set up The Guardian newspaper as a direct response to what he had witnessed. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a poem which he called ‘The Masque of Anarchy’. In it, he encouraged reformers to ‘Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number’. William Hone wrote the Political House That Jack Built with ingenious illustrations by the caricaturist Cruikshank. It became extremely popular. Using a nursery rhyme to get his message across, it would be hard to prosecute for fear of provoking laughter in court.
We termed the fateful events of the 16th of August, 1819 the 'Peterloo' massacre to mock the soldiers who had up to that point been seen as heroes following their victory at Waterloo.
My friends and I began the work the Chartists now continue. I fear it will be some time before all men get the right to vote for a representative who can protect them from the crooks that currently run this country.
One day, although it probably will not be in my lifetime, all men will have the right to vote. Perhaps one day, an ordinary working man will lead this country. If I have not been too wicked, I hope to look down from heaven and smile.
[1] According to Wikipedia, this was coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839, to indicate that writing in particular is more powerful than violence as an agent of change.