8 min read“I want to engage people. I don’t want to just appeal to those who would already pick up a history book,” says Michala Hulme. A professional genealogist and social historian at Manchester Metropolitan University, based at the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage, Michala is aiming to transform the way we interact with history here in Manchester.
Rather than dredging through dry facts, she encourages people to trace their own family trees, pay more attention to the places they pass every day and essentially feel part of the story. Discover your Victorian ancestry, gain new understanding of the past and explore your place within it!
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That is why Michala has been working on the recently launched Peterloo Descendants project with Dr Robert Poole, seeking to find the modern day relatives of people involved in the Peterloo Massacre. 2019 marks the 200th anniversary of this tragic event; that fateful day on the 16 August 1819 when over 60,000 people assembled in Manchester (in what was St Peter’s Fields, now around St Peter’s Square) to peacefully protest for parliamentary reform – yet were confronted by government forces. As a result, at least 18 people were killed and more than 700 injured.
You may well be related to one of the 60,000 who was there – after all, people travelled county-wide to come and be part of the peaceful gathering. Recognising Peterloo is crucial, as not only did the actions of the authorities prompt widespread criticism, but also the reforming spirit of the protestors paved the way towards suffrage and modern democracy. It was the strength of the people and their celebration of unity that still offers inspiration for many today.
Co-inciting with the launch of the Peterloo 2019 programme of commemorative events (led by Manchester Histories festival), Michala has been working on Peterloo Descendants –currently in the process of collecting material for a documentary which will be shown at HOME. As part of this, she issued a call-out, inviting people with a known family connection to Peterloo to get in touch. More than 30 people came forward.
”It’s been brilliant,” reflects Michala. “People have been in touch from many different places, not just the Manchester area; Yorkshire, Lincoln, even as far afield as America and Australia!
“Verifying whether people’s relatives were actually at Peterloo is a lengthy process though - it can be difficult to say. We often have to use Parish Records and newspapers, as well as evidence from the families.”
Do you have a Peterloo connection? People can get in in touch with descendants@manchesterhistories.co.uk and share their story. There is also a Peterloo focussed genealogy open day at Manchester Central Library on the 13 July, titled ‘Trace Your Peterloo People’ and Michala will be involved. This an opportunity to find more about the Peterloo Descendants project and to explore your own family history, booking recommended.
Michala reflects on further projects she is involved in:
“I was asked by the National Trust to work with their volunteers to research the role that Dunham Massey and Quarry Bank Mill had in the Peterloo Massacre. The research is being used by a family of artists and that will be on display from next weekend (13 July) at both National Trust sites.”
Michala is also trying to arrange a modern-day recreation of the ‘Peterloo Photograph’ – an image featuring a group of Peterloo survivors, the Veterans of Peterloo, taken in 1884 when they met in Failsworth. Michala aims to find the relatives of the people in the photograph and invite them to be part of a modern-day recreation of the image.
But why does this matter? Genealogy – the study of family lineage and family history – provides us with a personal connection to history; everyone can be their own historian and get involved in the research process. According to Michala:
“I didn’t think I had much of an interest in history, until I looked into my own personal connection to it. As a way of getting into history, researching your own can be a great starting point. For example, I was driven to find out more about my ancestors in the 19th century, what their lives would have been like.
“Unfortunately, History as a subject can still seem to give off the vibe as being quite elitist – certain groups of society aren’t always represented, such as the Working Class. In doing our own history, we give the people of the past names and identities; they aren’t just numbers. Everybody can be a historian – Academic History is different in the sense that it is an attempt to theorise and construct arguments out of findings. I work in both.
“In my work as a genealogist, for example, it’s made me a good researcher – and anyone can do their own research in terms of family history! The best place I’d encourage people to start is at their local library, they have lots of resources available and access to genealogy sites for free.
“I have found fascinating things through researching my own family; that my great grandmother was from Prussia, for example. Another is that my grandad’s dad was a murderer and one of the last people to be hung in Australia… I certai
nly didn’t know this before! On my mum’s side, we are linked to Jack Lloyd, who starred in silent films in Hollywood with the likes of Laurel and Hardy. It shows you don’t know until you start looking! Family history has made my love of history stronger and given it more personal meaning.
“In terms of Peterloo Descendants then, a key point of doing this is to get people looking at their own histories and the histories of place. Manchester Histories are doing brilliant work with the Peterloo 2019 commemorative events, and this is all contributing to a vital public awareness of Peterloo – both in terms of what happened and the importance of addressing inequality.
Michala specialises in the more unusual aspects of Manchester history, as underlined by her books A Grim Almanac of Manchester and Bloody British History Manchester (pictured). She is also working on a PhD that considers death and the disposal of bodies in 19th Century Manchester. Her expertise has also seen her become a key researcher for a Manchester International Festival feature this year ‘A Drunk Pandemic’ (5-21 June 2019), with a talk on the topic of ‘Sanitising The Working Class’ on Sunday 7 July.
‘A Drunk Pandemic’ is a multi-disciplinary creative response to the Manchester cholera epidemic of the 1830s, created by Chim↑Pom and curated by Contact Young Curators. During this epidemic, thousands of people died and many were buried in mass ‘Cholera graves’ in the area underneath where Victoria Station now stands. As part of ‘A Drunk Pandemic’, some of the tunnels below the station will become a performance space and a secret brewery will open up. After all, during the cholera outbreak, beer was potentially safer to drink than the contaminated water that was contributing to the disease!
Having created an 8,000-word research report that informs ‘A Drunk Pandemic’, it is clear that Michala’s interest in urban history does not shy away from delving into the dark sides. She reflects on her involvement:
“It has been a very interesting project to inform – and the creatives involved have been very keen to get all the facts straight, which is great. Consider it… Victoria Station is on top of what was once Walker’s Croft Burial Ground; predominantly a cholera burial ground, significantly used in the year 1832. It was very close to the workhouses too, and life then was incredibly difficult – the life expectancy for labourers wasn’t even 30 years old. Industrial Manchester was dark and polluted for many.
“The title of ‘A Drunk Pandemic’ comes from the concept that it was the fermentation process in beer which killed the water-bound cholera: so more people turned to beer as time went on. That leads me onto a separate story about beer here in Manchester… in 1907 there was a cross-contamination issue at a sugar factory involved in the brewing process and arsenic ended up in the supply! This caused a number of deaths, and for a period there was a lot of beer in the city that was unsafe to drink – so much so, that the authorities could fine you £5 (a large sum of money then) for serving it. In turn, the Manchester streets and sewers ran with beer as pubs were forced to tip it away!”
Michala also explores crime, street gangs and 19th century life in Manchester in her wider work– and is in the process of creating a new podcast, which seeks to revisit unsolved historic murder cases in the North West, with modern-day experts assessing them. Did Manchester have a 19th century serial killer? How did these crimes manage to go unsolved? You soon will be able to find out more.
Stay updated with Michala and her research via her website, Twitter @unearththepast and you can read her HAUNT articles as follows: The History of All Saints Burial Ground, Manchester’s Forgotten Burial Sites and Manchester’s Body Snatchers.
By Emily Oldfield
