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 horrified by the carnage. One of the casualties, Oldham cloth-worker and ex-soldier John Lees, who died from his wounds on 9 September, had been present at the Battle of Waterloo. Shortly before his death he said to a friend that he had never been in such danger as at Peterloo: "At Waterloo there was man to man but there it was downright murder." When news of the massacre began to spread, the population of Manchester and surrounding districts was horrified and outraged. After the events at Peterloo, many commemorative items such as plates, jugs, handkerchiefs and medals were produced; they