The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, Lancashire, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. It was the largest ever political gathering of working class people. Eighteen people died and 400–700 were injured when cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.
Samuel Bamford was an English radical reformer and writer born in Middleton, Lancashire. He wrote on the subject of northern English dialect and wrote some of his better known verse in it.
Mike Leigh is an English writer-director with a career spanning film, theatre and television. He has received numerous accolades, including prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, the Venice International Film Festival, three BAFTA Awards, and nominations for seven Academy Awards. He also received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2014, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1993 Birthday Honours for services to the film industry.
Henry "Orator" Hunt was a British radical speaker and agitator remembered as a pioneer of working-class radicalism and an important influence on the later Chartist movement. He advocated parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws. He was the first member of parliament to advocate for women's suffrage; in 1832 he presented a petition to parliament from a woman asking for the right to vote.
The Blanketeers or Blanket March was a demonstration organised in Manchester in March 1817. The intention was for the participants, who were mainly Lancashire weavers, to march to London and petition the Prince Regent over the desperate state of the textile industry in Lancashire, and to protest over the recent suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The march was broken up violently and its leaders imprisoned. The Blanketeers formed part of a series of protests and calls for reform that culminated in 1819 with the Peterloo Massacre and the Six Acts.
Neil Bell is an English actor, mainly on British television and occasionally in films.
Sir Thomas Joseph de Trafford, 1st Baronet, was a member of a prominent family of English Roman Catholics. He served as commander of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry at the time of the Peterloo Massacre. He was born at Croston Hall near Chorley, Lancashire, on 22 March 1778, son of John Trafford and Elizabeth Tempest, and was christened Thomas Joseph Trafford.
Robert Poole is a UK-based historian, currently professor of history at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston. He gained his PhD from the University of Lancaster in 1986, where he was associated with Prof Harold Perkin's Centre for Social History, organising the 1996 conference of the Social History Society on 'Time and the Construction of the Past'. He has also held positions at the universities of Keele, Edge Hill and Cumbria. He has also been Leverhulme Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Manchester (2000-1), an associate of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester (2010–17), an associate of 'The Future in the Stars' research programme, Friedrich-Meinecke Institut, Freie Universität Berlin (2012–16), and visiting senior research fellow to the History Group, University of Hertfordshire (2013–15).
Joseph Brotherton was an English reforming politician, Nonconformist minister, Swedenborgian and pioneering vegetarian. He has been described as the first vegetarian member of parliament.
The Manchester and Salford Yeomanry cavalry was a short-lived yeomanry regiment formed in response to social unrest in northern England in 1817. The volunteer regiment became notorious for its involvement in the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in which as many as 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured. Often referred to simply as the Manchester Yeomanry, the regiment was disbanded in 1824.
William Hulton was an English landowner, magistrate and collier who lived at Hulton Park, in the historic county of Lancashire, England. The Hultons owned the estate since the late-12th century.
The Manchester Observer was a short-lived non-conformist Liberal newspaper based in Manchester, England. Its radical agenda led to an invitation to Henry "Orator" Hunt to speak at a public meeting in Manchester, which subsequently led to the Peterloo Massacre and the shutdown of the newspaper.
James Wroe (1788–1844), was the only editor of the radical reformist newspaper the Manchester Observer, the journalist who named the incident known as the Peterloo massacre, and the writer of pamphlets as a result that brought about the Reform Act 1832.
The Hampden Clubs were political campaigning and debating societies formed in England in the early 19th century as part of the Radical Movement. They were particularly concentrated in the Midlands and the northern counties, and were closely associated with the popular movements for social and political reform that arose in the years following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. They were forced underground, and eventually disbanded in the face of legislation and pressure from the authorities.
Elijah Dixon was a textile worker, businessman, and agitator for social and political reform from Newton Heath, Manchester, England. He was prominent in the 19th century Reform movement in industrial Lancashire, and an associate of some of its leading figures, including Ernest Jones, and his obituary claims that he was called "the Father of English Reformers". His activism led to arrest and detention for suspected high treason, alongside some other leading figures of the movement, and he was present at key events including the Blanketeers' March and the Peterloo massacre. In later life he became a successful and wealthy manufacturer. He was the uncle of William Hepworth Dixon.
The Hulton family of Hulton lived and owned land in Lancashire for more than eight hundred years from the late-12th to the late-20th centuries. The family took its name from the three townships surrounding their Hulton Park Estate, Over, Middle and Little Hulton.
Mary Fildes was president of the Manchester Female Reform Society in 1819, and played a leading role at the mass rally at Manchester in that year which ended in the Peterloo massacre. She was also the grandmother of the artist Luke Fildes through her son James.
Charles Wickstead Ethelston, also given as Wicksted (1767–1830) was an English cleric, now remembered for the part he played in his role as magistrate on 16 August 1819, ahead of the Peterloo massacre.
William Robert Hay (1761–1839) was a British barrister, cleric and magistrate, one of the Manchester group associated with the Peterloo Massacre.
Peterloo, Op. 97, is a concert overture by Malcolm Arnold written in 1968 to commemorate the centenary of the first meeting of the Trades Union Congress. It is a programme piece which depicts the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. It was given a mixed reception by critics, but has nevertheless become one of Arnold's best-known works, being arranged several times for wind or brass band, recorded many times, and played twice at the Proms, once in its original form and once in a choral arrangement to words by Sir Tim Rice.
