Mary Fildes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mary Fildes | |
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The speaking platform at the event which became known as the Peterloo massacrepublished by Richard Carlile
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| Born | Mary Pritchard 1789 Cork, Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Died | 1876 (aged 86–87) United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Suffragette, political activist |
| Known for | President of The Manchester Female Reform Society |
| Spouse(s) | William Fildes |
| Relatives | Luke Fildes (grandson), Luke Fildes (great-grandson) |
Mary Fildes was a political activist and an early suffragette. The president of the Manchester Female Reform Society, she was one of the protagonists at the Peterloo massacre 1819. She was also the paternal grandmother of Luke Fildes through her son James.
Family
Born Mary Pritchard 1789 in Cork, Ireland, she married William Fildes, a reedmaker, on 18 March 1808 in Cheshire, England. They had eight children, James Fildes, father of Luke Fildes (1808); Samuel Fildes (1809), George FIldes (1810), Robert Fildes (1815), Sarah (1816), Thomas Paine Fildes (1818), Henry Hunt Fildes (1819), and John Cartwright Fildes (1821).
Mary named her children after some of the notable political figures of the day: John Cartwright, Thomas Paine and Henry Hunt
Peterloo Massacre
In 1819 on 16 August, a vast orderly concourse of working men and women assembled on St. Peter's field around what's now St Peters Square on the then outskirts Manchester. Fildes along with other female activists including Elizabeth Gaunt & Sarah Hargreaves were to be placed on the platform or in Hunts carriage holding the flags and banners of the society's represented.[1]
The magistrates fearing unrest and anarchy then gave orders to the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry. A number of the orderly concourse were killed and several hundred were seriously wounded. Mary Fildes was wounded severely while riding on the box sear of Henry Hunt's carriage. In the confusion of the massacre she tumbled off the carriage seat. Eye-witness account 'Mrs. Fildes hanging suspended by a nail on the platform of the carriage had caught her white dress. She was slashed across her exposed body by an officer of the cavalry'.
Reports claimed that the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry attempted to murder her while arresting the leaders of the demonstration. Although badly wounded Mary Fildes survived and continued her campaign for the vote.
The first victim of the massacre was two-year old William Fildes son of Charles & Ann Fildes of Kennedy Street. Ann claims to have been running errands to Cooper Street when she was knocked down by the approaching cavalry and William was thrown from her arms. Although at present no connection is made between Ann, William, and Mary, the closeness of Cooper Street to St Peters Fields indicates that Ann's husband Charles may have been related to Mary's husband William, who was known to have cousins in Manchester at the time. Therefore, Ann may have been in attendance to support her relative at the rally, creating an alternative story as for her reasons for being in the area.
Richard Carlile who was present at the rally describes Mary as a figure like "Joan of Arc" escaping uninjured, his account is given in "THE BATTLE OF THE PRESS"[2] by his daughter Theophila Carlile Campbell.
Political life
In 1833 Mary Fildes & Mrs Broadhurst established the Female Political Union of the Working Classes. When attempting to distribute pamphlets on birth control, Fildes was arrested and charged with the distribution of pornography.
Years went by and Mary Fildes became more of a celebrity.In the 1830s and 1840s Mary Fildes was active in the Chartist movement. She exchanged the tensions of Manchester for the relaxation of Chester and settled down as the proprietress of the "Shrewsbury Arms".
Manchester Female Reform Society
The Manchester Female Reform Society was formed in July 1819
Sir Luke Fildes
It was the first year of the Crimean War that she descended upon her son's home in Liverpool and took her grandson Samuel Luke away- later adopting him. He was privately educated in Chester. Drawing was his main interest. At the age of 14 the notion of his becoming an artist by no means pleased his grandmother. She had envisaged a more substantial life in politics for her grandson and this gave way to a rift between them.
Blackburn Female Reform Society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Blackburn Female Reform Society was established in early July 1819.[1] They immediately sent a circular to other districts, inviting the wives and daughters of the workmen in the different branches of manufacturing to form themselves into similar societies. In response Manchester formed their own society of reformers on 20 July 1819.[2]
![Map of the Peterloo Massacre and portrait of Henry Hunt [page: fold-out plate between pp. 76-77]](https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/dl%20romantics%20and%20victorians/collection-item-images/a/n/o/anonymous%20map%20m00009%2096.jpg?w=608&h=342)
![A Slap at Slop and the Bridge-Street Gang [page: single sheet]](https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/dl%20romantics%20and%20victorians/collection-item-images/h/o/n/hone%20william%20slap%20b20077%2090.jpg?w=608&h=342)
The Peterloo Massacre
In August 1819 dozens of peaceful protestors were killed and hundreds injured at what became known as the Peterloo Massacre. Ruth Mather examines the origins, response and aftermath of this key early 19th century political event.
On 16 August 1819, a meeting of peaceful campaigners for parliamentary reform was broken up by the Manchester Yeomanry, a local force of volunteer soldiers. Between 10 and 20 people were killed and hundreds more injured in what quickly became known as the Peterloo Massacre.
Although different sources give different estimates of both the numbers attending the meeting and the numbers killed and injured, it seems likely that around 100,000 people attended the meeting at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester on a sunny August day.[1] Men, women and children came not only from the local area but from towns and villages across the North West, some walking nearly 30 miles to attend. Although several members of the crowd attended from mere curiosity, most were supporters of parliamentary reform and had come especially to see the main speaker, Henry Hunt, known as ‘Orator’ Hunt because of his talent for public speaking.
Map of the Peterloo Massacre and portrait of Henry Hunt
Map depicting the location and movements of protestors and soldiers at St Peter’s Fields, 1820.
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Colour print depicting the Peterloo Massacre
Print depicting the Peterloo Massacre, 1819.
View images from this item (1)Why were people protesting?
Since the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, increasing numbers of working people in industrialising yet disenfranchised areas like Manchester had become involved in the movement for reform. Under the influence of men like Henry Hunt and the journalist William Cobbett, they began to campaign for universal suffrage. They argued that extending the vote to working men would lead to better use of public money, fairer taxes and an end to restrictions on trade which damaged industry and caused unemployment. Only a minority campaigned for women to have the vote, but women were nevertheless active in the movement. In 1819, women in and around Manchester had begun to form their own reform societies campaigning on behalf of their male relatives and vowing to bring up their children as good reformers. Many of the Female Reformers appeared at the meeting at St Peter’s Fields dressed distinctively in white as a symbol of their virtue.
Print depicting the Peterloo Massacre
Print of the Peterloo Massacre depicting Female Reformers dressed in white and holding a banner for the Manchester Female Reform Union.
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Suppressing the protesters
Despite the seriousness of the cause, there was a party atmosphere as groups of men, women and children, dressed in their best Sunday clothes, marched towards Manchester. The procession was accompanied by bands playing music and people dancing alongside. In many towns, the march was practised on local moors in the weeks before the meeting to ensure that everybody could arrive in an organised manner.
According to local magistrates, however, the crowd was not peaceful but had violent, revolutionary intentions. To them, the organised marching, banners and music were more like those of a military regiment, and the practices on local moors like those of an army drilling its recruits. They therefore planned to arrest Henry Hunt and the other speakers at the meeting, and decided to send in armed forces – the only way they felt they could safely get through the large crowd.
People who were already cramped, tired and hot panicked as the soldiers rode in, and several were crushed as they tried to escape. Soldiers deliberately slashed at both men and women, especially those who had banners. It was later found that their sabres had been sharpened just before the meeting, suggesting that the massacre had been premeditated.
The names of many of the hundreds injured were printed, along with details of their wounds, so that sympathisers could put money towards a charity to support them – remember there was no sickness benefit or free healthcare available at the time. These lists, however, probably underestimate the numbers killed and injured, as many people were afraid to admit they had been at the meeting and thereby risk further reprisals from the local authorities.
The response to the massacre
There was considerable public sympathy for the plight of the protesters. The Times newspaper printed a shocking account of the day, causing widespread outrage which briefly united advocates of a more limited reform with the radical supporters of universal suffrage. A huge petition with 20 pages of signatures was raised, stating the petitioners’ belief that, whatever their opinions on the cause of reform, the meeting on 16 August had been peaceful until the arrival of the soldiers.
From government came an official sanction of the magistrates’ and yeomanry’s actions, and the passing of the Six Acts, a paranoid legal crackdown on the freedoms of the public and press. Among this new legislation was the requirement for any public meeting on church or state matters of more than 50 people to obtain the permission of a sheriff or magistrate, and the toughening of the laws that punished authors of blasphemous or seditious material. Many braved the oppressive Six Acts, however, to express their anger in print. Percy Bysshe Shelley, on hearing news of the massacre while in Italy, called for an immediate response. His poem ‘The Masque of Anarchy’, encourages reformers to ‘Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number’ (stanza 38). He sent the poem to Leigh Hunt in London, who cautiously refrained from publishing it. The satirist William Hone had no such qualms. His Political House That Jack Built (1819), illustrated by caricaturist Cruikshank, neatly sums up the reformers’ grievances in his typically irreverent manner. The piece was wildly popular, reflecting both the extent of anger over Peterloo and the cleverness of using a well-known nursery rhyme to make a serious message widely accessible. Radical propaganda often veered between respectability and audacious humour, the latter, of course, being much harder to prosecute in court for fear of provoking hilarity.
![Petition declaring support for the victims of the Peterloo Massacre and the protestors [page: [1]]](https://www.bl.uk/britishlibrary/~/media/bl/global/dl%20romantics%20and%20victorians/collection-item-images/i/n/h/inhabitants%20petition%20m00010%2001.jpg)
Ironically, the attempt to silence government critics only encouraged journalists to develop inventive new ways of conveying the message of reform, while the outrage of conservative newspapers only inspired further satires.
As well as political prints and poems, everyday items such as cookware and handkerchiefs immortalised and commemorated Peterloo. Such items proclaimed the owner’s allegiance to the reform cause, and sustained the memories of its martyrs.
Beaker depicting radical speaker Henry 'Orator' Hunt
Beaker commemorating Henry Hunt, the radical speaker who was imprisoned for his involvement with the reform meeting at St Peter’s Field, 1819.
View images from this item (1)Handkerchief representing the Peterloo Massacre
Handkerchief commemorating the Peterloo Massacre, 1819. It depicts the yeomanry slashing at the crowd of protestors.
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Legacy
Peterloo remains a key moment in the history of the suffrage movement, less for the initial success of the meeting than for the way it allowed the reformers to gain the moral high ground. It was increasingly obvious that the government could only counter dissent with repression, while the chorus of angry voices only rose following outrages such as Peterloo.
A Slap at Slop and the Bridge-Street Gang
Satirical design for a monument and medal for the soldiers at Peterloo, from William Hone’s A Slap at Slop and the Bridge-Street Gang, 1821.
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Footnotes
[1] Due to the large numbers assembled, and the varying motives for exaggerating or downplaying attendance, it is difficult to obtain an accurate estimate. Robert Poole and Joyce Marlowe, scholarly authorities on Peterloo, use the fairly low attendance figure of 60,000, a number also given by the contemporary spectator John Benjamin Smith in his memoirs. The Times reported 80,000 in attendance, while the Manchester Observer carefully worked out the possible numbers per square yard and concluded that 153,000 people were present. Henry Hunt gave the number as 180,000 – 200, 000 in his memoirs, while Richard Carlile, who was also on the hustings, gave the unusually high attendance figure of 300,000 people in Sherwin’s Political Register.
The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter’s Field, Manchester, England, on this date in 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 peaceful and well dressed citizens who had gathered primarily to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, but also to protest the notorious Corn Laws. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws which placed tariffs on cheap imported grains (chiefly wheat) to keep the price of British grain artificially high. By the beginning of 1819, the pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the relative lack of suffrage in Northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating for parliamentary reform, organized a peaceful demonstration to be addressed by the well-known radical orator Henry Hunt.
Shortly after the meeting began local magistrates called on the military authorities to arrest Hunt and several others on the hustings with him, and to disperse the crowd. Cavalry charged into the crowd with sabres drawn, and in the ensuing confusion, 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured. The massacre was given the name Peterloo in an ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place four years earlier.
Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre one of the defining moments of its age. In its own time, the London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, but Peterloo’s immediate effect was to cause the government to crack down on reform, with the passing of what became known as the Six Acts. It also led directly to the foundation of The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian), but had little other effect on the pace of reform at the time because vested interests were deeply entrenched.
I studied 19th century English social history for my O-level exams in England, and it was this study that changed my life course from chemistry to history and anthropology. Since that time I’ve had a constant interest in the 19thcentury, as regular readers will have noted. There are so many defining events – the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions, the Congress of Vienna, the 1848 revolutions, etc. – that set the stage for the monumental transformation of Europe and the world in the 20th and 21st centuries. Peterloo is a small, but important piece of the puzzle.
The proposed demonstration in Manchester touched a very raw nerve in British economic and political life. Ultimately it came down to a battle between powerful and monied factions (doesn’t it always?). In 1819, Lancashire was represented by two Members of Parliament (MPs). Voting was restricted to the adult male owners of freehold land with an annual rental value of 40 shillings or more, and votes could only be cast at the county town of Lancaster, by a public spoken declaration at the hustings. Constituency boundaries were out of date, and the so-called rotten boroughs had a hugely disproportionate influence on the membership of the Parliament of the United Kingdom compared to the size of their populations: Old Sarum in Wiltshire, with one voter, elected two MPs, as did Dunwich in Suffolk, which by the early 19th century had almost completely disappeared into the sea. The major urban centres of Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Blackburn, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham and Stockport, with a combined population of almost one million, were represented by either the two county MPs for Lancashire, or the two for Cheshire in the case of Stockport. By comparison, more than half of all MPs were returned by a total of just 154 owners of rotten or closed boroughs. In 1816, Thomas Oldfield’s The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland; being a History of the House of Commons, and of the Counties, Cities, and Boroughs of the United Kingdom from the earliest Period claimed that of the 515 MPs for England and Wales 351 were returned by the patronage of 177 individuals and a further 16 by the direct patronage of the government: all 45 Scottish MPs owed their seats to patronage. These inequalities in political representation led to calls for reform.
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, a brief boom in textile manufacture was followed by periods of chronic economic depression, particularly among textile weavers and spinners (the textile trade was concentrated in Lancashire). Weavers who could have expected to earn 15 shillings for a six-day week in 1803, saw their wages cut to 5 shillings or less. The industrialists, who were cutting wages without offering relief, blamed market forces generated by the aftershocks of the Napoleonic Wars. Exacerbating matters were the Corn Laws, the first of which was passed in 1815. The cost of food rose as people were forced to buy the more expensive and lower quality British grain, and periods of famine and chronic unemployment ensued, increasing the desire for political reform both in Lancashire and in the country at large. In consequence a large demonstration was called by Hunt at St Peter’s Field in Manchester. People were invited to attend from all over Manchester and surrounds. At this point the local authorities were alarmed even though it was designed as a peaceful rally.
St Peter’s Field was a croft (an open piece of land) alongside Mount Street which was being cleared to enable the last section of Peter Street to be constructed. Piles of brushwood had been placed at the end of the field nearest to the Friends Meeting House, but the remainder of the field was clear. Thomas Worrell, Manchester’s Assistant Surveyor of Paving, arrived to inspect the field at 7:00 am. His job was to remove anything that might be used as a weapon, and he duly had “about a quarter of a load” of stones carted away.
The Manchester magistrates met at 9:00 am, to breakfast at the Star Inn on Deansgate and to consider what action they should take on Henry Hunt’s arrival at the meeting. By 10:30 am they had come to no conclusions, and moved to a house on the southeastern corner of St Peter’s Field, from where they planned to observe the meeting. They were concerned that it would end in a riot, or even a rebellion, and had arranged for a substantial number of regular troops and militia yeomanry to be deployed. The military presence comprised 600 men of the 15th Hussars; several hundred infantrymen; a Royal Horse Artillery unit with two six-pounder cannons; 400 men of the Cheshire Yeomanry; 400 special constables; and 120 cavalry of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry. The Manchester & Salford Yeomanry were relatively inexperienced militia recruited from among local shopkeepers and tradesmen, the most numerous of which were publicans. They had been recently mocked by the Manchester Observer as “generally speaking, the fawning dependents of the great, with a few fools and a greater proportion of coxcombs, who imagine they acquire considerable importance by wearing regimentals.” They were subsequently variously described as “younger members of the Tory party in arms”, and as “hot-headed young men, who had volunteered into that service from their intense hatred of Radicalism.”
The crowd that gathered in St Peter’s Field arrived in disciplined and organized contingents. Each village or chapelry was given a time and a place to meet, from where its members were to proceed to assembly points in the larger towns or townships, and from there on to Manchester. Contingents were sent from all around the region, the largest and “best dressed” of which was a group of 10,000 who had travelled from Oldham Green, comprising people from Oldham, Royton (which included a sizable female section), Crompton, Lees, Saddleworth and Mossley. Other large contingents marched from Middleton and Rochdale (6,000) and Stockport (1,500–5,000 ). Reports of the size of the crowd at the meeting vary substantially. Contemporaries estimated it from 30,000 to as many as 150,000; modern estimates are 60,000–80,000, which would have been about half the population of the urban area, and the largest meeting of its kind ever in England to date.
Hunt’s carriage arrived at the meeting shortly after 1:00 pm, and he made his way to the hustings. Alongside Hunt on the speakers’ stand were John Knight, a cotton manufacturer and reformer, Joseph Johnson, the organizer of the meeting, John Thacker Saxton, managing editor of the Manchester Observer, the publisher Richard Carlile, and George Swift, reformer and shoemaker. There were also a number of reporters, including John Tyas of The Times, John Smith of the Liverpool Echo and Edward Baines Jr, the son of the editor of the Leeds Mercury. By this time St Peter’s Field, an area of 14,000 square yards, was packed with tens of thousands of men, women and children. The crowd around the speakers was so dense that “their hats seemed to touch”; large groups of curious spectators gathered on the outskirts of the crowd. The rest of Manchester was like a ghost town, the streets and shops were empty.
William Hulton, the chairman of the magistrates watching from the house on the edge of St Peter’s Field, saw the enthusiastic reception that Hunt received on his arrival at the assembly, and it encouraged him to action. He issued an arrest warrant for Henry Hunt, Joseph Johnson, John Knight, and James Moorhouse. On being handed the warrant the Chief Constable, Jonathan Andrews, offered his opinion that the press of the crowd surrounding the hustings would make military assistance necessary for its execution. Hulton then wrote two letters, one to Major Thomas Trafford, the commanding officer of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry, and the other to the overall military commander in Manchester, Lieutenant Colonel Guy L’Estrange. The contents of both notes were similar:
Sir, as chairman of the select committee of magistrates, I request you to proceed immediately to no. 6 Mount Street, where the magistrates are assembled. They consider the Civil Power wholly inadequate to preserve the peace. I have the honour, & c. Wm. Hulton.
The notes were handed to two horsemen who were standing by. The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry were stationed just a short distance away in Portland Street, and so received their note first. They immediately drew their swords and galloped towards St Peter’s Field. One trooper, in a frantic attempt to catch up, knocked down a woman in Cooper Street, causing the death of her son when he was thrown from her arms; two-year-old William Fildes was the first casualty of Peterloo.
Sixty cavalrymen of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, led by Captain Hugh Hornby Birley, a local factory owner, arrived at the house from where the magistrates were watching; some reports allege that they were drunk. Andrews, the Chief Constable, instructed Birley that he had an arrest warrant which he needed assistance to execute. Birley was asked to take his cavalry to the hustings to allow the speakers to be removed; it was by then about 1:40 pm.
The route towards the hustings between the special constables was narrow, and as the inexperienced horses were thrust further and further into the crowd they reared and plunged as people tried to get out of their way. The arrest warrant had been given to the Deputy Constable, Joseph Nadin, who followed behind the yeomanry. As the cavalry pushed towards the speakers’ stand they became stuck in the crowd, and in panic started to hack about themselves with their sabres. On his arrival at the stand Nadin arrested Hunt, Johnson and a number of others including John Tyas, the reporter from The Times. Their mission to execute the arrest warrant having been achieved, the yeomanry set about destroying the banners and flags on the stand. According to Tyas, the yeomanry then attempted to reach flags in the crowd “cutting most indiscriminately to the right and to the left to get at them” – only then (said Tyas) were brickbats thrown at the military: “From this point the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry lost all command of temper”.
From his vantage point William Hulton perceived the unfolding events as an assault on the yeomanry, and on L’Estrange’s arrival at 1:50 pm, at the head of his hussars, he ordered them into the field to disperse the crowd with the words: “Good God, Sir, don’t you see they are attacking the Yeomanry; disperse the meeting!” The 15th Hussars formed themselves into a line stretching across the eastern end of St Peter’s Field, and charged into the crowd. At about the same time the Cheshire Yeomanry charged from the southern edge of the field. At first the crowd had some difficulty in dispersing, as the main exit route into Peter Street was blocked by the 88th Regiment of Foot, standing with bayonets fixed. One officer of the 15th Hussars was heard trying to restrain the by now out of control Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, who were “cutting at every one they could reach”: “For shame! For shame! Gentlemen: forbear, forbear! The people cannot get away!”
Within ten minutes the crowd had been dispersed, at the cost of eleven dead (several died later of wounds) and more than six hundred injured. Only the wounded, their helpers, and the dead were left behind. For some time afterwards there was rioting in the streets, most seriously at New Cross, where troops fired on a crowd attacking a shop belonging to someone rumored to have taken one of the women reformers’ flags as a souvenir. Peace was not restored in Manchester until the next morning, and in Stockport and Macclesfield rioting continued on the 17th. There was also a major riot in Oldham that day, during which one person was shot and wounded.
The Peterloo Massacre has been called one of the defining moments of its age. Many of those present at the massacre, including local masters, employers and owners, were horrified by the carnage. One of the casualties, Oldham cloth-worker and ex-soldier John Lees, who died from his wounds on 9 September, had been present at the Battle of Waterloo. Shortly before his death he said to a friend that he had never been in such danger as at Peterloo: “At Waterloo there was man to man but there [Peterloo] it was downright murder.” When news of the massacre began to spread, the population of Manchester and surrounding districts were horrified and outraged.
Peterloo was the first public meeting at which journalists from important, distant newspapers were present and within a day or so of the event, accounts were published in London, Leeds and Liverpool. The London and national papers shared the horror felt in the Manchester region, and the feeling of indignation throughout the country became intense. James Wroe, editor of the Manchester Observer was the first to describe the incident as the “Peterloo Massacre”, coining his headline by combining “St Peter’s Field” with the “Battle of Waterloo” that had taken place four years earlier. He also wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Peterloo Massacre: A Faithful Narrative of the Events”. Priced at 2d each, they sold out every print run for 14 weeks and had a large national circulation. Sir Francis Burdett, a reformist MP, was jailed for three months for publishing a seditious libel.
Naturally all of the militia were acquitted of any wrongdoing by biased judges. Things don’t change much – money and power trump grievous wrongs.
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