James Harmer the French. Harmer was their choice of solicitor. In 1819 Harmer represented Samuel Bamford after the Peterloo massacre. In the Peterloo aftermath Harmer, and Henry Dennison of Liverpool, represented the family of John Lees of Oldham, fatally wounded, at an extended inquest starting 8 September 1819. Dennison, Harmer and Charles Pearson were thanked by the "Report on the Metropolitan and Central Committee, Appointed for the Relief of the Manchester Sufferers" for their investigations. William Hone's book "The Whole Proceedings before the Coroner's Court at Oldham", which exposed the use of force at Peterloo, relied heavily on Harmer's work with witness
Waterloo Bay massacre the archival and newspaper record and noted that there was no evidence for a massacre on the scale of that claimed by Congreve, Beviss or John Chipp Hamp. In 1936, the historian James Dugald Somerville wrote a series of articles in the "Port Lincoln Times" regarding early settler life on the Eyre Peninsula, in which he concluded that "it is a certainty that the Waterloo Bay 'massacre', as pictured by H.J.C. [Congreve].. A. Beviss and others did not occur, and that the natives did not cut the head off Hamps' body and place it in the camp oven". In 1937,