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The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. It was the largest ever political gathering of working class people.
- 16 August 1819
- 400–700
- 18
- St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England
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
Two hundred years ago, on Monday 16 August 1819, a peaceful gathering in Manchester escalated into an indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians. How did this event, known as the ‘Peterloo Massacre’, spin so quickly and wildly out of control? Rotten Boroughs and Political Corruption.
Aug 16, 2022 · On 16 August 1819, thousands of people gathered in Manchester to take part in a peaceful protest to ask Parliament for a fairer political system and more voting rights. But the day ended in...
Aug 7, 2023 · On 16 August 1819 60,000 people congregated in St Peter’s Field in Manchester, with demands for the right to vote, freedom from oppression, and justice. We asked PHM’s Researcher Dr Shirin Hirsch to explain how, despite its peaceful beginning, this was a day that would end with a bloody outcome.
In the space of 20 minutes, over 600 people had been injured and as many as 20 people, including women and children, were killed at close quarters. Following a violent arrest, Henry Hunt was tried, convicted of seditious conspiracy and sent to prison for two years.
This became known as the ‘Peterloo Massacre’. The name Peterloo first appeared in a local Manchester newspaper a few days after the massacre. The name was intended to mock the soldiers who attacked and killed unarmed civilians, comparing them with the heroes that had recently fought and returned from the battlefield of Waterloo.
