The Peterloo Massacre

On 16 August 1819, cavalry brutally dispersed a crowd of 60,000 protestors at St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, leaving at least 18 people dead and more than 600 injured. The event, known as the Peterloo Massacre, became became a landmark moment in the struggle for democracy

Employees operate power looms at a cotton mill in Lancashire (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

Membership

Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Illustration by Luke Waller

Membership

The Pentrich Rising: England's forgotten armed revolution. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Membership

Michael Wood on the Peterloo photograph. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Cavalry charge into a crowd of protesters at St Peter's Field, Manchester, as depicted in an 1819 engraving. What followed was the worst violence ever to occur at a political meeting in Britain. (Picture by Alamy)

Membership

The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Peterloo Massacre

Membership

The Peterloo Massacre: how a peaceful protest turned into bloody chaos. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

Georgian

"Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now": Mike Leigh on a massacre

Mike Leigh at the 67th Cannes Film Festival in 2014. (Photo by dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo)

Membership

Mike Leigh on Peterloo. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

Membership

The Peterloo Massacre. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

As many as 15 people may have been killed, and a further 500 badly injured, during the 1819 riot in Manchester that came to be known as the 'Peterloo' Massacre. (Rischgitz/Getty Images)

Georgian

16 August 1819: Militia massacres protesters at ‘Peterloo’

Panic ensues in this depiction of the Peterloo Massacre, published in 1819. (The art archive/Getty Images)

Georgian

Why were there so few casualties at Peterloo?

George III at the end of his reign. He "represented the uncontrollable aspects of humanity that the Enlightenment could not explain," says Stella Tillyard. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Membership

Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.