Dewhurst, George 003

George Dewhurst was part of Blackburn’s radical tradition. Dewhurst was tried for treason after addressing a mass meeting of workers (many of whom would have been handloom weavers – mechanised weaving in factories was still in its infancy then) in Burnley in 1819. Earlier that same year there had occurred the ‘Peterloo Massacre’, when drunken local Yeomanry charged on horseback into an unarmed crowd, which included women and children, using the sharp edges of their swords to facilitate the arrest of the main speaker Henry Hunt.