Peterloo Massacre During a debate at Hopkins Street Robert Wedderburn declared "The Prince is a fool with his Wonderful letters of thanks ... What is the Prince Regent or King to us, we want no King – he is no use to us." In an open letter, Richard Carlile said: For a few months following Peterloo it seemed to the authorities that the country was heading towards an armed rebellion. Encouraging them in that belief were two abortive uprisings, in Huddersfield and Burnley, during the autumn of 1819, and the discovery and foiling of the Cato Street conspiracy to blow up the
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