Peterloo Massacre Peterloo Massacre The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws. By the beginning of 1819, the pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the relative lack of suffrage in Northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating
Robert Poole (historian) Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, to look at the recently-acquired papers of Arthur C. Clarke. Poole's forthcoming book "Peterloo: the English Uprising," (OUP, 2019) will provide the standard account of the1819 Peterloo massacre in Manchester, on which he has written articles in "Past and Present", "History", "Labour History Review," and edited collections. He is historical adviser to the Peterloo 2019 commemoration programme, run jointly by Manchester Histories and the People's History Museum, and to the 2017-18 community project by ReelMcr, 'Our Sam, Middleton man'.He was instrumental in bringing to the John Rylands Library a full set of the