Richard Buxton part seven .......Peterloo

Earlier in the month I wrote about Richard Buxton the working class botanist and his “quiet” life set against the backdrop of Revolution, war and trace depressions. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Richard%20Buxton

In the early decades of the 19th century Revolution it was thought was in the air, and the Government responded with the Gag Acts, the suspension of Habeas Corpus   and the rounding up and imprisonment of political suspects.

Mindful of any potential protest the authorities acted equally promptly.   When thousands of Manchester men set out on March 10th 1817 to petition the King, the army stooped them near Stockport.  One hundred and sixty-seven were arrested, several received sabre wounds and one was shot dead.

The unrest stretched on into the 1830s and 40s, and Buxton would have been well aware of the Chartist demands of manhood suffrage.   In 1839 the local papers   were full of a group of Chartists arrested for allegedly drilling with weapons, thousands had demonstrated at Kersal Moor for the vote and across the north the military sat and waited for what the propertied classes feared would be social unrest at best and revolution at worst.

But the one event that stands out and which defined the politics of his early middle years was the massacre at Peterloo.  In August 1819 a peaceful demonstration at St Peters’ Field calling for the vote was broken up by the military.  Units of cavalry charged the crowd and soldiers of the 89th Infantry fired into them.  Thousands were wounded and eleven were killed.

Eye witness accounts still have the power to shock


”As the cavalry approached the mass of people used their utmost efforts to escape, so closely were they pressed in opposite directions by the soldiers, the special constables, the position of the hustings, and their own numbers that immediate escape was impossible..... The people were in a state of utter riot and confusion, leaving the ground strewn with hats and shoes.... During the whole of the confusion, heightened by the rattle of some artillery crossing the square, shrieks were heard in all directions..... Some were seen bleeding on the ground and unable to rise; others less severely injured but faint with loss of blood were retiring slowly.”

“The hustings remained with a few broken and hewed flag staves erect, and a torn or gashed banner or two drooping whilst over the field  were strewed caps, bonnets, hats, shawls and shoes, and other male and female dress trampled torn, and bloody ...”

Buxton would have been aware of the demonstration and may even have seen the Oldham contingent of 6000 strong heading into Ancoats from the north and the 2000 from Ashton streaming in from the east of the city.

More importantly he would have known neighbours from the close warren of streets bounding Gun Street who went to hear Orator Hunt.  Many of those who made their way to St Peters Field went as family units, community groups or just f friends and work mates.  And many who returned as casualties came from those same streets.  Eighty alone who gave their address lived in Ancoats, and the streets they inhabited were minutes walk from Buxton’s home.    Five came from Buxton’s street.  James Weir or Ware from number 11 had been bruised and trampled another had gone with his wife and child and was badly hurt.

Nor was this the end of the horror.  For the remainder of the day the military and the local police patrolled the streets like some occupying force, and in the early evening with tensions still high a large crowd gathered at New Cross.  This was a popular meeting place for people from both Ancoats and Collyhurst and was just minutes from Gun Street.  Some of the crowd began throwing stones at the police and soldiers opened fire.

Before the crowd had dispersed, Joseph Ashworthy had been killed and several others lay injured.  Not surprisingly many of those injured in this event also came from that close network of streets close to Buxton’s home.  He may even have shared the anticipation that “In that paralysis of terror anything might happen”     

Nothing did but the memory of what happened on that August day survived well into the last quarter of the nineteenth century.  In the 1870s one  weaver looking at a newspaper picture of Henry Hunt  on the workshop wall could still express anger at an event which happened sixty years before. And others were prepared to pose of a photograph sixty-five years after the event.

None of these or the other great events which he lived through are referred to in his autobiography and the nearest he came to a social comment was his regret that ordinary people were unable to  fully walk the fields, “To the poor, as a class, it is to be feared that the possession of land in this country is not generally attainable ....[but] I hope the lords of the soil will yet allow the pent up dwellers in the crowded city to walk and view the beauties of creation”     But this was a request and not a demand and is limited to the use of old footpaths.

But Buxton was operating in a world where he was dependant on charitable donations and his work as a botanical collector.    The 1840s were increasingly difficult financially and made worse by the failure of the second edition of his book to make much money.

Picture; Peterloo, 1819 by Richard Carlile, m01563, Peterloo, 1819, m07589, and Veterans of Peterloo from a photograph taken in 1884, m07594, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council