On August 16, 1819, about 60,000 people marched in their Sunday best to St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to demand parliamentary reform. After the Napoleonic Wars, a weaver’s weekly pay had fallen from about 15 shillings in 1803 to five by 1818, the 1815 Corn Laws kept bread dear, only about 11% of adult men could vote, and rotten boroughs such as Dunwich and Old Sarum sent two MPs each while Manchester sent none. Organizers banned weapons and drilled marchers in step on the moors. Mary Fildes of the Manchester Female Reform Society rode with the speaker Henry Hunt, and many women wore white.
Magistrates watching from a window, primed by spies and an intercepted letter warning of insurrection, ignored Home Office advice not to intervene. William Hulton issued a warrant for Hunt, and the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, made up of local shopkeepers, publicans and factory owners, rode into the packed crowd slashing with sabers. Hulton then sent in the 15th Hussars, and within about ten minutes the field was cleared. Around 18 people died and 400 to 700 were injured. The Prince Regent thanked the magistrates, the Six Acts followed, and in 1821 John Edward Taylor, a witness, founded the Manchester Guardian.
- The first death was two-year-old William Fildes, thrown from his mother’s arms by a galloping yeoman.
- Waterloo veteran John Lees, who died of his saber wounds, called the attack downright murder.
- Women were about 12% of the crowd but over 160 of the casualties, many with saber cuts to the head.
- Journalist James Wroe coined the name Peterloo and was jailed for seditious libel.
- A four-penny stamp duty on newspapers led communities to pool money and read single copies aloud in pubs.
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