On Monday 3rd February, the Manchester Committee of Trades met. 27 people were present to hear a delegate from the Bolton Committee relate the details of the letter from Samuel Whitbread MP that had been read out to the Committee meeting at Bolton 3 nights before.
Although this was not the first time that the issue had been raised at the Manchester Committee, as the records of the spy 'B' show, the meeting now undertook to send delegates out to different areas to coordinate petitions for peace and parliamentary reform.
All the while, a spy reported this information back to Colonel Fletcher.
This information is from a letter from Colonel Ralph Fletcher to the Home Office of 6th February 1812. We do not know if the spy was 'B', who usually reported from Manchester since Fletcher does not say where the information is from and there is no report from 'B' in the Home Office papers which covers this date. The deposition of a Thomas Whitehead taken at the Home Secretaries office at Whitehall on 7th May 1812 (which can be found at HO 42/131) mentioned that certain figures we shall hear more about shortly had administered illegal oaths to 150 people on the same date in Manchester, but if this did take place, then Fletcher's spy was wholly unaware.
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