About Peterloo: Manchester, August 16, 1819
The Peterloo Massacre is featured in my novel, A Different Kind of Woman, the third and final volume of my Mansfield Trilogy
The tragic event at St. Peter’s field on August 16, 1819 came to be known as Peterloo as a reference to Waterloo. The actions of the Manchester Yeoman cavalry, in charging an unarmed crowd, were mockingly compared to the bravery of the soldiers at Waterloo.
An estimated 11 to 20 people died as a result and many more were severely wounded.
The tragic event at St. Peter’s field on August 16, 1819 came to be known as Peterloo as a reference to Waterloo. The actions of the Manchester Yeoman cavalry, in charging an unarmed crowd, were mockingly compared to the bravery of the soldiers at Waterloo.
An estimated 11 to 20 people died as a result and many more were severely wounded.
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The gathering of working people was estimated to be from 50,000 to 100,000. The meeting was intended to be the climax of a year of local activity to protest taxation without representation and to petition the Prince Regent for help to ease the sufferings of the working poor.
Since Manchester had been a hotbed of Radical politics and since riots had occurred there in the past, the local authorities were worried that the enormous gathering would turn into an uprising. And the magistrates had no professional police force to call upon. Henry Hunt had barely begun his speech when the authorities told Deputy Constable Nagin to arrest him. Nagin refused to venture into the crowd without military backup. The Manchester Yeomanry were stationed nearby, so they were summoned to escort Nagin and his assistants to the platform. The Yeomanry, who were an undisciplined group of amateurs, not regular army, then decided to confiscate all the banners. Instead of moving in a line, they rode individually into the crowd, and all hell broke loose. Most of the injuries occurred when people were crushed in the panic to get away. The wounded and dead become martyrs to the cause of political and economic reform. But in the short term, Peterloo brought down more political repression on the English people, and Henry Hunt went to prison. The passage of the English Reform bill was still 13 years away. |
In this editorial cartoon, the Yeomany commander is yelling: "Down with em! Chop ‘em down my brave boys. Give them no quarter. They want to take our beef & pudding from us — & remember the more you kill the less poor rates you’ll have to pay so go to lads show your courage and your Loyalty!" (Poor rates are the taxes levied for welfare)
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Manchester and the Industrial Revolution
"A place more destitute of all interesting objects than Manchester it is not easy to conceive." My brief description of the industrial city of Manchester through the eyes of Mr. Gibson owes a great deal to a description written by Robert Southey in 1807 and quoted in Peterloo: the Massacre and its Background, by Donald Read. The Industrial Revolution is remembered today as a time of soul-crushing work in factories, but we should bear in mind that rural poverty was also dire. Itinerant labourers travelled the country in search of work, and Mrs. Bennet's reference to "starving in the hedgerows" in the Pride & Prejudice mini-series was something that actually happened to poor families. The Industrial Revolution in fact ushered in an astonishing rise in health and material well-being, after thousands of years of global poverty. I will grant you that is little consolation to a child labouring in a mine or a factory. |
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Henry "Orator" Hunt Henry Hunt was a celebrated reformer and orator of the period, and his opinions (and some of his dialogue) in my book are taken from his memoirs; for example his story of how he turned down the chance to go to university and study for the church, and the story of his Royalist ancestor. The impression one gets from his memoirs and correspondence is that he had a very high self-regard. If Fanny had known that he left his first wife and ran off with another man’s wife, she really would have disliked him. But I did not tip her off to that. In my book, Hunt cries, We are many, they are few. That line is taken from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem written to commemorate Peterloo, but the rest of his dialogue on the hustings is based on contemporary reporting and eye-witnesses. Here is an article by Professor John Mullan about Shelley's poem, The Masque of Anarchy. |
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In my novel, A Different Kind of Woman, I have tried to accurately represent the sequence of events at Peterloo and the varying points of view of that afternoon. There were of course many eyewitnesses but there are disagreements about the details--for example, about whether anyone resisted the authorities.
I invented a few details, chiefly the involvement of an agent provocateur, and changed a few others. I have not read any explanation of how 80,000 people waiting in an open field for hours and hours answered the call of nature, so I have assumed that at least some of the men relieved themselves against the walls or in cellars or alleys. When the Yeoman cavalry came raggedly charging down Peter’s Road, a horse knocked a two-year-old out of his mother’s arms and he was trampled to death, the first casualty of Peterloo. I changed the accident to a non-fatal one. Mrs. Fildes, the president of the Manchester Ladies Reform Union, did get her gown caught on the platform. She was arrested. |
This video gives you the layout of St. Peter's field and
the sequence of events that day. |
By Jhamez84 - Own work by Jhamez84, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3825009
The speaker's platform was set up in front of Windmill Street.
The line of Constables stretched from in front of Mr. Buxton's house to the speaker's platform.
This BBC In Our Time podcast
discusses the Peterloo Massacre,
the political climate leading up
to that day, and the aftermath.