PHM is the national museum of democracy, telling the story of its development in Britain: past, present, and future.
On this blog we share posts from the PHM team and other experts, with behind the scenes stories, coverage of PHM's exhibitions and events, and highlights from the museum's unique collection.
Here at PHM we’re commemorating 200 years since the Peterloo Massacre; a major event in Manchester’s history, and a defining moment for Britain’s democracy. We asked Katie Belshaw, Curator of Industrial Heritage down the road at Science and Industry Museum to provide some context about early 19th century Manchester’s expanding cotton industry.
To complement the display of a portrait of Hugh Hornby Birley, who as captain of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry played a central role in the events that unfolded at the Peterloo Massacre, we asked author Jeff Kaye to share his research on Birley from his forthcoming novel All the People and treat us to an excerpt about the painting, now in People’s History Museum’s (PHM) collection.
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’ve invited our former colleague and the National Trust’s new Programme Curator of National Public Programmes Helen Antrobus to blog for us.
Helen is a specialist in the history and collections relating to 20th century radical women; from the women who marched at Peterloo, to the female Chartists; those involved with the women’s suffrage movement, to the first female MPs, and shares with us her insight into the women at Peterloo.
To complement the display of a first edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy from Friday 1 March until the end of April 2019, we invited Dr Michael Sanders, Senior Lecturer in 19th century writing at the University of Manchester to share his insight into Shelley’s protest poem.
In his blog Michael reveals his first encounter with the poem on a record sleeve.
Shirin Hirsch, Researcher at People’s History Museum, discusses Mike Leigh’s film and introduces how you can discover the legacy of the Peterloo Massacre at PHM.
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