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PETERLOO

18 August 1819

We kept the press open until a late hour this morning, in the hope of receiving minute accounts of the circumstances which attended the reformist meeting held at Manchester on Monday. From the statements brought to us in the course of last night, and which appear to have been collected in the midst of a scene of extraordinary uproar and agitation, we learned that HUNT took the chair, according to advertisement, and harangued that portion of the multitude which more immediately surrounded him; that the mob altogether amounted to more than 40,000 persons – some accounts say 60,000 – collected from all the neighbouring districts; that the Riot Act was read, and the troops called upon by the Magistracy to enforce their orders that the crowd should at once disperse. HUNT himself was taken prisoner – and we add with unfeigned sorrow, that several lives were lost.

The troops that were employed were the Manchester, Macclesfield, and Chester Yeomanry. The 15th Light Dragoons were likewise in the field, but were not called into action. The local troops, it is said, behaved with great alacrity. The consternation and dismay which spread among the immense crowd collected cannot be conceived. The multitude was composed of a large proportion of females. The prancing of cavalry, and the active use of the sabre among them, created a dreadful scene of confusion, and we may add, of carnage. By the accounts received through the mail, no less than 80 or 100 persons are wounded, and 8 killed. The mob is said to have dispersed as quickly as they could. At 7 o’clock in the evening some of the Yeomanry are reported to have fired on a crowd that showed a disregard of the mandate to disperse. At night, and up to 2 o’clock yesterday morning, complete tranquillity prevailed, and the streets were as quiet as on ordinary occasions. The great number of wounded had been carried to the hospital. Hunt, Johnston, and others, who were on the scaffolding, were taken into custody, and lodged in the New Bailey.

No manufactory or private building was destroyed or materially damaged, though many windows were broken. We only notice this circumstance, because we had heard early in the evening, that a factory, which it is now unnecessary to name, had been levelled with the ground.

Such is the brief and general outline of occurrences which the lateness of the hour at which we write enables us to lay before our readers. What actual violence or outrages were perpetrated – what menaces were uttered, or symptoms exhibited, which induced the Magistrates to read the Riot Act, and to disperse the meeting by force of arms, we cannot yet positively state. That a large discretion undoubtedly belongs to persons charged with the preservation of public order, which justifies their interference where they see it directly and distinctly threatened by a multitude, who may, nevertheless, have met for purposes or with professions originally not inimical to the King’s peace, we are not disposed to question. But the discretion, though large, is not unlimited.

On 16 August 1819, more than 60,000 people gathered in an open space known as St Peter’s Field, now in the centre of Manchester. They were to be addressed by Henry Hunt, known for his stirring oratory and for his radical advocacy of universal suffrage.

The end of the Napoleonic wars marked the start of an economic downturn, the effect of which on the poor was exacerbated by the cost of bread being kept high by the Corn Laws. Many of those in the mercantile and propertied classes feared a revolution and in anticipation of trouble the authorities in Manchester called out regular troops and a local cavalry militia.

An attempt to arrest Hunt led to panic, which became in turn a massacre as the soldiers hacked at the crowd. Eighteen people were killed and several hundred wounded. The event was among the first attended by reporters from national newspapers, which dubbed the bloodshed ‘Peterloo’, in ironic reference to Waterloo. Hunt was subsequently jailed for two-and-a-half years for sedition, but his legacy was the growth of mass pressure for reform.