author
J. B. (John Benjamin) Smith
1794–1879
A Manchester cotton merchant who became a prominent Liberal politician, he is remembered both for his long career in Parliament and for his firsthand account of the Peterloo Massacre. His life connects commerce, reform politics, and one of the defining protest movements of 19th-century Britain.
1 Audiobook
Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewitnesses Bishop Stanley, Lord Hylton, John Benjamin Smith; with Bishop Stanley's Evidence at the Trial
by 1st Baron Sir William George Hylton Jolliffe Hylton, J. B. (John Benjamin) Smith, Edward Stanley
About the author
Born on February 7, 1794, John Benjamin Smith was the son of merchant Benjamin Smith and built his own career in Manchester as a cotton merchant. He later became active in public life, serving as president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce from 1839 to 1841.
Smith is best known as a Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1847 to 1874, representing first Stirling Burghs and then Stockport. He was also closely associated with reform causes in industrial Britain, including free-trade politics, and is noted as an eyewitness to the Peterloo Massacre.
As an author, he is linked in library records and Project Gutenberg as J. B. Smith, and modern readers are most likely to encounter him through Three Accounts of Peterloo by Eyewitnesses. No confirmed portrait was found from the sources reviewed, so a reliable likeness may not survive online in an easily verifiable form.