Charles Allen Du Val

Thomas Whaite 1796-1881

Thomas Whaite was born on 23 December 1796, the son of John Whaite and his wife nee Mary Clayton. His ancestors had originated in Nottinghamshire.

On 17 July 1833 he married Ann Dunavian at the Collegiate Church in Manchester. She died on 24 December 1842. On 8 July 1844 he re-married, his second wife being Sarah Anderton 1806-1885. She was born on 9 April 1806, the daughter of William and Sarah Anderton, and baptised at Chorley in Lancashire on 27 April 1806. She died on 27 August 1885.

Thomas Whaite was a portrait painter who exhibited a picture in 1880, but was better known for painting banners and theatrical scenery. He had painted the banners that were proudly flown at the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester on 16 August 1819.

That occasion was a peaceful gathering of about seventy thousand people from Manchester and the surrounding industrial towns to protest against the Corns Laws. During the depression which followed the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the government had banned the import of foreign grain to protect domestic growers. The result was high prices and great hardship among poor working people. A protest meeting demanding the repeal of the Corn Laws assembled in St Peter’s Field, a piece of undeveloped ground awaiting the completion of Peter Street near St Peter’s church in Mosley Street. (The church has long been demolished, but stood in front of where Manchester Central Library now stands.)

The frightened government feared England would rise in revolution like the French. The commander of the military forces gathered around Manchester had gone off to York races, and his deputy panicked when a baby was accidentally killed by a soldier. Troops poured in from the surrounding streets, hacking mercilessly at the assembled crowd, who were tightly packed in and had no escape route. In the resulting carnage fifteen people were slaughtered by the soldiers and over six hundred seriously injured.

A soldier said the scene was like his experiences at Waterloo. He called it “Peterloo”, and the name stuck. The government victory proved temporary. The Anti-Corn Law League was founded by leading members of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, including Charles Allen Du Val and led by John Bright and Richard Cobden, and became very influential in 1841-1845. Mounting hardship and middle-class pressure eventually forced the Tory administration under Sir Robert Peel (born in Bury) reluctantly to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846.