1. Mary Fildes was president of the Manchester Female Reform Society in 1819, and played a leading role at the mass rally at Manchester in that year which ended in the Peterloo massacre.
13 Facts About Mary Fildes
1. 2.
Mary Fildes was the grandmother of the artist Luke Fildes through her son James.
3.
Mary Fildes married William Fildes, a reed maker, on 18 March 1808 in Stockport, England.
4.
Mary Fildes named her younger children after some of the notable political figures of the day: John Cartwright, Thomas Paine and Henry Hunt.
5.
Mary Fildes mounted the platform and stood at the front with her flag, along with other female activists.
6.
Mary Fildes herself was knocked to the ground by the truncheon of a special constable who seized her flag, and narrowly escaped a swipe with a sabre.
7.
Mary Fildes escaped and lay low for a fortnight, possibly sheltered by her loyalist family in the northern quarter.
8.
Mary Fildes gave her own story in a petition to the House of Commons in May 1821.
9.
Mary Fildes was a female reformer, but not a suffragette as is sometimes claimed.
10.
Mary Fildes did not advocate votes for women, but like most female reformers of her generation she believed that women should fight alongside men for a vote for all adult male householders, which could then be exercised in the interests of the whole family.
11.
Mary Fildes remained a reformer, speaking at a meeting in Heywood, Lancashire, in 1833 to launch a branch of the Female Political Union, and giving lectures on 'War' at Chorlton near Manchester in 1843, both advertised in the radical press.
12.
Mary Fildes was able to pay for him to attend classes at Warrington School of Art, setting him up to be one of Victorian England's most famous painters.
13.
Mary Fildes died of bronchitis in Manchester on 3 April 1876.