Riot Act felt uncertain of their power to take action to stop the riots without a reading of the Riot Act. After the riots, Lord Mansfield observed that the Riot Act did not take away the pre-existing power of the authorities to use force to stop a violent riot; it only created the additional offence of failing to disperse after a reading of the Riot Act. The Riot Act was read prior to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, as well as prior to the Bristol Riots at Queen's Square in 1831. Both are held to be related to the Unreformed House of
The Peterloo Group The Peterloo Group The Peterloo Group was a group of poets, artists and writers in Manchester during the latter part of the 1950s. It had three founder members; Robin Skelton, poet and professor of English at Manchester University, Tony Connor, poet and Michael Neville Seward Snow, painter. Their objective was to bring together the isolated people who were writing and working in the visual arts within the region, and to provide a forum for discussion and exhibition of their work. The first meeting was held in May 1957 in a hired room above the Town Hall Hotel, a Victorian gothic