Kmflett's Blog

Peter Finnerty, Peterloo, Samuel Bamford & Ramsay MacDonald

Peter Finnerty was a supporter of the United Irishmen at the end of the eighteenth century, a veteran opponent of Castlereagh who was Home Secretary at the time of Peterloo in 1819 and a Parliamentary reporter for the Whig (Liberal) daily paper the Morning Chronicle.

I’m pleased to note that a long overdue biography of Finnerty is in hand. He was a significant figure in early nineteenth century radical politics, an associate of both Sir Francis Burdett and William Hazlett and an important link between English and Irish radical politics.

Finnerty was imprisoned in Lincoln jail in 1812 for libelling Castlereagh and a youthful Shelley wrote a poem in his defence. Shelley also wrote or course the Masque of Anarchy about Peterloo although it was not published until some years after the massacre.

I’ve been looking at what Finnerty’s links were with Peterloo.

I don’t think he was in Manchester on that August Monday in 1819. Certainly the editions of the Morning Chronicle published in the days after the Massacre did not suggest they had a reporter present.

He was however present at the inquest into the death of a man killed at Peterloo in September 1819,John Lees, and it was there he met Samuel Bamford, the leader of the Middleton contingent on 16^th August 1819. Finnerty had been one of a handful who had inspected John Lees body before the inquest began but was barred from attending by the Coroner.

He successfully lobbied Bamford for his notes so he could publish details in the Morning Chronicle.

This led him to suggest Bamford could get a job on the paper.

The story of this episode is here:

https://minorvictorianwriters.org.uk/bamford/c_radical_(9).htm

As Finnerty and Bamford travelled to London he stopped at the house of Sir Richard Wolseley.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wolseley,_Charles_(1769-1846)_(DNB00)

Wolesley had chaired one of the great meetings that was a precursor to Peterloo and had been in jail on 16^th August 1819. However on release he showed an interest in the fate of those injured and killed.

This no doubt explains why Finnerty who clearly knew him stopped by his residence.

What we don’t know is whether Finnerty was also involved in pre-Peterloo agitation as Wolseley had been.

In an interesting twist the Dictionary of National Biography entry on Wolseley above was written by Ramsay MacDonald.

Research work still in progress.