The major urban centres of Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Blackburn, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham and Stockport, with a combined population of almost one million, were represented only by their county MPs; and very few inhabitants had the vote.
More than half of all MPs were elected by boroughs under the control of a total of just 154 proprietors[3] who therefore had a hugely disproportionate influence on the membership of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
[1][5] Its style resulted in sales outside its core geography, and by late 1819 it was being sold in most of the booming industrialised cities—Birmingham, Leeds, London, Salford—that were calling for non-conformist reform of the Houses of Parliament.
Hunt stated:[1][5] The Manchester Observer is the only newspaper in England that I know, fairly and honestly devoted to such reform as would give the people their whole rights.
[1][5] But, despite its popularity, association with its radical agenda was seen as bad for sales by traditionalist conformist-Tory business people, and hence advertising revenue was low.
[1][5] At the start of 1819, Joseph Johnson, John Knight and James Wroe all of the Manchester Observer formed the Patriotic Union Society (PUS).
He stood trial with Hunt at York Assizes, but his defence that he was present as a reporter, not as a participant in the meeting, let alone a member of the hustings party, was successful.
On 28 August the Observer printed an article claiming that Manchester Royal Infirmary had been emptied of patients, including one whose leg had been amputated the previous day, before the massacre to prepare to receive the wounded, and that all the surgeons had been summoned to attend on 16th.
The specimen charges related not to anything in the Observer, but to articles in Sherwin's Weekly Political Register, which Wroe had sold.