Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

the unrest Rochdale became a barracks town giving it a permanent military
presence ready at a moments notice to put down any riots.
The move to reform the existing parliamentary system dominated the political
mood of the country. A party of reform minded men, equipped with blankets
to keep them warm on overnight stops, set off from Manchester on March
24, 1817 to present a petition to the Prince Regent in what became known
as the March of the Blanketeers.
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The same year a large political reform meeting was held on Cronkeyshaw
Common outside Rochdale. 35,000 men and women marched through
Rochdale to the Common, and amongst the crowd at the meeting was
Samuel Bamford, a reformer/radical from Middleton.
The Peterloo Massacre
Two years later Bamford led a party of Middleton people to an assembly on
open ground near St. Peter’s Church in Manchester, where they hoped to
hear Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt speak.
‘They wore their Sunday suits and clean neckties; and by the side of fustian
and corduroy walked the coloured prints and stuffs of wives and sweethearts,
who went as for a gala-day, to break the dull monotony of their lives, and
to serve as a guarantee of peaceable intention. Such at least was the main
body, marshalled in Middleton by stalwart, stout-hearted Samuel Bamford,
which passed in marching order, five abreast down Newton Lane, through
Oldham Street, skirted the Infirmary Gardens, and proceeded along Moseley
Street. each leader with a sprig of peaceful laurel in his hat.’
Peterloo: the 15th Hussars rode, with sabers drawn, into the crowd ...
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 16