Samuel Bamford

Samuel Bamford 1788-1872, English weaver, poet, and social reformer. Always sympathetic toward the working class, he was jailed in 1819 for his part in the Peterloo massacre. His dialect verses were popular among the Lancashire workers. Besides his poetry, Bamford is noted for Passages in the Life of a Radical (2 vol., 1840-43, repr. 1967).

Bamford, Samuel (1788–1872), weaver and poet, born in Middleton, Lancashire. He became a Chartist activist, and in Passages in the Life of a Radical (1840–4) he vividly describes the Peterloo massacre (1819) which both he and his wife witnessed: he was subsequently imprisoned for a year. His Homely Rhymes, Poems and Reminiscences (1843) collects some political and pastoral poems, some written in dialect, many of them displaying energy and verve. Early Days (1848–9) is an account of his childhood and of old Lancashire customs.

Bamford, Samuel (1788–1872). Lancashire radical and poet. Brought up a Wesleyan in Middleton near Manchester, he worked as a warehouse boy, farm labourer, on coal ships plying between Tyneside and London, and as a bookseller before setting up as a hand‐loom weaver. Under the influence of William Cobbett he became a radical, founding the Middleton Hampden Club in 1816 and being arrested for treason for advocating parliamentary reform in 1817. Acquitted, he was present at ‘Peterloo’ on 16 August 1819 and was sentenced to a year in Lincoln gaol for treason. His autobiography was written in 1841–3 to justify his turbulent past and warn chartists against the use of violence.