t he View from westminster
What can visitors expect to find at the Parliament & Peterloo exhibition? The Parliament & Peterloo exhibition, which opens on 4 July at Westminster Hall really tells the story of how Parliament and Peterloo are connected. We look at the background of Peterloo and the state of the country immediately after the Battle of Waterloo. We also reference the beginnings of people campaigning for the right to vote.
One of the features we’re having in the exhibition is an audiovisual presentation. We’ve been working in partnership with Royal Holloway University of London and they supplied us with some videos that bring to life some of the testimony of people who were around at the time. For instance we have a video of someone who speaks the words of a woman called Mary Fildes who was actually one of the people on the platform with Henry Hunt at Peterloo. What do we know about Westminster’s understanding of what was happening in Manchester? Because it was August, parliament wouldn’t have been sitting at the time. Parliament as a body wasn’t immediately aware of what was happening, but what happened subsequently was a series of reports and copies of letters from people who were there at the time.
Between 1819 and at least 1832 there were several hundred petitions sent into parliament from people who were there demanding an inquiry. Has the process of digitising your archive shed any new light on the response of parliament to Peterloo? I think the papers we’ve found that are in the bundle marked ‘papers relating to the internal state of the country’, have possibly been overlooked by historians in the past, simply because of the way they’ve been catalogued here. There’s a lot of personal testimony that I think sheds light on the way people were treated at the event. Are there any examples of testimony that spring to mind? Mary’s is the testimony that I’m most aware of and hers is that she was struck by someone, treated very badly by a member of the Yeomanry and they were the ones who charged into the meeting. She describes how that happened and how other people around her were basically hit and injured by the action of the Yeomanry and the cavalry. And it took her several days, if not weeks, to recover from the experience. The Parliament & Peterloo exhibition at Westminster Hall is running from 4 July to 26 September, from 9am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday (except 26 August with closing at 5.30pm). Limited free entry is available. Go to parliament. uk/visiting/ for more information
“between 1819 and at least 1832 There were several hundred Petitions sent into Parliament from People who were There demanding an inquiry”