Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewitnesses: Bishop Stanley, Lord Hylton, John Benjamin Smith; with Bishop Stanley's Evidence at the TrialStanley, Edward
History
Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewitnesses: Bishop Stanley, Lord Hylton, John Benjamin Smith; with Bishop Stanley's Evidence at the Trial
Stanley, Edward
Manchester (England) -- History; Peterloo Massacre, Manchester, England, 1819
With the kind assistance of Mr. Swann, of the Reference Library, I have
been able to find one (and only one) copy of this Report. It is bound up
with a series of papers catalogued as "Lancashire and Yorkshire Tracts,"
at the Manchester Reference Library. (The Reference number is "Lancashire
and Yorkshire Tracts; Barlow's Historical Collector. H. 63. 3. No. 3
(15104)"). It is entitled: "Report of the Metropolitan and Central
Committee appointed for the Relief of the Manchester Sufferers, with an
Appendix containing the names of the sufferers and the nature and extent
of their injuries; also an account of the distribution of funds, and other
documents. Published by order of the Committee. London, 1820." This
Committee seems to have been formed by amalgamating several organisations
in the metropolis which sprang into being as a result of public sympathy
with the sufferers, and it worked in conjunction with the Manchester and
other Lancashire Committees. The subscriptions recorded to date amount to
£3,408 1s. 8d. of which £1,206 13s. 8d. had been distributed, £250 having
been received from the local Manchester Committees. The amount expended on
law charges and expenses of witnesses is given as £1,077 6s. 9d.;
advertisements and sundries cost £355 13s. 6d.; and this leaves a balance
of over £768, which is pronounced inadequate to deal with the cases that
remain. A fresh appeal is therefore made to the British Public. A
Deputation was sent from London to investigate cases, and this Deputation
reports, in January, 1820, that out of 420 sufferers visited and relieved
113 are females; that 130 received severe sabre-cuts, 14 of these being
females. (To be quite safe, we must admit the possibility that the term
"sufferers" may sometimes include members of the families of those killed
or injured.) There follow 38 pages filled with the names of those killed
and wounded at Peterloo, some 430 in all, with full details of their
injuries, and in the case of the former the description is "Killed, _or_,
who have subsequently died in consequence of injuries there received," the
number of these being given as eleven. Of these eleven: two were "sabred;"
one was "sabred and trampled upon;" one was "sabred and stabbed;" one
"sabred and crushed;" two (one of them a woman) "rode over by the
cavalry;" one "trampled by the cavalry;" one "inwardly crushed;" and one
(a woman) "thrown into a cellar." In the case of two of these the words
are added "killed on the spot." The child killed in Cooper Street
completes the total.
One of the Relief Committees met at Mr. Prentice's warehouse, and the care
with which the various cases were investigated, and successive grants made
from the funds of the different Committees, is clearly shown by the
details given in the account-book secured by Mr. Guppy in 1919 for the
Rylands Library, which is mentioned above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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