Collating data using google fusion tables

Meeting places in Manchester, 1775-1848: link to google fusion table

Total percentages of all public meetings in Manchester, 1775-1848, that I've recorded from newspapers, Home Office correspondence, and local archives, listed by broad type.

This is in no way complete. I have 391 records plotted by place, but I have not gone through all sources systematically, and there are many places (particularly pubs) that I cannot find exact locations either on maps or in trade directories - i.e. an address of simply 'Deansgate' is not much use. Furthermore, the categories are not definitive (i.e. some meetings could cover more than one category).

The data generally does not cover private meetings, regular meetings like weekly friendly societies, and secret meetings (i.e. in back rooms of pubs). It is therefore only representative of events that were publicly advertised or involved many people so that they were recorded in the press. Radical and Chartist meetings are likely to be over-represented in this data because the radical press seems keener about recording meetings (the Northern Star has whole pages dedicated to listing upcoming and past events in each town).

Also, the data is weighted towards the latter part of the period, because of the wider availability of sources. Again, more newspapers were published, and their recording of local events improved as the century went on. Eighteenth-century newspapers often did not bother recording local events because they were known about in the town; what editors thought readers wanted was international news that they could not access by word of mouth).




abbreviations include ACLA (anti-Corn Law League), abolition (of slave trade/slavery), radical (generally covers meetings for universal manhood suffrage from 1790 to 1820), loyal (Church and King, anti-radical meetings), reform (generally Whig-moderate reformists 1830-2), NPL (anti New Poor Law), 10 Hours (campaign for working day).

Squares:



Pubs:


Chartist places (note the placemarks only show one out of the many meetings in each place):
Loyalist places:

I've put my less extensive data on Leeds meetings on google maps. It looks pretty much the same as google fusion but there is no access to a table with geo-data etc. However, google fusion tables still has an issue with exporting the KML to Google Earth or ArcGIS - it doesn't export the placemark styles, unlike google maps. So I've not been able to plot the different types of meetings clearly on my historical maps of Manchester, whereas I can do for Leeds.

View Leeds meetings, 1789-1848 in a larger map

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