Peterloo workshop at the National Archives

On 31 March Robert Poole and I organised a workshop with the National Archives, giving people a chance to look at and transcribe original Home Office documents relating to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.

Chirs Day, Home Office specialist at TNA, and our AHRC collaborative PhD student Nathan Bend also gave talks.

It was the first time, perhaps ever, that all the Home Office papers on the massacre were shown together in original, in the same place. Normally you have to access only to the poor quality (and effectively uncatalogued) microfilm of some of the documents, and certainly can't get all the different series out all on the table at once. This allowed us to compare the original hand-written petition by the Blanketeers to the Prince Regent with the printed version of the petition sent from London, and bring together the posters and prints (including one seized from a fairground man in Chudleigh, Devon) with the original correspondence and copies of the Manchester Observer.

Pictures courtesy of Robert Poole:






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