The Peterloo Massacre was the fateful response to protesters for Reform

This edited article about Peterloo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 423 published on 21 February 1970.

As 50,000 protesters screamed in panic, the hussars rode through the crowd, swinging and striking out at anyone within reach; inset: Henry Hunt, by Clive Uptton

The crowds began arriving at about eleven o’clock in the morning. Most of the people were wearing their best clothes in honour of the occasion. The people meant to make a great display on this Monday morning in August.

Some of them had walked from as far away as twenty miles to the meeting place at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester. Several of the contingents marched in step. They had spent many hours practising their drill so that they would arrive in an orderly array and not as a shuffling rabble.

There were many banners carried, calling for the “Reform of Parliament”, for “Universal Suffrage” and for “Vote by Ballot”. Women carried some of the banners. Others carried caps of liberty held high on long poles. These were a symbol borrowed from the French Revolution that had taken place some forty years before.

There was the smell of rebellion in the Manchester air that Monday morning in 1819, but the organisers of the meeting had appealed in advance for an orderly gathering.

The town magistrates gathered in a house overlooking the place where the meeting was to be held. They were nervous of the outcome of the meeting, angry that it should be taking place at all, and determined that it should be stopped before the mob had a chance to riot and damage their shops and factories in the town.

Henry “Orator” Hunt had been invited to speak at the meeting. He was regarded by those in authority as a dangerous man. He was considered a rebel and a trouble-maker and the sooner he was put in prison the better. He was filling the minds of the working classes with all sorts of dangerous notions about reforming Parliament so that everyone should have a vote.

In fact, such was the electoral system in 1819 that in Manchester and many other big manufacturing towns no one had a vote.

The magistrates expected trouble at the meeting. According to the posters put out in advance it had been called “to consider the propriety of adopting the most LEGAL and EFFECTUAL means of obtaining a REFORM in the Commons House of Parliament”. It was feared that the rabble would use the meeting as an opportunity to smash things up and loot and steal.

However, the magistrates had everything prepared. Nothing was left to chance, especially as their spies had reported that the Reformers had been drilling in the country districts. There had been alarmist reports of scythes being sharpened into weapons, pikes being made from table knives set in the ends of long poles, and of swords being beaten out on secret anvils.

As they watched the marching crowds filling the large triangular ground before the house, the magistrates could see no weapons. Yet the crowds looked menacing. They were marching like well-trained soldiers, especially the Reformers from Rochdale and Middleton, with their bugles and two green banners.

At about noon the magistrates ordered the local constables to take up their positions. There were over three hundred of them. These were part-time “specials”, and were mostly craftsmen and small shopkeepers and publicans, all of whom had houses and business premises to preserve from the ravages of the mob. They had formed up in front of the house occupied by the magistrates and marched out to form an avenue three or four deep to link it with the platform built from carts and boards from which Orator Hunt would speak. Each constable was armed with a truncheon. This was his badge of office as well as his weapon.

If these men were not enough the magistrates comforted themselves with the thought that the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry were hidden nearby in Messrs. Pickfords’ yard. They were part-time soldiers, recruited from wealthy young men and others who loudly proclaimed their support for the government and took any chance they had to attack Hunt and threaten his supporters. In other streets there were regular units of the 15th Hussars, 31st and 88th Regiments of Foot and parties of the 6th Dragoons and Artillery.

The constables formed up, but the crowd paid little heed to them. They were too busy cheering groups of newly arrived Reformers as they marched on to the meeting ground, some with bands playing loudly at their head.

Orator Hunt was not due to arrive until one o’clock. It was nearly twenty minutes past before he entered St. Peter’s Fields wearing his famous white hat and accompanied by several other famous Reformers of the day. He was cheered all the way to the hustings, as the platform was called, and it was some time before he could quieten the enthusiastic crowd to make himself heard.

Estimates of the size of the crowd put it at almost one hundred thousand. The hundred thousand stood there, pressed shoulder to shoulder, eagerly awaiting what the famous man had to say. They wanted to hear how they could obtain better wages, regular jobs and fairer food prices by reforming Parliament.

He had not even begun to tell them when the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry arrived upon the scene, galloping down Mosely Street and Peter Street. Some women gathered on a mound saw them and scattered.

The horsemen paused on the edge of the crowd. Some dismounted and tightened their horses’ girths. Others, who had lagged behind, tried to regain their proper places in the ranks. Their untrained horses were nervous of each other and of the crowd, which turned and gave them a hearty, contemptuous cheer.

At a later date, the magistrates claimed that the Riot Act had been read, legally ordering the crowd to disperse within an hour or be broken up by force at the end of that time. No one seemed to have heard it being read, if it were read at all. In any case, the meeting was not scheduled to begin until one o’clock and the crowd had been good-natured and orderly, albeit noisy, all the time. Hunt had not arrived until twenty minutes past the hour and had said no more than a few sentences when the Yeomanry forced their horses into the crowd.

Sabres flashed. Some of the Yeomen hacked at the crowd that milled around them, packed so tightly that they had not the slightest chance of moving away.

Many fell with screams and groans beneath the heavy blades and the stomping horses’ hooves. The unarmed crowd could do little to fight or flee to protect itself. One man felled a trooper with a well-aimed bottle but was instantly cut down for his trouble. Even some of the constables fell victim to the over-eager cavalrymen.

Hunt and those with him were arrested and hustled towards the house, beaten along the way with clubs and truncheons.

The banners were cut down by the horsemen, now galloping to and fro, chasing bunches of people still desperately trying to find the way out of the muddy field. Dead and wounded lay on the ground. Shoes, hats, scarves and banners littered the blood-stained earth.

Eleven people died and six hundred were injured by sabres and by being trampled in those few horrible minutes, afterwards nicknamed the Battle of Peterloo, in mock reference to the recent Battle of Waterloo.

The nation was shocked by the massacre. Excuses were made, the blame pushed from one side to another until even today the truth of the matter is hard to find.

Some say that the magistrates had a duty to protect their town from the mob. Others say that the Yeomanry charged a legal and peaceful demonstration without cause.

The eleven who died at Peterloo did not perish in vain. Immediately afterwards support for Parliamentary Reform grew rapidly, with the result that 13 years later the Great Reform Bill was made law. For the first time Manchester and many of the other new, large industrial towns were allotted Parliamentary seats, and votes were given to most householders and many others.