Eye Witnesses
There are in all at some 360 surviving eye-witness accounts of what happened on St Peter’s Field on 16 August 1819. (Dozens more people, mainly rounded up by the authorities some time afterwards, testified to the preparations in July and August and to the disturbances that followed). In addition to the trial testimonies and press accounts elsewhere on this site, many individuals wrote letters or memoirs, or provided signed statements for the various trials that were not in the end used. Most have been transcribed; new accounts continue to turn up.
Samuel Bamford
Samuel Bamford’s account of Peterloo from his autobiography Passages in the Life of a Radical is famous. It was used in the BBC History of Britain. Bamford organised the march from Middleton and was subsequently tried and convicted for his role.
Jemima Bamford
As well as giving his own account, Samuel Bamford insisted that his wife Jemima write her own account. Although her voice owes something to her husband’s influence her account of her experiences remains compelling.
Reverend Stanley
William Stanley, at the time rector of Alderley in conservative Cheshire and later a Bishop, had a good view of the event. His independent evidence at the trial of Redford vs Birley stood up well under cross-examination and his memoir was subsequently one of three new accounts of Peterloo published for the centenary in 1919. This version includes his sketch map and notes. His evidence at the trial is shown for comparison.
Joseph Barrett
The account of Joseph Barrett, a Newton Heath cotton manufacturer, is from Greater Manchester Archives and was one of three new accounts published in Return to Peterloo (Manchester Region History Review special edition, 2014 for 2012).
John Railton
Railton’s account was published after his death in the Manchester Guardian; the cutting survives among the Wadsworth collection in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Although Railton is hostile to the reformers and blames them for the overall situation, he is nonetheless quite clear that the troops mounted a determined attack on the demonstration without direct provocation.
Samuel Bamford’s account of Peterloo from his autobiography Passages in the Life of a Radical is famous. It was used in the BBC History of Britain. Bamford organised the march from Middleton and was subsequently tried and convicted for his role.
Jemima Bamford
As well as giving his own account, Samuel Bamford insisted that his wife Jemima write her own account. Although her voice owes something to her husband’s influence her account of her experiences remains compelling.
Reverend Stanley
William Stanley, at the time rector of Alderley in conservative Cheshire and later a Bishop, had a good view of the event. His independent evidence at the trial of Redford vs Birley stood up well under cross-examination and his memoir was subsequently one of three new accounts of Peterloo published for the centenary in 1919. This version includes his sketch map and notes. His evidence at the trial is shown for comparison.
Joseph Barrett
The account of Joseph Barrett, a Newton Heath cotton manufacturer, is from Greater Manchester Archives and was one of three new accounts published in Return to Peterloo (Manchester Region History Review special edition, 2014 for 2012).
John Railton
Railton’s account was published after his death in the Manchester Guardian; the cutting survives among the Wadsworth collection in the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Although Railton is hostile to the reformers and blames them for the overall situation, he is nonetheless quite clear that the troops mounted a determined attack on the demonstration without direct provocation.
