Guns and nettle beer

James Downey was a cobbler by day and a Chartist arms dealer by night

James Downey the cobbler was a busy man.

His job was to repair the mill workers’ clogs that clacked on the cobbles before the dawn whistle marked the start of their daily grind.

The weavers liked coming into his shop at the top of Gould Street. Downey gave them fizzy pop and nettle beer.

But at night he had a side hustle that of late was keeping his candles burning.

Downey was an arms dealer.

His store room at the shop was full of weapons.

It was the spring of 1848 and revolution was spreading like a fever across Europe.

In Manchester, hungry weavers had begun making secret plans for their own insurrection over the conditions in the cotton mills.

They were Chartists — men wanting political reform and prepared to fight for it — and many of them were Irish.

Back home in Ireland, at the height of the Great Famine, their relatives were dying of starvation on land owned by English landlords.

Friedrich Engels said the weavers of Manchester were “men who have nothing to lose, two thirds of them not having a shirt on their backs”.

“They are real proletarians and sans culottes, and, moreover Irishmen — headstrong, fanatical Gauls,” he wrote.

Beyond Peterloo

At a secret meeting in a hollow near the River Irk, an agitator named Patrick Flynn urged the weavers to arm themselves and prepare for battle.

And, in the following days, Downey’s shop began to see a surprising amount of business.

The queues at the door caught the eye of a spy who was being paid by the police to find out what the Chartists were planning.

Why were so many mill workers suddenly getting their clogs repaired?

On 30 May the spy slipped into the shop and could barely believe his eyes. The back room was lined not with clogs but with guns, swords and pikes.

He bought a cutlass with a 3ft blade and took it to the town hall as evidence, telling the town officials he had seen around 40 people buying pikes and cutlasses in the shop.

But the discovery was too late.

The Monkey Parade

The following morning, Downey’s customers picked up the weapons they had bought and set off.

Up to 1,000 Chartists led by Downey and Flynn gathered in the streets armed to the teeth and carrying flags.

They planned to hold a rally in Stevenson Square.

Soon, they heard a crowd of 6,000 supporters was approaching the town from Oldham and had been blocked by police at a tollgate.

The armed mob marched out of town to meet them — stabbing a policeman’s horse on the way with a pike.

At the gate, they lined up opposite the 80 officers guarding it and prepared to charge.

“I saw a gun with a bayonet at the end of it and 20 or 30 pikes held up in the centre of the procession,” the police chief superintendent Richard Beswick later said.

“From the violent conduct of the people, my impression was that we should be attacked.”

Manchester cellar dwellings - a Victorian housing scandal

But just then something remarkable happened. The heavens opened and the Manchester rain saved the officers.

Under a heavy downpour, the rioters in their shirtsleeves lost heart and the police, armed only with wooden staffs, were able to beat them back.

Later that night, officers stormed Downey’s shoe shop and arrested him.

They discovered he was an Irish confederate — part of an Irish nationalist movement whose aims overlapped with some of the Chartists.

Downstairs, the officers found 20 swords, six pikes, a pistol, a blunderbuss, two muskets and Downey’s gun with a bayonet at the end.

In an upper room, they then surprised 14 men who were reading Irish newspapers.

On the door, written in chalk, was a sign saying “this club will meet at ten o’clock tomorrow morning” — the day of the riot.

A journalist from the Manchester Times managed to get inside Downey’s arms store and was able to describe the weapons haul:

“The articles are of a very inferior quality, and whether of English or Irish manufacture, do not reflect much credit on the maker. The pike is of the ordinary size and shape. The cutlass, while of the usual length, is much narrower in the blade than the standard instrument of war. The pikes are labelled with a ticket, intimating the price of two shillings and three pence. No price is attached to the cutlasses.”

The shop, he said, had “nothing of an enticing character about it” and “the shopkeeper does not seem inclined to advertise his wares”.

“The only thing in the shape of an announcement in the window is a printed paper, with PRIME POP AND NETTLE BEER in large letters,” he said.

A court later heard that the guns, even though they were old, could still have killed and maimed people.

“The firearms are huge, old things, which would require some nerve to run the risk of firing,” the prosecutor at the Chartists’ trial said.

“But they seem to be very dangerous articles.”

Downey was jailed for 15 months with hard labour — one of 47 defendants who made a great noise when they appeared together in the dock.

He was, the court was told, Manchester’s “principal pike vendor”.

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Autumn Angel Meadow Tours

One of the best things I’ve found about leading walking tours around Angel Meadow is noticing the seasons change.

Through the rain of spring and the warm days of summer, I've been looking forward to leading tours in the autumn — my favourite season.

What could be better than wrapping up in a big coat and taking a walk on a cool autumn day, hearing to a few stories and kicking piles leaves in good company?

My tours take place on most Wednesdays and Saturdays and last around 90 minutes, are dog friendly and nicely timed for a lunch time finish with a few cosy pubs nearby.

Tickets are now available for my last dates in September and October before I look at closing the tours for winter to focus on my writing and family history work.

It’d be good to meet you if you can make it.

I’m running tours today (Saturday, 14 September), next Saturday (21 September) and on 28 September — all at 11am. Tickets cost £15.

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September History Listings: Heritage Open Days

If you want to check out some historic places this weekend, then there are only two days left of this year’s Heritage Open Days.

It’s England’s largest festival of history and culture and a chance to visit a few hidden places you haven’t seen before — and it’s all free.

Events taking place in Greater Manchester today and tomorrow (Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 September) include:

• Go behind the scenes at the conservation studio at the People’s History Museum in Manchester (Saturday — pre-booking required).

• Tour the Mechanics Institute, the birthplace of the Trades Union Congress, which was founded in this building in 1868 (Sunday — pre-booking preferred).

• There’ll be a talk on archive stories with Donna Claypool at the Manchester Craft and Design Centre (Saturday — pre-booking required).

• Lancashire Mining Museum at Astley will be having a Battle of Britain afternoon tea and a display on the Bevan Boys. (Sunday — pre-booking not required).

• Heights Chapel in Delph, Saddleworth, is having an open weekend with tours of the graveyard taking place on Sunday if the weather is good. (Saturday and Sunday, 1.30pm to 4.30pm — pre-booking not required).

A full listing of all Heritage Open Days this weekend can be found here.

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Mill of the Month

I’ve started taking photos of the mills around Greater Manchester and am planning to show you one of my favourites each month.

It’s surprising how differently the mills were designed. They now stand like silent monuments to the region’s once great cotton industry.

This is New Mill, part of the Murrays’ Mill complex in Jersey Street, Ancoats, which was built for the brothers Adam and George Murray.

It was built in around 1804 and, when it was finished, Murrays’ Mills was the largest mill site in the world, with 84,000 mule spindles.

Conditions were better there than in other mills. The buildings at least had opening windows and the workers were given a short break in the afternoon.

Have a great weekend!