'And Your Petitioners &c': Chartist Petitioning in Popular Politics 1838-48

Abstract

AT nine o'clock on Monday morning, 2 May 1842, many thousands of Londoners began to assemble at various points in the metropolis to play their part in what the leading Chartist newspaper, the Northern Star, described as a 'novel .. . and dangerous experiment' -marching on the House of Commons to present a National Petition praying 'that a nation's wrongs should be redressed'. 1 By eleven o'clock, amidst bright sunshine, the various local and regional contingents began to converge at Lincoln's Inn Fields in Holborn. As each new section arrived the area became 'more densely crowded', enthused the reporter for the Northern Star, 'than it ever had been previously in the memory of the oldest inhabitant'. Within the hour the object of the congregation had arrived: the 'GRAND PETITION'.