Peterloo Massacre | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Peterloo Massacre

Great Britain 1819

Synopsis

The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Fields, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819. (The name was an ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo four years earlier.) A large meeting comprising 50 to 60,000 men, women, and children had assembled to demand reform of Britain's archaic and elitist political system. The meeting was to be addressed by the leading radical figure of the day, Henry "Orator" Hunt, among others. Local magistrates, fearful of disorder, ordered the arrest of Hunt and other platform speakers. As the yeomanry charged into the crowd to effect the arrests, panic ensued. Eleven people were killed and some 400 injured. The episode aroused fierce anger among both working-class radicals and the more liberal upper classes, but Lord Liverpool's Government endorsed the action of the magistrates and passed a series of repressive measures (the "Six Acts") to suppress further protest.

Timeline

• 1798: British parson Thomas Malthus publishes An Essay on the Principle of Population, in which he maintains that populations increase geometrically or exponentially, whereas food production increases only arithmetically. Accordingly, he holds that overpopulation and a world food crisis are inevitable, and opposes social welfare programs.
• 1801: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is established.
• 1802:

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