All the People

By Jeff Kaye

Thirteen years after the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, the mill owner that led the murderous Yeomanry, Hugh Hornby Birley, the most hated man in Manchester, still casts a dark shadow over the impoverished area. His workers include the nine-year-old Mary Burns, whose family relies on her wages to survive. She will mature into a radical Chartist, fighting to change her world.
James Hull is sent into the midst of the deprivation as a missionary but, faced with such misery, he abandons his spiritual mission to save lives. His wife, Elizabeth, is devastated by the portentous death of their eighteen-year-old daughter, consumed by such guilt that it threatens to overcome her.
When the Chartists strike across the north-west in 1842 the harsh memories of Peterloo are rekindled. James and Mary support the strikers, confronting Birley, who is determined to resist the cries of working people. Each faces their own tragedy along with all the people, searching for the means and the will to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Feb 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838597214

Jeff Kaye

After a career in high-technology, Jeff Kaye has worked with a number of global NGO’s such as Global Witness, Transparency International (UK) and Tax Justice Network. His first book, Last Line of Defense, was a story of corruption in the international arms trade.

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Copyright © 2020 Jeff Kaye

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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For Senal, Steven and Joanna

Acknowledgements

The spirit of Charles Darwin was there throughout. It was inside a Darwin biography by Grant Allen, published in 1887, that I chanced upon a letter from Edward Hull. His drawings and paintings (and those of his brother, William) created an interest that resulted in the extensive genealogical research that led to James Hull, the Moravian Missionary to Manchester and then to this book. To the Hull family, past and present, farmers, missionaries, artists, lawyers, scientists and all the rest, go my special thanks. It is Edward’s ‘voice’ that speaks loudest in All the People.

Thanks also to the United Brethren (The Moravians) who gave me time and access to their archives at the Moravian Church House in Muswell Hill, London (thanks to Lorraine Parsons, archivist) and at the Fairfield Settlement in Droylsden (thanks to Barbara Derbyshire). Documents at Fairfield yielded the chapter on Mary Hull’s last days and Elizabeth’s hymn that was read at her interment.

Another spirit, that of Feargus O’Connor, champion of the Chartist cause and founder of the Northern Star newspaper, infused itself within me as much as the spirit of Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt did for O’Connor. The 200th anniversary of Peterloo, that Hunt attended in 1819 as the main speaker, was commemorated in Manchester and beyond on 16 August 2019. Those like Robert Poole, Paul Fitzgerald and Eva Schlunke, whose books on the Massacre together with their efforts, with others like Manchester Histories, John Ryman Library and The People’s History Museum, to ensure that the 200th anniversary was successfully memorialised, have lit the way to the completion of All the People. I was delighted that Paul and Eva agreed to design the cover image: by Polyp www.polyp.org.uk.

My appreciation must also be given to Laurence Cockcroft, whose keen interest in O’Connor and Chartism encouraged my work throughout; to the City of Manchester, for its incredible history and remarkable present; and to Andrew Noakes (www.thehistoryquill.com) , through whose editing, thorough knowledge of historical fiction and encouragement my work has been so much improved.

Contents

Part 1

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Part II

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

Part III

13.

14.

15.

Part IV

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

Part V

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

I write a line to say… (Historical Notes)

Part 1

1.

Mary was startled from her sleep by the frenzied buzzing of a wasp that had squeezed through a gap in the broken window. Her gaze was fixed as it fruitlessly attempted to regain its freedom, repetitively thudding against the glass. Then, with a sudden change of direction, it flew close to the straw mattress on which her parents slept. The insect hovered threateningly, captivating the child’s attention as it drifted above her parents who were lying unconscious and unmoved.

Deaf to its sound and blind to its malevolence, her sleeping father appeared unusually vulnerable, his body half-covered by a ragged sheet partially hiding the clothes he had worn the previous day. If his eyes had been open, he would have seen black and yellow stripes circling above, homing in on its prey. Michael’s mouth was open, and a jarring sound like a rock roughly scraping against a stone slab escaped from it each time he breathed. Perhaps the wasp would do her job for her, Mary hoped, watching intently.

Sting him! Do my work! she whispered waspishly as the object of her fascination buzzed close to an ear and then hovered over the gaping cavity.

A loud rasping noise issued forth, the target’s head jerked sideways as if he had been struck, but Michael remained unscathed and asleep. The discord had erupted from his throat while the repelled wasp flew back to the window to resume its quest for freedom.

The nine-year-old cursed, jerking herself upright on the mix of straw and animal hair that separated her from the floor on which she had slept alongside her sister Lizzie. As she strove for wakefulness, Mary ignored the strange noises emanating from the nearby Manchester streets. She thought these must be the sounds of people running and shouting, late for their early morning mass at the local church, St Austin’s, half a mile away in Granby Row. Since its consecration just twelve years before, in 1820, it held the daily ceremony at five o’clock, early enough for worshippers to begin work an hour later. Save Mary, no one in the dwelling had stirred, their visits to church sacrificed on the altars of fatigue, despair or intemperance.

She crawled across the filthy, uneven, splintered floorboards to an unsteady table, overladen with empty bottles. Deep amongst them was an earthenware bowl containing tepid water on which drowned flies floated. She heard another shout from outside that caused her to shift her head towards the dirt-covered window as she cupped her hands into the infested liquid and rinsed her face. Still too tired to look beyond the room for the origin of the groaning sounds that she could now clearly hear, she placed a threadbare shirt over her drowsy head and stepped across Lizzie’s sleeping body. Her mother and father were still encased within their alcohol-induced slumber.

Mary sighed deeply and inhaled the humid air. It had been heated by an August night in a stifling room where almost every space was filled by a sleeping man, woman or child temporarily evading the harshness of the waking world. The groans from the nearby streets, that she knew as Little Ireland in Chorlton-upon-Medlock, grew louder. Mary glanced towards the window, but she could not be deflected from her duties and cautiously approached her father. Her mother snorted loudly, causing the child to jump and her knees to scrape along the rough, splintered floor as she neared the place where her father lay with his large head pointed towards the ceiling. Michael was snoring heavily, but it was a working day and his slumber had to be cut short.

Mary edged closer, willing herself not to be diverted from her cause by the distractions just beyond the window. She was determined to discharge her responsibility, to accomplish her first obligation of the day. With increasing trepidation, a sense that never lessened with time, she tugged at the shoulder of his shirt. A gentle tinkle of glass on glass sounded as Mary’s knees collided with the empty bottles that lay on the floor beside her parents. Her eyes were now on her father’s left arm, which was positioned above his head and poised to defend himself from any assault.

Mary tugged harder, but there was still no response. In fear of his reaction to her next attempt, she closed one eye and half-shut the other. She inhaled deeply before she slapped his face and, as if through a mist, glimpsed his eyes moving erratically beneath closed lids. She slapped again, her small, delicate hand scraping over his rough, unshaven cheek. His eyelids flickered like doors forced open, and a startled gaze was directed at her. His puzzled expression lasted only a moment before he grabbed his daughter’s arm with his left hand and hit her hard across the shoulder with the other, just missing his target, her face. Another bruise would soon appear to join the rest, but this time it would be hidden beneath her clothing.

Mary sighed again, relieved that one half of her mission had been fulfilled without excessive pain. Michael launched himself into a seated position and dismissed Mary with a grunt and a push before reaching over and loudly gulping from the bowl where she had just washed her face. Hearing the shouts from the street outside, he stood gruffly, inhaled deeply and kicked at the bottles underfoot, crashing them underneath the table while he sought his shoes. He placed them on his feet then flattened his hair with more water from the bowl and stared outside. He had fallen asleep fully clothed and was ready to leave the house but hesitated, glaring at the street.

Michael swore at whatever had gripped his attention and only moved when his daughter tugged at his shirt. He tore himself from the window as Mary, her ragged shoes quickly slipped on to her feet, followed him out of the door to fulfil her next task. That morning, as on all mornings, once she had woken her father from his drink-induced dormancy, she would follow him to his destination, ensuring he found his place of work. It had been hers too for the last three months since she had reached the required working age of nine years.

Mary felt the steamy air of a hot and humid early morning wrap around her as she began to follow her father to Chorlton Mill. He angrily pushed past others to the outhouse, shouting to be heard amidst the sustained cries that he and Mary could now hear – sounds of jeering and cries of anger.

Let me through! Michael shouted to no one in particular before he stumbled down broken steps and into dust-covered streets, carrying a look of bewilderment, no doubt his head still aching from the night before. While his journey was less than five hundred yards, his daughter had often watched him slump in a doorway just a street from his home, asleep before he hit the ground. She would then run to him shouting, Get up, you old Irish drunk! harrying him towards his place of work whilst swerving to escape a flurry of fists.

This morning she lost sight of her father almost as soon as his feet touched the streets outside the house, hidden within an unusual flow of noisy people heading west in the opposite direction to the church. Mary was confused, losing count of the men, women and children walking rapidly towards her workplace just across the river. They appeared to be groaning.

She was soon amongst them, her head frantically turning left and right in an attempt to spot her father, but also from a sense of inquisitiveness, wanting to understand the reason for such wailing and for the presence of so many determined-looking, agitated people.

She was a small child caught in a raucous swirl of adults, forced to move with them as if in a river where the current was too strong to resist. For a minute or two, Mary surged with the tide, even across the River Medlock’s own bridge, when the flow of people abruptly ceased along with her exhilaration. She had come to where the towering chimney of Chorlton Mill stood, standing more than two hundred feet high. Above the converging crowds, whose flow had been stemmed as if by a dam, dark swarms of black smoke were being hurled into the cloudless sky, filling it, obscuring the sun in a dark gloom.

Along with all the others, Mary came to rest, peering upwards to where the pale sun could just be seen above the horizon. It would strain all day to penetrate the thickening blanket of smoke, the man-made shadow to which the town was so used, a dark and pervading fog that turned every daylight hour into a fume-filled dusk.

Mary stood quite still and listened to the rowdy chatter and the shouts of those around her, gazing motionlessly at the giant buildings in which she and her father worked and that she saw every day. This was the first time she had stared at their enormity, and they returned her glare as colossuses surveying their subjects.

Mary saw her father push through the crowd and disappear into the mill. While the young mill worker would soon follow him, the child needed more time to interpret the strange information swarming around her. The destination to which they had walked was not merely her workplace that day but also seemed to be a place of great significance.

She stood transfixed as she watched men sneering and calling loudly towards the dark, angry mill that rose above them, its bricks black with the dirt and grime created inside. As their heartiest shouts were muffled by the barrage of noise coming from within the mill, they shouted louder, making it more difficult for Mary to hear the stories that were now being told around her. She stepped nearer to her workplace, and the thuds from inside grew, as if hundreds of blacksmiths had lost control of their senses, their hammers clashing on anvils with incessant discord. She relaxed at the thought that her father was one of those responsible, hard at work, and then tensed at the realisation that she was late herself, and there would be harsh consequences.

Just yards away, the suffocating River Medlock, full of the decaying waste that could not be discharged as smoke, sent its acrid odour towards the assembling crowd. Mary joined some younger children who had been tempted to take a closer look and who had edged towards the slimy water. It was the only river she had ever seen, a sullen mass, dark, solid, dank and harsh, the morning heat magnifying its ability to dispel the sordid perfume beyond its banks.

Fall into that and you will never be seen again! a mother screamed, dragging her children away.

Before she followed the family back to safety, Mary could not resist a peek at the black sludge, masquerading as a life-giving waterway, that she crossed daily. The smells all around heightened her senses along with the noise of angry men, their collective shouts in opposition to the clamour from within the mill.

Some of the crowd had walked for miles from the towns and villages surrounding Manchester, but the majority were locals whom Mary recognised: working men and women, many with children, congregating on a hot Thursday in the middle of summer – a working day. Some were unemployed men, including many who had once worked at the mill until they were replaced by women and children.

If anyone else had happened upon them, uncertain of their motivation for assembling in Hulme Street by the River Medlock in Manchester, then placards and posters provided evidence that it was the bloody memory of St Peter’s Field that they conspired to remember. Mary could not read but asked the mother whose children had been pulled back from the river to tell her what was written.

They say: ‘Remember Peterloo’, ‘Remember Henry Hunt’, ‘Remember 16th August 1819’. Listen to those men holding them for they are shouting the words!

Mary remained confused, not knowing why these people had come to her place of work to remember this event, so she asked and was answered with a question: Where is your own mother, child?

Mary shrugged: Probably asleep, but my father is a worker in the mill, as I am. He is in there, she said, pointing, as I will be when I know why everyone is here today.

The young mother held her two children closely while she shouted how she and her own father had been present at St Peter’s Field when she was just a girl of seven years. He held my hand tight that day to make sure we could not be separated in the dense crowd. We were peacefully waiting for the speeches when men on horseback rushed upon us. There was much screaming as they cut us down. She held her daughters close. Many died that day – men, women and even a baby! Now, every year since that dreadful day, my father takes me with him to this place. Look, there he is! There is my father! and she pointed towards the buildings where a large group of men, grey-haired and steely-faced, stood in a line, shouting and jeering at the building.

We have no monuments around which we can gather, the young mother continued, so we come to Chorlton Mill, on this corner of Cambridge Street and Hulme. It is a bleak part of Manchester, much like the gloomy streets from which all of us walk. She pointed to the crowd. Child, we are not permitted to come together at St Peter’s Field – her voice rose as she called out above the men’s jeers and the heavy noise of the mills – where the bloody charge of the hated Manchester and Salford Yeomanry killed and injured so many!

Her voice softened again, and she moved very close to Mary.

We were there to hear Mr Hunt talk of the Ten Hours’ Bill and the vote for all men that day, but we are not allowed there no more. There are soldiers camped in that place from the barracks nearby ready to cast out anyone should they dare to enter on the anniversary. So instead we come to what is – she thought hard for the right word, one that she remembered her father telling her – a symbol of the murderous yeomanry.

She pointed skywards to the chimneys and shouted again. And that symbol is none other than the mills, these mills, owned by Major Hugh Hornby Birley! She screamed his name with deep disgust. He was the leader of that charge on horseback, that attack against unarmed men, women and children who had walked so far just to hear another man speak!

Mary watched her new friend shudder at the memory, her rage evidenced by her reddened face. With her head bowed, the woman emitted a sigh that brought tears to Mary’s eyes, for even one as young as she might imagine how this could make you cry. Thirteen years of memories had been reduced to jeering at a faceless building, surrounded by smoke, smells and the soured river that provided a theatre of tragedy for their sad recollections.

As they were talking, a circle formed around one of the greying men and Mary joined them, attracted by a storyteller as the jeering momentarily subsided. The elderly man saw her walk towards him and made a space by his side. You are too young to know why we are here today, I would think, he said and then redirected his gaze at his audience. It is thirteen years from the terrible day of Peterloo. And now we are blessed with the Reform Act of this year of our Lord 1832, passed by Parliament just months ago. Should we be thankful?

His listeners jeered at the mention of the Act.

Reform? he sneered as the cries grew louder. Maybe a few more are allowed to vote, but it changes nothing for working people. We have no voice, while the mill owners like Birley – he pointed to the mill as the jeers continued – now vie for power alongside the owners of the land.

More had joined the circle as the man continued, his voice straining against the din from the mill.

The voice of Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt was silenced that day, and he was imprisoned. Yet, when the murderous Major Birley, promoted from captain as a reward for his killing, was taken before the courts for his grievous sins, his own class judged him innocent!

Mary did not fully understand the story, but she began to feel the emotions and the rage as the men renewed their shouting at Birley’s mill, at the place she and her father worked. She returned to the young mother and, for a minute or two, watched the men, now well over a hundred of them, shouting at the building, the symbol of their anger, with their fists raised high.

Years of repressed rage had led to extreme emotion, and there were others in the crowd who yearned for more than the yearly catcalling and shouts of despair that had become the norm outside Chorlton Mill. Some of the younger men in the group picked up stones and pieces of slate that had fallen from the roof of the building and began to hurl them at the walls, but after a few, weak throws they were stopped from throwing more missiles too close to the windows.

There are children working inside! one woman screamed, and the young men drew back.

In the momentary silence, Mary decided that she was already late enough and bound for a punishment that would only increase the longer she waited. She ran towards the main doors under the watchful glare of her fellow marchers and knocked hard as she shouted to be allowed in. It was some minutes before she heard the lock being turned, and from a narrow opening, an arm appeared and dragged her by her hair into the mill. Her pained scream could not be heard above the yells of rage from outside and the machinery from inside.

The loud cries of Shame! continued even as the doors of the mill remained shut and the windows covered.

They hear nothing, see nothing and do nothing for us! screamed Mary’s new friend, her arms holding her two children in front of her, tight to her body.

Just like the Parliament in London! shouted one of the younger men, attempting to be heard above the baying crowd.

2.

This man embodies the spirit of the evangelist. James, you would make the finest of missionaries.

James Hull, a resolute man that some considered stubbornly unshakable, felt his legs give way at the commendation, certain that he felt the floor tremble when John King Martyn uttered these words. Yet James was in the chapel at Kimbolton in the county of Huntingdonshire, not in some far-away land of volcanoes and earthly tremors. He was still unsteady when, minutes later, he gripped John’s hand in thanks.

John’s compliment was bestowed in response to a speech that James had just given. It had been his first-ever oration, delivered on a special day of celebration for the Church of the United Brethren – the Moravians – to which James belonged. On this day, the Church was commemorating one hundred years of evangelism: a century of missionary exploits and many thousands of converts throughout the world.

The minister had preceded James with a rousing sermon where he reminded his flock of the first Moravian mission in 1732 after the Church’s founder, Count Zinzendorf, had met an African slave on a visit to the King of Denmark. The count decided that two men from his congregation, a potter and a carpenter, should immediately sail to the West Indies to seek more followers, and tens of thousands had become members of the Church since that time.

That John had asked James to respond to the minister’s sermon on behalf of the community might have been judged an unusual request. While James had often championed the case for better corn prices on behalf of his fellow farmers, he had never before spoken in a public forum nor even stood on a podium. Yet John, who had founded the Moravian Church in Kimbolton, considered that James was destined for such recognition. The struggle for survival for a small Christian denomination such as the United Brethren was a hard one, and if it had not been for James, the established Church would have easily suffocated the fledgling group before it had even fluttered its wings.

When it was his turn, James had climbed to the pulpit, staring at it for some moments as if to familiarise himself. Unusually apprehensive, he fought to ignore the expectant multitude sitting quietly in their neat rows before him. He coughed nervously, his eyes fixed firmly on his lectern, head down and his normally sonorous voice surprisingly soft.

I feel honoured and humbled to have been asked to speak today by Mr John King Martyn. He was the first of the United Brethren in Pertenhall where I live with my family. But – and with much emphasis on this word, he now raised his head towards the congregation – we of the United Brethren, we who live in the demanding farmlands of our native Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire, we are not known for our sheepish qualities, are we? No, indeed!

He smacked the lectern and revelled at the sight before him of men and women rustling in their seats. They were suddenly awake, repeating his words, No, indeed!

He continued. Who remembers the floods of ’23 when our River Great Ouse burst its banks, destroying lives and livelihoods?

Cries of We do! resounded.

We all came together then to set ourselves back on our feet, did we not?

The crowd answered Yes! and James continued.

And I believe we remember just a year or two ago when Captain Swing’s men were bent on setting fire to our farms as they had throughout the country like reborn Luddites! Who was it that talked them to their senses, for they were not our enemies but our working colleagues, frightened by the mechanical threshers, scared of losing their jobs? We averted the fires, and our community grew stronger, did it not, while the rest of the country burned? A hearty ripple of applause burst through the congregation.

James nodded as if to ask for silence, and a quiet tranquillity settled on the room. We all remember when Mr Martyn was told by the minister at St Peter’s Church in Pertenhall – an Anglican church – that the use of that church by the United Brethren would no longer be tolerated even for simple assemblies and teaching. We were at great risk of losing our first struggle for spiritual survival, but we came together then, did we not? The congregation shouted back in affirmation, and James sensed his emotions pulling him on. Now, each one of us struggles every day for survival, for we are mostly farmers, digging deep into the deepest four-horse clay just to get by. Oftentimes, we have to dig ever deeper to overcome our daily hardships so that we may, through God and the Church of the United Brethren, maintain our spiritual health. We are willing to suffer mightily if that guides us as men and women under God, here to live our lives under whatever privations God’s natural order bequeaths, so that we may truly honour the Lord.

James had not eaten for many hours. His head felt light with lack of food and his heightened perceptions as he went on: When John King Martyn left the established Church to begin again here, it was clear as a crystal to me that we should follow him and become one with the United Brethren. I may have been one of the first to hear prayers at his home and then in St Peter’s Church before we were obliged to vacate that place. It was clearly the Lord’s work, for John then proceeded to build this one. He raised his arms as if to direct the congregation’s eyes to the simple wonders of the building. On this day of celebration for the missionaries of the past one hundred years, I consider that none could have been a better spiritual leader than John King Martyn.

He had completed his work, and as he stepped from the pulpit there was a sustained level of acclamation from all who had heard him. Some even stood to applaud, which James, not known for any self-glorification, feigned not to notice. Sitting in the midst of the congregation, James’s wife Elizabeth smiled with pride, but she was hiding a little uncertainty now that she was required to share her husband. She looked from side to side to ensure that no one had noticed her misgivings, certainly not her nine children spread along the row beside her. They were aged from a few years to young adulthood and were watching their father as intently as everyone else appeared to be.

When John stood to formally thank James with the words that had made him tremble, Elizabeth spotted an older figure, grey-haired and of simple dress, sitting behind the chapel’s founder. She saw them share a certain knowing look, and the older man nodded as if in agreement with something that had been previously discussed. It seemed that her husband was at the centre of their earlier deliberations, and Elizabeth’s misgivings were ignited.

The Hull children, now alive to the sounds of congratulations that swarmed around them, ran to the eloquent speechmaker – none other than their father – but had to wait until many others had given their thanks first. Elizabeth followed her children, walking slowly as if something was dragging on her, while the chapel began to empty. As she busily counted her charges, James walked outside with his thoughts elsewhere. John’s words,