Samuel Bamford

In 1817 he was remanded in jail to the New Bailey Prison in Salford on suspicion of high treason, on account of his political activities. From there he was taken to London and examined before the Privy Council, presided over by Lord Sidmouth as Home Secretary. After promising future good behaviour, Bamford was released and allowed to return to his cottage at Middleton with his wife Jemima.[7]

In August 1819, he led a group from Middleton to St Peter's Fields for a meeting that pressed for parliamentary reform and repeal of the Corn Laws. There they witnessed the Peterloo Massacre, and Bamford was arrested and charged with treason. Although there was no evidence shown that either he or any of his group had been involved in the violence, he was found guilty of inciting a riot and sentenced to a year in Lincoln prison.

The massacre had a deep impact on Bamford, convincing him that state power always succeeded against radical militancy. He came to be seen as a voice for radical reform, but opposed to activism involving physical force.[4] Bamford responded to the claim that his political group had used violence to pursue their reforming ends, in Passages in the Life of a Radical and Early Days (1840–1844), "It was not until we became infested by spies, incendiaries, and their dupes – distracting, misleading, and betraying – that physical force was mentioned amongst us. After that our moral power waned, and what we gained by the accession of demagogues, we lost by their criminal violence, and the estrangement of real friends."[8]

Bamford was the author of poetry mostly in standard English,[9] but of those in dialect, several that showed sympathy with the conditions of the working classes became widely popular. His Passages in the Life of a Radical (1840–1844) is an authoritative history of the condition of the working classes in the years after the Battle of Waterloo.

In 1850, he published Tawk o'Seawth Lankeshur, by Samhul Beamfort, which, following the first one written in standard English, even adds a second title page and publishing information in local dialect. It begins:

Continuing his interest in dialect, he also compiled The Dialect of South Lancashire in 1854.

In the 1871 England Census, taken the year before Bamford's death, he is recorded as living at 109 Hall Street, Harpurhey, as a widower, with a widowed housekeeper, Elizabeth Hilton.[11]

Plaque marking where the Middleton contingent gathered before being led by Bamford to St Peter's Fields

Relief of Samuel Bamford on the obelisk in Middleton Cemetery

Bamford died at Harpurhey on 13 April 1872 at the age of 84 and was given a public funeral in Middleton on 20 April, attended by several thousand people.[12] A memorial obelisk unveiled in Middleton Cemetery in 1877 reads in part, "Bamford was a reformer when to be so was unsafe, and he suffered for his faith."[13]

In 2000 The Diaries of Samuel Bamford were released, edited by Robert Poole and a critical Martin Hewitt, according to whom "Bamford's career, not least its virulent anti-Chartism, have tainted him with reformism, and left him to be invoked as an example of the weaknesses and limitations of early nineteenth-century working-class political assertion."[14]