How easy it is to lose our history, and once lost how much more difficult to retrieve.
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| Alexander Somerville, 1848 |
This I know is not an original idea but is one that I have been wrestling with today, as I seek to uncover the lives of five radical working men all of whom were born in the 18th century and died long before Parliament extended the vote to include a section of the male working class.
They were, Peter Rothwell, George Hadfield, George Exley, Henry Parry Bennet, and James Wheeler.
I doubt I would ever have come across any of them, were it not that all five were buried beside the monument to Henry “Orator” Hunt, which stood in the burial ground of the Round Chapel on Every Street.
They were part of the committee responsible for that monument, and I suspect had been at Peterloo along with Mr. Hunt.
As yet, I don’t know what they looked like, the position they took on the reform of Parliament and where they stood on the broad spectrum of opinion within the Chartist movement.
To be honest I don’t even know if they were all Chartists, but I suspect they were.
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| Off Oldham Road, home to some of the "five", 1851 |
They may appear in the autobiographies of other radicals like Samuel Bamford and Mr. Hunt, and if I am very lucky, I might turn up a reference to the memorial committee.
I have trawled the database of the Working-Class Museum in Salford and gone looking for any reference in the newspapers to the five, but so far have only found them in the census returns, directories and registers of births deaths and marriages.
But I am confident that I have found all five in the official records, which list their occupations as cotton weaver, tailor, and baker, in fact three of the five were bakers.
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| Back Prussia Street, 1851 |
All lived in the northern part of the city in an area which was densely packed with rows of terraced houses which in turn were surrounded by textile mills, iron works and timber yards, bounded by the Ashton and the Rochdale Canals.
In the absence of anything on their politics, and their activities I am forced back on exploring just where they lived.
Henry Parry Bennet who was one of the three bakers lived with his wife on Bradford Street, throughout the 1840s and into the next decade, and died there in 1851. And as you do, I wondered on the fate of his wife, who was 62. But like so many working people of the period, she is lost from the records with nothing listed as yet after the date of her husband’s death.
Conversely in the case of Peter Rothwell there is bewildering choice of candidates, one of whom lived in a property which commanded an annual rent of £20 and would have entitled him to a vote in the reformed Parliament and another Mr. Rothwell, who in 1841 described himself as a cotton weaver and lived with his family and assorted others in Back Prussia Street.
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| Prussia Street, 1904 |
In all there were ten people sharing the house, four of whom along with Mr. Rothwell and his wife Ann were well past retirement age, but I suspect were still hard at it working in the nearby cotton mills.
Back Prussia Street was, as its name suggests directly behind Prussia Street, which ran from Oldham Road down to Jersey Street, and like the rest of this part of town was a mix of cotton mills, foundries, timber yards with the odd glass making works thrown in.
And to further complicate the picture, a Peter Rothwell in 1844 was listed in the rate books as living in the cellar of a property on Bradford Street which was close to where the Bennet’s lived.
It is all tantalizing and is a bit like looking through a dirty window, which reveals some detail but not much.
I suspect our cellar dwelling Mr. Rothwell will be the same as he that lived on Back Prussia Street and is a reminder that people moved around the city in a way that most of us don’t today.
I continue to trawl the records and might yet turn up the minutes of the committee which erected the monument to Mr. Hunt, and remain confident that there will be some reference to them, but in the meantime, they are just names.
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| Prussia Street, 1907 |
But not quite, because we know that the organization that went into the erection of the monument and the subsequent preparations for the day of its unveiling are impressive.
The committee had decided on charging a penny for admission to the event and set up platforms from which spectators could observe the speeches, for which they wee asked to pay an extra 6 pence.
And on the day the committee had to cope with an estimated crowd of 15,000 people, which would have taxed any group of marshals charged with making for a peaceful and dignified day.
So that is it, ………. Not much perhaps, but a step in uncovering the lives of five Manchester radicals who have been pretty much forgotten.
Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. In his ground-breaking book, The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson, wrote
"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity."*
And if it was good enough for him, who am I to stop digging for my five?
Pictures;
cover page of Alexander Somerville's Somerville's autobiography, 1848, Back Russia Street, 1851, from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ Harriet Street stables adjoining No.1 Prussia St, near Oldham Road, Bradburn ,A, 1904, m10109 and Portugal Street & No. 3 Prussia Street, near Oldham Road, Jackson, J, 1907, m10411, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class, 1963, 1968, 1980, page 12 from the 1980 revised edition. My 1968 Pelican edition is all but falling apart and I suspect it is time for a new copy.
