Enemies of the State (2011)
“The discontented and the dispossessed, spinners and weavers from Middleton, Boarshaw, Hopwood, Chadderton and Back O’ the Brow. Men, women and children, wearing (if they owned such a thing) their Sunday best, even though it was Monday.
It was 19 August 1819. For eleven of them, it would be the last day of their lives.
If we look, as we must, for a motive behind the Cato Street conspirators’ bizarre enterprise, we should see it in part as an act of revenge. Because, in the short term at least, and in the area where it happened, there was no revenge.
Manchester, by the hot, dry summer of 1819 was huge. Together with nearby Oldham it boasted over 95,000 inhabitants, the poorest the Irish who lived in water-logged cellars on the edge of still open spaces like St Peter’s Fields. Nearly a third of that population – half of the able-bodied adults – worked in the city’s sixty mills, most of which were given over to spinning. The fastest growing of the English industrial sprawls, Manchester wa...s on its way to becoming the cottonopolis, a centre of rich magnates and civic pride.MoreLess
It was 19 August 1819. For eleven of them, it would be the last day of their lives.
If we look, as we must, for a motive behind the Cato Street conspirators’ bizarre enterprise, we should see it in part as an act of revenge. Because, in the short term at least, and in the area where it happened, there was no revenge.
Manchester, by the hot, dry summer of 1819 was huge. Together with nearby Oldham it boasted over 95,000 inhabitants, the poorest the Irish who lived in water-logged cellars on the edge of still open spaces like St Peter’s Fields. Nearly a third of that population – half of the able-bodied adults – worked in the city’s sixty mills, most of which were given over to spinning. The fastest growing of the English industrial sprawls, Manchester wa...s on its way to becoming the cottonopolis, a centre of rich magnates and civic pride.MoreLess
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