On 16th August 1819 a crowd of 80,000 ¹ 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. Members of the manufacturing class in the uniform of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, aided by the Cheshire Yeomanry and the 15^th Hussars - ve

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Published 22 October 2004

Citation: Gardner, John. "Peterloo Massacre". The Literary Encyclopedia. 22 October 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=856, accessed 9 February 2010.]