In 1814 he commenced the building of the Cambridge Street Cotton Mill in Chorlton-on-Medlock . He was a local magistrate and one of the commanders of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry responsible for the Peterloo Massacre at St Peter 's Field in 1819 . He assisted the Swiss inventor-engineer Johann Georg Bodmer by making space available to him at his Chorlton Mills and was instrumental in founding the Royal Victoria Gallery of Practical Science in 1839 . He was associated with the Royal Manchester Institution and a moving force in the establishment of Owens College . He was a director of the Manchester Gas Works and became a business associate of Charles Macintosh with the intention of putting the works ' waste products to profitable use in the manufacture of waterproof fabrics
Peterloo Massacre
Peterloo Massacre
Hugh Hornby Birley