Peterloo Massacre

On 16th August 1819 a crowd of 80,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Fields in Manchester at a meeting organised by Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt, a leading Parliamentary reformer, to listen to speeches demanding universal suffrage, lower taxation and better living conditions for the working classes. The speeches were never delivered as the local authorities decided that Hunt and his comrades should be arrested. Charging through the crowd, the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, aided by the 15th Hussars, killed up to twenty people that day and injured over 650 others.