Blanketeers
Encyclopedia
The Blanketeers or Blanket March was a demonstration
organised in Manchester
in March 1817. The intention was for the participants, who were mainly Lancashire weavers
, to march to London and petition the Prince Regent over the desperate state of the textile industry in Lancashire, and to protest over the recent suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act
. The march was broken up violently and its leaders imprisoned. The Blanketeers formed part of a series of protests and calls for reform that culminated in the Peterloo Massacre
and the Six Acts
.
England suffered economic hardship in the years immediately following the Napoleonic Wars
, and Lord Liverpool's government faced growing demands for social, political and economic reform. In the textile towns of the industrial north, wages fell sharply as the factory system
developed, and traditional handloom
weavers were among the worst affected.
The Corn Laws
of 1815 onward were intended to protect British agricultural workers from cheap foreign imports, but their effect was to increase grain prices and decrease supplies, causing hardship among the poor. In 1816 (the "Year without a summer
") severe weather resulted in poor harvests, leading to further food shortages during the winter of 1816—1817. Discontent led to riots, first in some country districts and then in towns and cities, notably the London Spa Fields riots
of November 1816. A Reform Bill for universal suffrage was drafted, with considerable input from the Northern radicals, and presented to Parliament at the end of January by Thomas Cochrane
, but it was rejected on procedural grounds by the House of Commons. After the Prince Regent's coach was attacked on the way back from Parliament on 28 January 1817, the government embarked on the so-called "Gag Acts", a number of measures to repress the radicals, including the suspension
of the Habeas Corpus Act
. The rejection of the draft bill, and the increasingly repressive measure, led to a series of events that included the Blanketeers' march, as the radicals attempted, as Poole puts it: "to appeal in the last resort to
the crown over the head of parliament, and to exercise in person the right of petitioning which had been denied them by proxy".
In January and February 1817, various workers' and deputies' meetings in Manchester were addressed by the radical orators Samuel Drummond and John Bagguley. A recurring theme of these meetings was the supposed legal right of individuals to address petitions directly to the Crown. Drummond and Bagguley helped plan a march to London to present such a petition, holding meetings along the way and encouraging others to join the demonstration, and these plans were announced by William Benbow
at a public meeting in Manchester on 3 March, at which the hope was expressed that the marchers would be 20,000 strong.
Some Lancashire reformers opposed the march and advised their supporters not to take part. Samuel Bamford
, a weaver, writer and radical leader from Middleton
, had been part of the delegation to London to discuss and forward the abortive Reform Bill. He thought the march ill-planned and unwise, predicting that they would be "denounced as robbers and rebels and the military would be brought to cut them down or take them prisoners", and expressed his relief that no Middleton people went as marchers. Bamford would later claim that one of the organisers disappeared with the money raised to feed the Blanketeers, leaving them without a means of support on the march.
, along with a large crowd of onlookers, perhaps as many as 25,000 people in total. Each marcher had a blanket
or rolled overcoat on his back, to sleep under at night and to serve as a sign that the man was a textile worker, giving the march its eventual nickname. The plan was for the marchers to walk in separate groups of ten, in order to avoid any accusation of illegal mass assembly. Each group of ten carried a petition bearing twenty names, appealing directly to the Prince Regent to take urgent steps to improve the Lancashire cotton trade. The organisers stressed the importance of lawful behaviour during the march, and Drummond was quoted as declaring: "We will let them see it is not riot and disturbance we want, it is bread we want and we will apply to our noble Prince as a child would to its Father for bread." Nevertheless, magistrates had the Riot Act
read, the meeting was broken up by the King's Dragoon Guards, and 27 people were arrested including Bagguley and Drummond. Plans for the march were thus in confusion, but several hundred men set off. The cavalry pursued and attacked them, in Ardwick on the outskirts of Manchester and elsewhere, including an incident at Stockport that left several marchers with sabre
wounds and one local resident shot dead. Many dropped out or were taken into custody by police and the yeomanry between Manchester and Stockport
, and the majority were turned back or arrested under vagrancy
laws before they reached Derbyshire. There were unconfirmed stories that just one marcher, variously named as "Abel Couldwell" or "Jonathan Cowgill", reached London and handed over his petition.
for personal interrogation by a secret tribunal including the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh and the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth. In some cases they were held without trial for months before their eventual release. No sign of the uprising was seen on the appointed day, but the event was used to support the government's case for the continued emergency measures. Parliament renewed the suspension of Habeas Corpus again in June and it was not reinstated until the following March, at which time legislation indemnifying
officials for any unlawful actions during the period of suspension was also passed. Meanwhile, the Pentridge or Pentrich Rising
in Derbyshire
in June 1817 continued the trend of insurrection among the working classes in the name of social and political reform.
The government also clamped down on press comment and radical writing. It had already passed the Power of Imprisonment Bill in February 1817, prompting the journalist William Cobbett
to leave for America for fear of arrest for his pro-reform writing and publishing, and the Seditious Meetings Act
in March of that year, as a direct response to the Blanketeers' march. On 12 May Sidmouth circulated instructions to the Lords Lieutenant
that magistrates could use their own judgement on what constituted "seditious or blasphemous libel" and could arrest and bail
anyone caught selling it. The Six Acts
, which followed the Peterloo massacre, would include further restrictions designed to limit the freedom of the press.
The Blanketeers March and the subsequent conspiracy alarms led the Manchester magistrates to form the short-lived Manchester and Salford Yeomanry
cavalry, intended to combat any future attempts at insurrection. It became infamous two years later for its role in the Peterloo Massacre.
Demonstration (people)
A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...
organised in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
in March 1817. The intention was for the participants, who were mainly Lancashire weavers
Weaving
Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...
, to march to London and petition the Prince Regent over the desperate state of the textile industry in Lancashire, and to protest over the recent suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act
Habeas Corpus Act
Habeas Corpus Act may refer to several Acts of Parliament and Acts of Congress relating to Habeas Corpus:*Habeas Corpus Act 1640 of the Parliament of England*Habeas Corpus Act 1679 of the Parliament of England...
. The march was broken up violently and its leaders imprisoned. The Blanketeers formed part of a series of protests and calls for reform that culminated in the Peterloo Massacre
Peterloo Massacre
The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 that had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation....
and the Six Acts
Six Acts
In the United Kingdom, following the Peterloo Massacre of August 16, 1819, the British government acted to prevent any future disturbances by the introduction of new legislation, the so-called Six Acts which labelled any meeting for radical reform as "an overt act of treasonable conspiracy"...
.
Background
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, and Lord Liverpool's government faced growing demands for social, political and economic reform. In the textile towns of the industrial north, wages fell sharply as the factory system
Factory system
The factory system was a method of manufacturing first adopted in England at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1750s and later spread abroad. Fundamentally, each worker created a separate part of the total assembly of a product, thus increasing the efficiency of factories. Workers,...
developed, and traditional handloom
Loom
A loom is a device used to weave cloth. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads...
weavers were among the worst affected.
The Corn Laws
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade barriers designed to protect cereal producers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The barriers were introduced by the Importation Act 1815 and repealed by the Importation Act 1846...
of 1815 onward were intended to protect British agricultural workers from cheap foreign imports, but their effect was to increase grain prices and decrease supplies, causing hardship among the poor. In 1816 (the "Year without a summer
Year Without a Summer
The Year Without a Summer was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities caused average global temperatures to decrease by about 0.4–0.7 °C , resulting in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere...
") severe weather resulted in poor harvests, leading to further food shortages during the winter of 1816—1817. Discontent led to riots, first in some country districts and then in towns and cities, notably the London Spa Fields riots
Spa Fields riots
The Spa Fields Riots were mass meetings that took place at Spa Fields, Islington, England on 15 November, 2 and 9 December 1816 between revolutionary Spenceans against the British government. The Spenceans had planned to encourage rioting at this meeting and then seize control of the British...
of November 1816. A Reform Bill for universal suffrage was drafted, with considerable input from the Northern radicals, and presented to Parliament at the end of January by Thomas Cochrane
Thomas Cochrane
Thomas Cochrane may refer to:*Thomas Cochrane, 8th Earl of Dundonald , Scottish nobleman and politician*Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald , Marquis of Maranhão, naval officer and radical politician...
, but it was rejected on procedural grounds by the House of Commons. After the Prince Regent's coach was attacked on the way back from Parliament on 28 January 1817, the government embarked on the so-called "Gag Acts", a number of measures to repress the radicals, including the suspension
Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1817
The Habeas Corpus Suspension Act 1817 was an Act passed by the British Parliament.The Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, introduced the second reading of the Bill on 24 February 1817...
of the Habeas Corpus Act
Habeas Corpus Act
Habeas Corpus Act may refer to several Acts of Parliament and Acts of Congress relating to Habeas Corpus:*Habeas Corpus Act 1640 of the Parliament of England*Habeas Corpus Act 1679 of the Parliament of England...
. The rejection of the draft bill, and the increasingly repressive measure, led to a series of events that included the Blanketeers' march, as the radicals attempted, as Poole puts it: "to appeal in the last resort to
the crown over the head of parliament, and to exercise in person the right of petitioning which had been denied them by proxy".
William Benbow
William Benbow was a non-conformist preacher and a leader of the Great Reform Movement in Manchester, England.Benbow worked with William Cobbett on the radical newspaper The Political Register. Faced with being imprisoned for sedition he fled to the United States where he continued to work on the...
at a public meeting in Manchester on 3 March, at which the hope was expressed that the marchers would be 20,000 strong.
Some Lancashire reformers opposed the march and advised their supporters not to take part. Samuel Bamford
Samuel Bamford
Samuel Bamford , was an English radical and writer, who was born in Middleton, Lancashire.-Biography:...
, a weaver, writer and radical leader from Middleton
Middleton, Greater Manchester
Middleton is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale, in Greater Manchester, England. It stands on the River Irk, south-southwest of Rochdale, and north-northeast of the city of Manchester...
, had been part of the delegation to London to discuss and forward the abortive Reform Bill. He thought the march ill-planned and unwise, predicting that they would be "denounced as robbers and rebels and the military would be brought to cut them down or take them prisoners", and expressed his relief that no Middleton people went as marchers. Bamford would later claim that one of the organisers disappeared with the money raised to feed the Blanketeers, leaving them without a means of support on the march.
Assembly and march
On 10 March 1817 around 5,000 marchers, mainly spinners and weavers, met in St. Peter's Field, near ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, along with a large crowd of onlookers, perhaps as many as 25,000 people in total. Each marcher had a blanket
Blanket
A blanket is a type of bedding, generally speaking, a large piece of cloth, intended to keep the user warm, especially while sleeping. Blankets are distinguished from sheets by their thickness and purpose; the thickest sheet is still thinner than the lightest blanket. Blankets are generally used...
or rolled overcoat on his back, to sleep under at night and to serve as a sign that the man was a textile worker, giving the march its eventual nickname. The plan was for the marchers to walk in separate groups of ten, in order to avoid any accusation of illegal mass assembly. Each group of ten carried a petition bearing twenty names, appealing directly to the Prince Regent to take urgent steps to improve the Lancashire cotton trade. The organisers stressed the importance of lawful behaviour during the march, and Drummond was quoted as declaring: "We will let them see it is not riot and disturbance we want, it is bread we want and we will apply to our noble Prince as a child would to its Father for bread." Nevertheless, magistrates had the Riot Act
Riot Act
The Riot Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that authorised local authorities to declare any group of twelve or more people to be unlawfully assembled, and thus have to disperse or face punitive action...
read, the meeting was broken up by the King's Dragoon Guards, and 27 people were arrested including Bagguley and Drummond. Plans for the march were thus in confusion, but several hundred men set off. The cavalry pursued and attacked them, in Ardwick on the outskirts of Manchester and elsewhere, including an incident at Stockport that left several marchers with sabre
Sabre
The sabre or saber is a kind of backsword that usually has a curved, single-edged blade and a rather large hand guard, covering the knuckles of the hand as well as the thumb and forefinger...
wounds and one local resident shot dead. Many dropped out or were taken into custody by police and the yeomanry between Manchester and Stockport
Stockport
Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on elevated ground southeast of Manchester city centre, at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame join and create the River Mersey. Stockport is the largest settlement in the metropolitan borough of the same name...
, and the majority were turned back or arrested under vagrancy
Vagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
laws before they reached Derbyshire. There were unconfirmed stories that just one marcher, variously named as "Abel Couldwell" or "Jonathan Cowgill", reached London and handed over his petition.
"Ardwick Bridge conspiracy" and aftermath
Some concern was expressed over the harsh suppression of the march, but the Manchester magistrates quickly provided justification for the authorities' actions. On 28 March a private meeting of reformers was broken up in the Ardwick Bridge area of Manchester, and the following day it was announced that a major conspiracy had been discovered. According to the official story, deputies in Manchester and other northern towns had been planning an uprising in which the army and local officials would be attacked, mills burned, and imprisoned Blanketeers liberated. It was said that up to fifty thousand people were expected to take part. Many suspected insurrectionists were arrested immediately, including Samuel Bamford, whose memoirs contain a detailed description of his arrest and detention. The prisoners were taken to London in ironsHandcuffs
Handcuffs are restraint devices designed to secure an individual's wrists close together. They comprise two parts, linked together by a chain, a hinge, or rigid bar. Each half has a rotating arm which engages with a ratchet that prevents it from being opened once closed around a person's wrist...
for personal interrogation by a secret tribunal including the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh and the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth. In some cases they were held without trial for months before their eventual release. No sign of the uprising was seen on the appointed day, but the event was used to support the government's case for the continued emergency measures. Parliament renewed the suspension of Habeas Corpus again in June and it was not reinstated until the following March, at which time legislation indemnifying
Indemnity
An indemnity is a sum paid by A to B by way of compensation for a particular loss suffered by B. The indemnitor may or may not be responsible for the loss suffered by the indemnitee...
officials for any unlawful actions during the period of suspension was also passed. Meanwhile, the Pentridge or Pentrich Rising
Pentrich, Derbyshire
-Pentrich Revolution:The village gave its name to the Pentrich Revolution, which occurred on the night of 9/10 June 1817. A gathering of some two or three hundred men , led by Jeremiah Brandreth , , set out to march to Nottingham...
in Derbyshire
Derbyshire
Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...
in June 1817 continued the trend of insurrection among the working classes in the name of social and political reform.
The government also clamped down on press comment and radical writing. It had already passed the Power of Imprisonment Bill in February 1817, prompting the journalist William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...
to leave for America for fear of arrest for his pro-reform writing and publishing, and the Seditious Meetings Act
Seditious Meetings Act 1817
The Seditious Meetings Act 1817 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which made it illegal to hold a meeting of more than 50 people....
in March of that year, as a direct response to the Blanketeers' march. On 12 May Sidmouth circulated instructions to the Lords Lieutenant
Lord Lieutenant
The title Lord Lieutenant is given to the British monarch's personal representatives in the United Kingdom, usually in a county or similar circumscription, with varying tasks throughout history. Usually a retired local notable, senior military officer, peer or business person is given the post...
that magistrates could use their own judgement on what constituted "seditious or blasphemous libel" and could arrest and bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
anyone caught selling it. The Six Acts
Six Acts
In the United Kingdom, following the Peterloo Massacre of August 16, 1819, the British government acted to prevent any future disturbances by the introduction of new legislation, the so-called Six Acts which labelled any meeting for radical reform as "an overt act of treasonable conspiracy"...
, which followed the Peterloo massacre, would include further restrictions designed to limit the freedom of the press.
The Blanketeers March and the subsequent conspiracy alarms led the Manchester magistrates to form the short-lived Manchester and Salford Yeomanry
Manchester and Salford Yeomanry
The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry cavalry was a short-lived yeomanry regiment formed in response to social unrest in northern England in 1817. The volunteer regiment became notorious for its involvement in the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in which as many as 15 people were killed and 400–700 were...
cavalry, intended to combat any future attempts at insurrection. It became infamous two years later for its role in the Peterloo Massacre.