The Manchester Female Reform Group was
formed in the summer of 1819. One of the main figures in the group
was Mary Fildes. A passionate radical Mary named her two sons after
John Cartwright and Henry
Hunt. Fildes was also involved in the campaign for birth control
and when she attempted to sell books on the subject she was accused
in the local press of distributing pornography.
Fildes was one of the main speakers at the St.
Peter's Field meeting on 16th August, 1819. Some reports claimed
that the Manchester & Salford Yeomanry
attempted to murder Fildes while arresting the leaders of the demonstration.
One eyewitness described how "Mrs. Fildes, hanging suspended
by a nail which had caught her white dress, was slashed across her
exposed body by one of the brave cavalry." Although badly wounded
Mary Fildes survived and continued her campaign for the vote.
In the
1830s and 1840s Mary Fildes was active in the Chartist
movement. Fildes later moved to Chester where she ran the Shrewsbury
Arms in Frodsham Street. She also adopted her grandson, Luke
Fildes, who was later to become one of Britain's most successful
artists. Mary Fildes died in May 1875 while visiting friends in Manchester.
The woman on the platform in
the white dress is believed to be Mary Fildes.
(1) Samuel
Bamford wrote about the involvement of women in the struggle for
universal suffrage in his book Passages in the Life of a Radical.
At one of these meetings,
which took place at Lydgate, in Saddleworth, and at which Bagguley,
Drummond, Fitton, Haigh, and others were the principal speakers, I,
in the course of an address, insisted on the right, and the propriety
also, of females who were present at such assemblages voting by a
show of hands for or against the resolutions. This was a new idea;
and the women, who attended numerously on that bleak ridge, were mightily
pleased with it. When the resolution was put the women held up their
hands amid much laughter; and ever from that time females voted with
the men at the Radical meetings.
(2) The British Volunteer
newspaper (10th July, 1819)
Among the many schemes which now endanger the peace of our society,
are some for the forming female political associations, to inculcate
in the minds of mothers and of the rising generation a disrespect
for parliament. One of these, it is alleged, has been formed in Blackburn,
in this county!!!
(3)
In his account inThe Times published
on 19th August, 1819, John Tyas described
the female reformers at St. Peter's Field.
A club of Female Reformers, amounting in numbers, according to our
calculations, 150 came from Oldham; and another, not quite so numerous,
from Royton. The first bore a white silk banner, by far the most elegant
displayed during the day, inscribed 'Major Cartwright's Bill, Annual
Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, and Vote by Ballot'. The females
of Royton bore two red flags, the one inscribed 'Let us die like men,
and not sold like slaves'; the other 'Annual Parliaments and Universal
Suffrage'.
A group of women of Manchester, attracted by the crowd, came to the
corner of the street where we had taken our post. They viewed the
Oldham Female Reformers for some time with a look in which compassion
and disgust was equally blended, and at last burst out into an indignant
exclamation - "Go home to your families, and leave sike-like
as these to your husbands and sons, who better understand them."
The women who addressed them were of the lower order of life.
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