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Not content with multiplying  indictments upon Mr Wroe, the intrepid  proprietor of the Manchester Observer, and exasperated at his perseverance and their capacity to obtain possession of his person ,  the revengeful  animals have directed all the engines of their prostituted authority to the persecution of his wife and children, who continue to sell that and other obnoxious publications. Twice have the mean violators of the law and deciders of justice held Mrs Wroe to bail,  and twice have her children been taken out of his shop,  and sureties been demanded for their appearance to answer the charge of having published scandalous libel that told too much truth of these… In addition to Mrs Wroe, the wife of one of the journeymen Mrs Hough and her daughter, were arrested and confined in the New Bailey all night because forsooth the magistrates, after having them into custody, could not make it  convenient to wait until their friends  could be sent  for to put in security for an appearance which the magistrates  dare never require of them before any jury.  Black Dwarf , 29 September 1819, p.633.

A vivid glimpse of the experiences of some  women  at Peterloo can be found in the pages of the inquest into the death of John Lees, a weaver from Lees near Oldham,   who was sabred on the field  and died on his injuries on 6 September.  The inquest into his death  was turned into an enquiry into  the events of Peterloo by Mr Hamer –  a solicitor engaged by the Lees family – who,  in the teeth of bitter  opposition from the Coroner and an opposing solicitor engaged by the magistrates,   cross-examined the Crown's witnesses and also  summoned his own. The proceedings were taken down in notes  and shorthand and published in full  by William Hone the following year.  (The inquest was adjourned after ten days and never resumed).

Martha Kearsley  from Oldham,  had been sitting on the outside  of Henry Hunt's carriage very close the hustings.  She said that what occasioned the tumult  on the field  had been  “the soldiers coming and cutting and slashing among the people" . She had seen a man fighting off two soldiers who were attacking him with swords when a third came up and wounded him on the back of the shoulder. “I was so struck with horror,  that I turned round and saw no more of him." She saw many others cut by the soldiers.

Ellizabeth  Farren,  of Lombard Street, Manchester,  explained she had been cut on the forehead, raising her bonnet and cap and bandage to show  the wound, which had not completely healed. She said she was cut as the  cavalry went  to the hustings. “I was with this child (shewing the child she held in her arms). I was frightened for its safety, and to protect it, held it close to my side with head downwards, to avoid the blow. I desired them to spare my child, and I was directly cut on my forehead." She passed out and awoke three hours later in a strange cellar.

Hannah Croft was living in a house  Windmill Street, right by St Peter's  Fields. She described  looking out of the window and seeing the Manchester cavalry riding among the crowd “and the people falling in heaps".  The people tried to get away “but the soldiers rode so hard that they knocked them down before they could get out of the way".

Margaret Goodwin from Salford was situated  between Saint Peter's church and the hustings. She saw two men wounded near the church “ and all covered with blood and gore"  and a woman cut within a few yards of where she was standing.  She was trying to get away when she was wounded by Thomas Shelmerdine and knocked unconscious.

Ann Jones lived on Windmill Street. She told the inquest that she saw the cavalry cutting and slashing and saw a large quantity of blood on the field after they were gone.  “I saw a great many people wounded, and very bloody indeed,…there a great many people in my house, and all was in great confusion, and some of the special constables came up in great triumph before my door, calling out, “This is Waterloo for you! This is Waterloo."

A militant position  was taken by Ethelinda Wilson who  wrote articles in  Republican, a journal published by the political and sexual radical Richard Carlile. She condemned the failure of the male reformers to hold another meeting on St Peter's fields and said it  now up to women to take up the fight. Future generations would thank them for doing so,  exclaiming  “our mothers, our revered mothers, cultivated the soil in which this universal blessing grew".  Ethelinda  left Manchester for London  where  she attended meetings touting a loaded pistol  wrapped in handkerchief.

Article published by kind permission of the author, Emma Speed.  Originally published with images, 15 August, 2018 on the following blog: Red Flag Walks: taking radical history onto the streets

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