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
Peterloo Massacre cabinet that winter. By the end of the year, the government had introduced legislation, later known as the Six Acts, to suppress radical meetings and publications, and by the end of 1820 every significant working-class radical reformer was in jail; civil liberties had declined to an even lower level than they were before Peterloo. Historian Robert Reid has written that "it is not fanciful to compare the restricted freedoms of the British worker in the post-Peterloo period in the early nineteenth century with those of the black South African in the post-Sharpeville period of the late twentieth century." One direct