Hugh
Hornby Birley, was born in Blackburn, Lancashire on 10th March, 1778.
Birley owned a large textile factory in Oxford Road, Manchester.
He developed a reputation an industrialist with reactionary political
opinions. Birley was a captain in the Manchester
and Salford Yeomanry Calvary. The Yeomanry was made up of local
businessmen, and were used to deal with social unrest. For example,
Birley had used the Yeomanry to disperse weavers marching from Manchester
to Ashton-under-Lyne. During an industrial dispute at his factory
in 1818, Birley was involved in a violent confrontation with his workers.
This involved a group of men attacking Birley's factory with stones.
According to local liberals such as Archibald
Prentice and John Edward Taylor, Birley
and the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry had a deep hatred of reformers.
When William Hulton heard about the planned
meeting at St. Peter's Field on 16th August, 1819, he asked Thomas
Trafford, commander of the Manchester and Salford, to bring his 120
men to help maintain order. Hulton and his fellow magistrates were
based at a house in Mount Street overlooked St. Peter's Field. At
about 12.30 Hulton came to the conclusion that "the town was
in great danger". Hulton therefore decided to instruct Joseph
Nadin, Deputy Constable of Manchester, to arrest the four leaders
of the meeting Henry Hunt, John
Knight, Joseph Johnson and Joseph
Moorhouse. Nadin replied that this could not be done without the help
of the military. Hulton then wrote two letters and sent them to Lieutenant
Colonel L'Estrange, the commander of the military forces in Manchester
and Major Thomas Trafford, the commander of the Manchester
& Salford Yeomanry.
Major Trafford, who was positioned only a few yards away at Pickford's
Yard, was the first to receive the order to arrest the men. Major
Trafford chose Captain Hugh Birley, his second-in-command, to carry
out the order. Local eyewitnesses claimed that most of the sixty men
who Birley led into St. Peter's Field were
drunk. Birley later insisted that the troop's erratic behaviour was
caused by the horses being afraid of the crowd.
Journalists such as John Tyas, Archibald
Prentice and John Edward Taylor argued
that Birley used unnecessary force in his attempts to arrest the leaders
of the meeting and had been responsible for the deaths
of several people killed in the crowd. It was claimed that Birley's
men tried to kill John Saxton and Mary
Fields on the platform and several well-known radicals in the
crowd. Afterwards, Hugh Birley was one of the main people blamed for
the Peterloo Massacre.
When the government refused to hold a public inquiry into the Peterloo
Massacre, Thomas Redford, who had been badly wounded by a member
of the Manchester & Salford Yeomanry,
brought a personal action for assault against Hugh Birley, and three
other members of his troop. The court case took place at Lancaster
in April 1822. Thomas Redford produced several witnesses that gave
damaging evidence against Birley and his men. However, after five
days, the jury decided to accept Birley's defence that the assault
on Redford had "been properly committed in the dispersal of an
unlawful assembly."
Hugh Birley continued to live in Manchester
after the Peterloo Massacre. Although
deeply hated by the reformers, Burley was held in high esteem by conservatives
and eventually became Manchester's first President of the Chamber
of Commerce. In the early 1820s Birley went into partnership with
Charles Macintosh, who patented the
idea of water-proofing. Hugh Hornby Birley died on 31st July, 1845.
(1)
Hugh Birley wrote a letter to The Times
complaining about the way John Tyas had
reported the behaviour of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry on 16th
August 1819.
Mr. Tyas accuses the Yeomanry of
cutting, to get at the flags, after Hunt and Johnson had been taken
into custody - of losing their command of temper after brickbats had
been hurled at them. There is ample evidence to prove that this attack
had begun before the hustings were surrounded. The temper of the Yeomanry
and of all the troops employed in the dispersion of the meeting is
sufficiently marked by the fact, that, not withstanding the fury with
which they were assailed - not withstanding that a Yeoman was struck
from his horse senseless, and to all appearances, lifeless - not more
than one death can be ascribed to a sabre wound.
(2) Robert Mutrie was a member
of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry that arrested Henry
Orator Hunt at St. Peter's Field. On the 19th August, 1819, Mutrie
wrote a letter to his friend, Archibald Moore.
The crowd had pelted us with stones
for an hour or two. Captain Booth gave the word and we then charged
the crowd. My horse grew quite mad and carried me over the backs of
many poor devils. I think the Reformers will not call another meeting.
(3) Archibald
Prentice, The Manchester Times (10th July, 1830)
The Duke of Wellington visited the
fortified factory owned by ex-Major Birley, whose deeds of valour
on the bloody 16th of August, have immortalised his name. The factory
is situated on the banks of the nasty, inky stream, called the river
Medlock. What induced the Duke and his retinue to visit this place
in preference to factories of far greater importance in the town has
puzzled the heads of many of the good people of Manchester, but ultimately
they came to a conclusion that the preference was given to the Major
solely because "he was famed for deeds of arms". It is to
be regretted that, out of all the factories in Manchester, he should
visit one whose owner is stained with the recollections of the 16th
of August, 1819, when the Yeomanry under his command cut down the
people when peaceably and legally assembled.
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