Peterloo Massacre Regency England, parliamentary reform had come of age." The Skelmanthorpe Flag is believed to have been made in Skelmanthorpe, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1819. It was in part made to honour the victims of the Peterloo Massacre. The Free Trade Hall, home of the Anti-Corn Law League, was built partly as a "cenotaph raised on the shades of the victims" of Peterloo. Until 2007 the massacre was commemorated by a blue plaque on the wall of the present building, the third to occupy the site, now the Radisson Hotel. It was regarded as a less than appropriate
Peterloo Massacre Fields meeting, all serve to indicate the breadth, diversity and widespread geographical scale of the demand for economic and political reform at the time. Peterloo had no effect on the speed of reform, but in due course all but one of the reformers' demands, annual parliaments, were met. Following the Great Reform Act of 1832, the newly created Manchester parliamentary borough elected its first two MPs. Five candidates including William Cobbett stood, and the Whigs, Charles Poulett Thomson and Mark Philips, were elected. Manchester became a Municipal Borough in 1837, and what remained of the manorial rights were purchased by