In any Society as long established and active as the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society it is inevitable that, amongst all the scientists and scholars about whom it is easy to be proud, there will be some historical members who are more controversial.
Hugh Hornby Birley falls into the latter category. He was born on the 10th March 1778 and died on the 31st July 1845 and was part of a family of Manchester mercantile magnates.
Birley was one of the major mill owners in Manchester and built the Cambridge Street cotton mill. For its time it was very advanced with gaslighting and cast-iron columns, designed to reduce the fire risk which was always a major issue in textile mills. Coincidentally, the mill still survives as apartments and part of it is now the Anthony Burgess Centre where the modern day Literary and Philosophical Society sometimes holds meetings.
But his most famous participation in the dark side of Manchester history was as the Captain of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry when, on the 16th of August 1819, he led them into the crowd at the Peterloo massacre.
The Peterloo massacre is one of the defining events in Manchester history and occurred as part of the popular movement to extend the franchise. Shortly after the end of the Napoleonic wars, economic depression and the Corn Laws, which imposed tariffs on the import of cheap foreign corn to protect the interest of British aristocratic farmers, led to mass deprivation among the working classes.
At that time very few people had the vote and Members of Parliament were effectively controlled, usually by wealthy landowners, with newly expanded cities like Manchester having very little representation in Parliament. As a result, Manchester was one of the epicentres for popular agitation to extend the franchise which in turn, it was hoped, would lead to steps such as the repeal of the Corn Laws making food cheaper for the working classes.
Accordingly on the 16th of August 1819 approximately 60,000 people gathered in Saint Peter’s Fields, close to the site of the current Friends Meeting House and the Radisson Hotel and now in the centre of Manchester, for a peaceful demonstration.
This was in the days before the existence of a police force, so law and order was enforced to by magistrates relying on the regular army and militia units, both of whom were present that day. Hugh Hornby Birley was the captain, second in command of the militia unit, the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry. It is said that they were generally the younger sons of Tory landowners and some may have been drunk. Accordingly, they had little training, little preparation and little sympathy for the crowd who had gathered in Saint Peter’s Fields. Notwithstanding that it was a peaceful demonstration, the magistrates ordered it to be broken up and the speakers arrested. Birley led his yeomanry cavalry troopers into the crowd, and they started using their swords to hack at the civilians, including women and children. In the ensuing fracas 18 people died and between 400 and 700 were injured. Because the event was so close to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, it has gone down in history as the Peterloo massacre with Birley’s name being forever associated with it.
Some years afterwards, in 1822, a hatter from Middleton, Thomas Redford, one of the attendees who was injured, pursued a private prosecution against Birley and some of the other Yeomanry members. Despite popular outrage at the massacre, the jury at the trial found Birley innocent on the basis that he was properly discharging his duties to disperse an unlawful assembly.
As a Tory who would have objected to the Radical working-class movements who organised the Peterloo gathering, it is unsurprising to find that Birley also had other attitudes that today we would find jarring. His mills were not, despite their modernity, good places to work. In common with other manufacturers, he employed children. It is notable that, in revenge for his attendance at the Peterloo gathering, three children of one of his workers, William Marsh, were sacked from Birley’s Mill. That was at a time when, even for children, the difference between working or not could be the difference between eating or not. So, such revenge had serious consequences.
Industrial relations got so bad that in 1842 there was a strike where managers used hosepipes and threw stones from the mill roof onto the crowd below. For a number of years after the Peterloo massacre, on the anniversary, crowds would gather outside Birley’s Mill to jeer at it.
As well as his infamous part in the Peterloo massacre Birley participated in other aspects of Manchester life, again not all of which reflect well upon him to modern eyes. He was the spokesman of the Manchester Association of Master Manufacturers, a platform which he used to campaign against the movement to limit working hours for children to ten hours a day.
But he was also thought of as a philanthropist by some, as the Treasurer of the Manchester Lying-in Hospital for 30 years and being associated with the Royal Manchester Institution which became the Manchester City Gallery. He was also a driving force behind Owens College which went on to become Manchester University.
He chaired the first meeting in 1839 of the committee to create the Royal Victoria Gallery for the Encouragement of Practical Science – a classically named Victorian endeavour to extend scientific education to wider audience. But it failed because the subscriptions were too high and beyond the means of most Manchester residents.
Birley must have been a canny businessman because his mill thrived and by the 1830s employed nearly 2000 people. It was one of the largest spinning mills in Manchester. He also formed an association with a Charles MacIntosh who developed rubberised water-proof materials and became the person who gave his name to the Mac raincoat. Therefore, it is possible to say that Birley was instrumental in developing some of our modern clothing materials.
He was elected to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on the 27th of April 1804 at a time when the Society would have been ‘the place to be’ for many of the movers and shakers in Manchester. As one of the major mill owners Birley certainly fell into that category. But his interest in modern mill design, the Victoria Gallery for the Encouragement of Practical Science and Macintosh’s materials, suggests an interest in the sciences which was being promoted by the Society.
He also became the first president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and probably would have been involved in some of the major disputes within the political and business class of Manchester in the early to mid-19th century. There was a tension between landowners who wanted to preserve the Corn Laws, which kept the price of the grain they produced high, and some manufacturers who wanted it lowered for their workers. It would be a mistake to assume that all campaigners for the removal of the Corn Laws and reduction of bread prices were doing it to benefit the workers. In fact, some manufacturers wanted to see the price of bread lowered for their workers so that they could reduce the wages that they needed to pay them. Birley must have been caught up in some of that tension as a manufacturer, but it is clear from his activities at Peterloo that he strongly sided with the Tory land establishment.
Interestingly, there is a portrait of Birley, which resides in the least likely place in Manchester, the Pumphouse People’s History Museum. The museum, which is dedicated to the history of working people, uses the picture of Birley to highlight the forces that were ranged against them.
It is possible that later in his life Birley was seeking to make amends for his involvement in the Peterloo massacre by supporting educational and philanthropic activities such as Owens College and the Practical Science Gallery. The greater probability is that he was simply acting as a Victorian gentleman would have been expected to act in society at that time.
When he died on the 31st of July 1845 it was not long before the 26th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre and his name remained associated with that event in most Mancunian’s minds He is buried in the vault of Saint Peter’s Church which is now the site of the Saint Peter’s Square tram stop. Therefore, thousands of Mancunian commuters and visitors step over Birley every day. The site is also very close to the site of the Peterloo massacre and his most infamous contribution to Manchester history in life.
Andrew Welch, member of Manchester Lit & Phil