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Peterloo Massacre. The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Eighteen people died and 400–700 were injured when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars ...
Sep 20, 2024 · Peterloo Massacre, in English history, the brutal dispersal by cavalry of a radical meeting held on St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester on August 16, 1819. The “massacre” (likened to Waterloo) attests to the profound fears of the privileged classes of the imminence of violent Jacobin revolution in England in the years after the Napoleonic Wars.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Aug 16, 2022 · But the day ended in tragedy, with the Peterloo massacre. Many people were injured and some even died in the violence. Reports of the numbers killed vary, but it's thought that up to 18 people ...
- Rotten Boroughs and Political Corruption
- Economic Strife After The Napoleonic Wars
- The Manchester Patriotic Union
- A Peaceful Gathering
- Bloodshed and Slaughter
- An Important Legacy
In the early 19th century, parliamentary elections were fraught with corruption and elitism – it was far from democratic. Voting was restricted to adult male landowners, and all votes were cast by a public spoken declaration at hustings. There were no secret ballots. Constituency boundaries had not been reassessed for hundreds of years, allowing ‘r...
The Napoleonic wars were brought to a close in 1815, when Britain tasted its final success at the Battle of Waterloo. Back at home, a brief boom in textile production was cut short by chronic economic depression. Lancashire was hit hard. As a centre of the textile trade, its weavers and spinners struggled to put bread on the table. Weavers who earn...
In 1819, meetings were organised by the Manchester Patriotic Union to offer a platform for radical speakers. In January 1819, a crowd of 10,000 gathered in St Peter’s Field in Manchester. Henry Hunt, the famous radical orator, called upon the Prince Regent to select ministers to repeal the disastrous Corn Laws. The Manchester authorities grew nervo...
Indeed, there was no such uprising planned. Propelled by the success of the January meeting, and riled by government inactivity, the Manchester Patriotic Union organised a ‘great assembly’. It was intending: and: Importantly, this was a peaceful gathering to hear the orator Henry Hunt. Women and children were expected to attend, and instructions we...
What happened next is somewhat unclear. It seems the inexperienced horses of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, thrust further and further into the crowd, began to rear and panic. The cavalry became stuck in the crowd, and began wildly hacking around with their sabres, ‘cutting most indiscriminately to the right and to the left to get at them’. I...
The national reaction was one of horror. Many commemorative items such as medals, plates and handkerchiefs were produced to raise money for the injured. The medals carried a Biblical text, reading, The importance of Peterloo was reflected in the immediate reaction of journalists. For the first time, journalists from London, Leeds and Liverpool trav...
The massacre. 10 minutes later at 1:45pm, hundreds of Yeomanry, some on horseback, others drunk with personal vendettas, were ordered into the crowd to arrest the speakers. Charging through the crowds with sabres drawn, the panic that ensued quickly turned into chaos. Soon after, hundreds of Hussars were also ordered in to control the crowds ...
The 15th The King’s Hussars, a cavalry regiment of the regular British Army, were then summoned to disperse the protesters. Sabres drawn they charged the massed gathering and in the general panic and chaos which followed, eleven people were killed and about six hundred injured. This became known as the ‘Peterloo Massacre’.
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Peterloo is an important event in the history of the labour movement of Great Britain. It lit a fire under a movement that would eventually lead not only to the passing into law of the Great Reform Act, but also to the formation of the trades unions, the founding of the Labour Party, universal suffrage and the slew of workers’ rights Britons enjoy today.
