“He was still bleeding when he was put in his coffin”. John Lees is killed, 1819.

As we go into this General Election with inequality rising and people’s faith in the political establishment eroded to it’s lowest level in decades, we’d do well to remember that almost 200 years ago people assembled in defiance of the authorities to hear a speech on political reform. 11 people died and over 400 were injured fighting to get the right to vote. If you fail to register to vote they did it in vain. Don’t dared take for granted what they were willing to die to obtain for you. Register to Vote NOW!! You have NO excuse: https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

Georgian and Victorian Britain

Briton’s strike home

He told me he was the Battle of Waterloo, but he was never in such danger as at this meeting, for at Waterloo it was man to man, but in Manchester it was downright murder”………..William Harrison, 27^th September 1819, Inquest of John Lees

John Lees, born about 1797, was the son of a successful cotton master, Robert Lees, of Oldham. He started spinning for his father aged about 14, but in 1812 he suddenly enrolled into the army that was fighting Napoleon. We don’t know why, but the reasons was never good. It might have been a family problem; his father was a formidable figure; however, he fought in France and was at Waterloo, and at the age of 19 he was an “old soldier”, demobilised by the state who had no further need for him, and grudgingly accepted by his father in his former…

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