William Butterworth Petitioner

• Place: Middleton,Rochdale
• Role: Demonstrator,Injured,Petitioner
• Occupation: Weaver

Petitioner describes the wound he received and its impact on his family. Unable to work as a weaver for 5 months.

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Petition of William Butterworth

House of Commons, Votes and Proceedings, 15 May 1821

 

A Petition of William Butterworth, of Thornham, in the parish of Middleton, in the County Palatine of Lancaster, Weaver, was presented, and read; setting forth, That the Petitioner is one of the unfortunate men amongst the great many of His Majesty's peaceable and loyal subjects that attended that ever memorable Meeting at Manchester on the 16^th day of August, 1819; that the Petitioner begs permission to lay before the House, and prove the same at the Bar if required, the most wanton bodily injury he received from a sabre cut upon his right arm near the shoulder, inflicted by a maddened infuriated Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry, in violation and in the face of the Laws of the Realm, and to the disgrace of a civilized Nation; that the Petitioner was deprived for more than five months from following his employ as a Weaver, to the great loss and injury of a wife and three small children, and that the Petitioner's arm is never likely to recover its full use again, the wound was seven inches in length; that the Petitioner humbly prays, That the House will make a full and strict inquiry into the transactions of this memorable day, and that they will, for the honour of the House, act impartially, so that the aggressors, instigators, and perpetrators of the most horrible deed that was ever acted in an enlightened and civilized Nation, be brought to justice, whether they be of the higher or lower order of miscreants.

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