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
James Wroe was the first journalist to describe the incident as the Peterloo massacre, taking his headline from the Battle of Waterloo that had taken place only four years before. Wroe subsequently wrote pamphlets entitled "The Peterloo Massacre: A Faithful Narrative of the Events". Priced at 2d each, they sold out each print run for 14 weeks, having a large national circulation. The government instigated repeated prosecutions of the "Manchester Observer" and those associated with it. Vendors of the "Manchester Observer" were prosecuted for seditious libel, and a total of fifteen charges of seditious libel were brought against Wroe, his wife and