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Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen
Beneath the genteel surface of decorous society, unrest simmered in the world – and works – of Jane Austen
While the novels of Jane Austen might suggest an endless schedule of middle- and upper-class gaiety, disgruntlement was rumbling beneath the surface across the country – and, during this tail end of the Georgian era, it often erupted in violent, sometimes lethal protest. Not that Austen herself completely ignored what was happening in the country beyond Barton Cottage and Netherfield Park. For instance, her fifth novel, Northanger Abbey, refers to the unrest erupting in England’s larger cities. Although she writes about a riot as imagined by one of the characters, the rather visceral description depicts: “a mob of three thousand men assembling in St George’s Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood”. Whether real or imagined, Austen’s inspiration for this tableau does seem to have come from real-life events. The episode appears to be a conflation of at least two separate disturbances that occurred prior to Northanger Abbey’s publication. In 1808, perhaps 6,000 weavers from the local – and rapidly growing – textile industry in Manchester gathered in St George’s Fields to protest about the lack of a minimum wage in their trade. Eight years later, not long before Austen’s novel was published, another riot broke out in London at the end of a hitherto peaceful protest. During the violence, the rioters even planned to attack the Tower of London – so it was surely not mere coincidence that Austen’s imagined account of the unrest included the Tower being “threatened”. Fighting for fair pay The weavers’ protest in Manchester may have been violent but it did achieve a modicum of success. Though dragoons were called in to restore peace (and one protester died during this response), the rioting was replicated in surrounding towns in Lancashire, and the weavers won a small concession in the form of a modest rise in their wages. Some scholars of Jane Austen believe that the Gordon Riots of 1780 also contributed to her description in Northanger Abbey, though those events took place when the author was only four years old. In particular, these scholars cite her reference to a deadly disturbance during which “the streets of London [were] flowing with blood”, as well as an attack on the Bank of England. The Gordon Riots were certainly bloody, a violent response to the Papists Act 1778, which aimed to reduce discrimination faced by Catholics. Anti-Catholic protests, led by the head of the Protestant Association, Lord George Gordon, exploded into chaos, with a week of rioting, burning and looting following in the capital, resulting in several hundred deaths. Religion was also the cause of the 1791 Priestley Riots in Birmingham, in which non-Anglicans who supported the French Revolution were attacked and their property damaged or destroyed. Local taxation was the reason for the Bristol Bridge Riot two years later; the militia were called to quell this disturbance, and 11 people died. Headstrong heroines As well as including occasional references to events playing out across the country, Austen didn’t confine her social commentary to the romantic politics of the gentry. Although by no means a polemical feminist, she put the disparity between men and women in the late Georgian period at the heart of her novels. They focus heavily on marriage, the ways women are defined by their husband, and what society’s expectations of women. Women seldom owned property; they couldn’t vote; they were barred from higher education; and they were rarely able to access prestigious professions. Certainly, a middle-class woman who had to work was looked down upon. Despite the absence of women’s rights, Austen’s headstrong heroines are by no means shrinking violets in their marriages or in their pursuit of suitable husbands. Although she can’t give her female characters the rights that society has denied them, Austen does empower them with purpose and intent. Women lower down the social strata simply had to work if their husband’s income wasn’t sufficient – those who were married, that is. Women were also required to maintain a functioning household, even when conditions beyond their control intervened. Such conditions arose in 1795, when a savagely cold winter brought the average temperature in the English Midlands down below –3°C. When the rivers thawed, great floods raged, so that crops didn’t grow, and animals couldn’t graze. Angry women tackled the resulting food scarcity head-on in what was later dubbed the ‘Revolt of the Housewives’ or the ‘Food Riots’. Unscrupulous merchants took full advantage of the fact that demand far outstripped supply, pushing up the prices of items such as flour and meat – but the rioters weren’t having high prices dictated to them. They seized merchants’ goods and sold them at what they believed were true market prices, giving the proceeds to the merchants. Such direct action was one way that women, with no electoral power, could effect change. But other people were also denied the vote in Austen’s time. Indeed, only 200,000 individuals – all of them property-owning men – had the vote. So a wave of vociferous reformers fiercely pushed for a large-scale extension of electoral suffrage – in the face of equally implacable opposition. Did you know? Initial goverment responses to the Gordon Riots were weak and badly planned. But when the army was called out to protect the Bank of England on 7 June 1780, the result was mass bloodshed – around 285 protesters were shot dead. Boasting nearly 30 MPs among its ranks, the Society of the Friends of the People filed a petition in the House of Commons in 1793, demanding electoral reform. This was heavily quashed in a parliamentary vote by MPs concerned about the redistribution of power to the masses after the French Revolution four years earlier. And while that Society was trying to put the subject of reform on the political agenda, organisations such as the Hampden Clubs and the London Corresponding Society, whose more radical proposals included extending the vote to all adults, met with even greater opposition. It wasn’t until the Reform Act of 1832 that the growing metropolis of Manchester gained any representation in the Commons. Unsurprisingly, then, the protection of entrenched interests in Parliament, and the means by which this was legitimised by a very limited notion of democracy, poured extra fuel on the bonfire of disquiet that flared among large swathes of the population. Problems at the pinnacle While the fabric of wider society was being unpicked, unease also proliferated right at the pinnacle of the British elite. While George III bounced between bouts of madness and lucidity, the threat of a constitutional crisis always hung heavy in the air. In 1788, a bill was passed in the Commons that would see the king’s eldest son, another George, become regent. The king emerged intact from that episode of mental ill health, and the bill was withdrawn before it had progressed through the House of Lords. By 1811, though, his insanity had become permanent, and another regency bill successfully negotiated its way through Parliament. With the Care of King During His Illness etc Act 1811, George III was replaced as head of state by his son, who eventually became King George IV on his father’s death in 1820. By then, Jane Austen had also died, passing away three years earlier, in 1817, at the age of just 41. Her great success and renown arrived only posthumously. Yet her legacy proved to be not only her artfully plotted novels, populated by enduring characters, but also her ability to depict – albeit subtly – the late Georgian period as it approached the crossroads of change. The industrial age cometh Austen’s writing did little to reflect the vast changes taking place in Britain’s cities Jane Austen’s novels might be set on rolling country estates and in well-heeled towns and cities, but the Industrial Revolution was well underway during her lifetime. Although more commonly associated with the early Victorian age, industrial development was progressing at lightning speed during Austen’s lifetime, and the largely rural economy that had dominated the countryside was being undermined. Towns and cities grew rapidly, their skylines soaring and their populations booming. The nature and pace of everyday life was irrevocably changed within a generation, and the world became driven by steam, not horse. Who knows what themes Austen’s novels might have touched on had she been born 50 years later, or if she’d grown up in the dirty heart of a city dominated by factories and chimneys. As it is, her works remain lasting memorials to a fading, possibly more innocent era. Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins Regency Britain: An age of war and revolution – reading time 6 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins
The Pentrich Rising: England's forgotten armed revolution
In 1817, a working-class uprising was brutally quashed amid accusations that government spies had deliberately incited the rebels. Stephen Bates relates the tragedy of the Pentrich Rising...
On 9 June 1817, a mob of men marched nervously through darkness and driving rain down the country lanes of Derbyshire. They were on their way – or so they thought – to capture Nottingham, 14 miles away, as part of a national revolt to overthrow the government. They did not know it at the time but the Pentrich revolutionaries, as they came to be called, were taking part in the last armed insurrection in English history – and, according to the late historian EP Thompson, the first entirely working-class political uprising. Armed with pikes and a few muskets, and led by an unemployed stocking weaver called Jeremiah Brandreth – known to them for his Luddite activities as ‘the Nottingham Captain’ – they expected to be joined by thousands of others marching down “like a cloud” from Yorkshire and Lancashire. Read more | Your guide to the Luddite movement They were assured that a further 50,000 men in London could be quickly summoned to seize the government and capture the Bank of England. In reality, they were on their own. Most of the men were unclear as to what the political aim was, beyond cancelling the national debt and shooting ministers. Perhaps a provisional government would be set up, one that would hand out provisions to the starving populace – but, more immediately, the men had been promised money, food, rum and boat rides on the river Trent. As they marched wearily on, Brandreth led the singing: “The time is come, you plainly see/The government opposed must be.” The men on the march were weavers, farm labourers and iron workers. Most were related to each other, and many – including Brandreth – were Primitive Methodists. They blamed the autocratic government and aristocratic ministers for their distress. Many were out of work and without food, the result of the contraction of the economy after the Napoleonic Wars. But they were also victims of a natural phenomenon of which they had no idea. An ash cloud from the 1815 volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, is now recognised to have affected the climate across the world over several seasons, wrecking harvests in the northern hemisphere. As a result, food and particularly bread had become expensive – landowners’ incomes were protected by the newly enacted Corn Laws, keeping wheat prices high – and in short supply. To maintain morale and keep out of the rain, the men – who had been gathered mainly from villages around Pentrich, South Wingfield and Ripley – stopped at pubs, demanding beer, bread and cheese. Brandreth led them to local farmhouses, where they coerced the residents into giving them money and firearms, and pressed workers to join the uprising. At the home of a widow named Mary Hepworth, they smashed the window shutters when the occupants refused to open up, and Brandreth fired his musket into the kitchen, fatally hitting a servant called Robert Walters in the neck. Read more | The Corn Law crisis: the bitter political war that threatened thousands with starvation The next target was the Butterley iron works. The company had recently sacked several men for attending a political meeting – some of them had joined the march – and the manager, George Goodwin, had set his remaining workers to guard the gates. When the crowd approached, he confronted them and said they should go home or risk being hanged. One young man, Isaac Ludlum, trembling violently, retorted: “I am as bad as I can be. I must go on – I cannot go back.” Others were not so sure; many peeled off and vanished into the night, pursued by threats from Brandreth. The depleted mob approached Nottingham on the morning of 10 June, only to be met by a detachment of the 15th Hussars. The authorities had been expecting them. The men turned on their heels and fled back across the fields, into the arms of waiting magistrates. An uprising against the government had been brewing for some time. While many people had joined Hampden Clubs (named after a 17th-century parliamentarian) across the country to discuss political reform, others vented their frustration more aggressively. Demonstrations in London’s Spa Fields in December 1816 had ended in violence as followers of the radical bookseller Thomas Spence campaigned for the abolition of private land and universal suffrage. Read more | Regency inequality: the gap between rich and poor in Georgian Britain Fearing a repeat of the French Revolution, which he’d witnessed first hand as a student visiting Paris, prime minister Lord Liverpool hurriedly introduced repressive legislation, including the suspension of habeas corpus (which requires a person under arrest to be brought before a court). And when a delegation of 5,000 unemployed Lancashire weavers attempted to march from Manchester to London in March 1817 to plead for food, they were dispersed by troops before getting beyond Stockport. In the absence of a police force, home secretary Lord Sidmouth relied on spies to keep the government informed of what was going on. One of these was a man named William Richards, a carpenter and surveyor who had been an associate of radicals before being imprisoned for debt. On his release in March 1817, he went to see Sidmouth to offer his services, and was sent north as an undercover agent. He adopted the name William Oliver, and would become known as ‘Oliver the Spy’. Accompanied by his friend Joseph Mitchell, a genuine radical, Richards infiltrated meetings and reported back. Mitchell was arrested soon after, but Oliver escaped capture by showing authorities a secret letter from Sidmouth – “He is an intelligent man and deserving of your confidence” – and was allowed to slip back to London. Read more | A brief history of Chartism Oliver returned to the Midlands and Yorkshire in May, and continued to attend meetings. Known as “the London delegate”, he told the organisers that thousands across the country were ready to join an uprising. To what extent he actively provoked potential rebels remains unknown, but he certainly did not discourage the desperate talk at meetings in Huddersfield and Nottingham. One veteran radical, Tommy Bacon – described by the authorities as “a pertinacious old man” – returned home to Pentrich telling locals of a “coming blow”. Brandreth was another regular at the meetings, and in June he left his wife and three young children in Sutton-in-Ashfield, and moved to Pentrich, ready for the imminent uprising. He missed a meeting at the Punchbowl Inn in Nottingham, where increasingly suspicious plotters interrogated Oliver about his background. One told him: “They were not so fond of being hung for nothing at Nottingham as they were in Lancashire.” Lucky to escape with his life, the spy hurriedly departed for London. In the days following the rebels’ dispersal, authorities arrested 47 of the men. They were charged as false traitors, for “not having the fear of God in their hearts, not weighing the duty of their allegiance but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil”. Among the 47 was Brandreth, who had tried to escape to America, but returned penniless to Nottinghamshire. Listen | Stephen Bates examines a failed attempt to murder the entire British cabinet in February 1820. He also explores the background and aftermath of this violent plot By the time of the trial before the Lord Chief Justice at Derby in October 1817, Oliver had been unmasked by the Leeds Mercury – he had been spotted outside a pub in Wakefield talking to a servant of local military commander General John Byng – and the authorities were worried about using him as a witness. Oliver was spirited to a nearby hotel, but his name was never mentioned at the 10-day trial – incitement was no excuse for treason. Traditionally, charges of treason had been reserved for aristocratic rebels. Indeed, Tommy Bacon, who had lain low during the uprising but been arrested nonetheless, was quoted as saying: “[It’s been] never known in England before that labouring men were tried for high treason… men who can scarce tell a letter in the alphabet.” With a jury dominated by local landowners, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. In the dock, Brandreth cut a fearsome figure – the stuff of respectable nightmares – as his black beard had not been trimmed in prison. He had killed a man during the march and expected no mercy. His lieutenants, Isaac Ludlum the Elder, William Turner and George Weightman, were also sentenced to death, though Weightman’s sentence was later remitted on account of his youth and good character. Of the remaining men, 23 – including Bacon – were sentenced to transportation (none of them ever returned to Derbyshire) and 21 were acquitted. The Duke of Devonshire, owner of Pentrich, had the cottages of the rebels demolished. The punishment for traitors was still barbaric, and included beheading and quartering, though the Prince Regent remitted the last detail. Brandreth, who was literate, left his pregnant wife Ann all his worldly possessions, which amounted pathetically to “one work bag, two balls of worsted and one of cotton, a handkerchief, an old pair of stockings, a shirt and a letter I received from my beloved sister”. On the scaffold, a furious William Turner shouted to the crowd: “This is all Oliver and the government.” Read more | Peterloo: the English uprising But to what extent did the government deliberately provoke the uprising against them? The journalist William Cobbett was in no doubt. In his Political Register newspaper, he wrote: “The employers of Oliver might, in an hour, have put a total stop to those preparations and blown them to air. They wished not to prevent but to produce those acts.” However, Lord Sidmouth was having none of it. He wrote to the Yorkshire magnate Earl Fitzwilliam, insisting that such claims were incredible: “It was directly at variance with the instructions given to Oliver and with his communications… to myself.” The Pentrich Rising turned out to be the last attempt to overthrow a government by a general uprising, and not just because of the severe punishments meted out. In the ensuing years, prosperity returned to the country as harvests improved and the economy recovered. Eventually – gradually and reluctantly – parliamentary reform would be conceded. Soon, there would be local police forces (Derbyshire being the last to acquire one); governments would become more pervasive and responsive; and harassed ministers would grow more wary of employing untrained spies. Regency Britain: an age of rebellion The Luddites Between 1811 and 1816, there were numerous outbreaks of Luddism across the Midlands and the North. Gangs of weavers thrown out of work or fearing the loss of wages following the introduction of weaving frames wrecked machinery at mills and factories under the leadership of the mythical Ned Ludd. A plot to overthrow the government In November and December 1816, meetings at London’s Spa Fields – held to present a petition demanding parliamentary reform to the Prince Regent – were hijacked by radicals trying to incite an uprising to overthrow the government. There was arson and violence as a group marched towards the Bank of England, before being dispersed. The Blanketeers' march In March 1817, around 5,000 unemployed weavers, known as the Blanketeers because they carried blankets, attempted to march from Manchester to London to petition the Prince Regent for food. Most got no further than Stockport before they were dispersed by troops. The march alarmed ministers, leading to the arrests of several suspected radicals. The Peterloo Massacre In August 1819, a peaceful crowd attending a Manchester rally to call for political reform was broken up by Yeomanry and Army cavalry. At least 18 people lost their lives, and hundreds more were injured. The Cato Street Conspiracy In February 1820, a radical named Arthur Thistlewood and his small band of followers plotted to assassinate the cabinet. The London-based gang were exposed by an undercover agent and later seized as they gathered above a stable at Cato Street, near Edgware Road. Five were hanged and then beheaded, while five were transported. The plan became known as the Cato Street Conspiracy. The Great Reform Act In June 1832, in the face of a rising tide of disaffection at the absence of parliamentary reforms, the Whig government passed the Great Reform Act. This marginally extended the franchise, abolished rotten boroughs and gave parliamentary representation to new industrial cities. Stephen Bates is a journalist and author. His books include 1815: Regency Britain in the Year of Waterloo (Head of Zeus, 2015) This article was first published in the June 2017 issue of BBC History Magazine
Michael Wood talks to us about a photograph that links his family to the Peterloo massacre of 1819
The acclaimed popular historian and broadcaster Michael Wood talks to us about a photograph he discovered that links his family to the infamous Peterloo massacre of 1819.
The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve?
It started as a peaceful appeal for political reform, but ended with 18 dead and hundreds injured. Stephen Bates describes how the events of 16 August 1819 became a landmark moment in the struggle for democracy
What was the Peterloo Massacre? The Peterloo Massacre, which took place on 16 August 1819, was the worst violence ever to occur at a political meeting in Britain. Cavalry brutally dispersed a crowd of 60,000 protestors in Manchester taking part in a peaceful appeal for political reform. The many thousands of weavers and tradesmen and their families had gathered to consider “the propriety of adopting the most legal and effectual means of obtaining a reform”. The one thing they were not expecting as they made their way on foot to Manchester on that fateful Monday morning was a massacre. They came in from the suburbs and surrounding towns and villages respectably dressed, holding their children by the hand, marching in disciplined columns behind banners and flags, with bands playing patriotic tunes, to have an entertaining day out and to hear speeches calling for parliamentary reform. A “more shocking” massacre? How we might have overestimated the Peterloo crowds 16 August 1819: Militia massacres protesters at ‘Peterloo’ It was a fine summer day and the meeting was entirely legal. It had been called to consider – not to demand – “the propriety of adopting the most legal and effectual means of obtaining a reform”. And the demonstrators had been warned not to be provoked by what was sure to be a heavy presence of constables and local militia. They should, they were told, bring “no other weapon but that of a self-approving conscience”. “There were crowds of people in all directions, full of good humour, laughing and shouting and making fun,” recalled John Benjamin Smith, a 25-year-old businessman who witnessed the meeting. “It seemed to be a gala day with the country people who were mostly dressed in their best and brought with them their wives.” But what happened to them that day was the worst violence ever to occur at a political meeting in Britain, an event that shocked the nation and was pivotal in the long struggle for the vote. At least 18 people were killed and more than 600 injured when the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry and the regular cavalry of the 15th Hussars charged into the crowd gathered at St Peter’s Fields to break up the meeting on the orders of local magistrates. Listen | Historian and author Jacqueline Riding discusses the tragic events of the Peterloo Massacre The troops cleared the field in 20 minutes but what happened that day has reverberated for the best part of 200 years since. That’s at least partly due to the inspiration of the local journalist James Wroe, who described it as the Peterloo Massacre, in punning reference to the battle of Waterloo four years earlier. Wroe, incidentally, found himself imprisoned for a year and his newspaper closed down by the authorities in retaliation. The event did however give rise to the foundation of another progressive newspaper, the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) by an outraged local businessman, John Edward Taylor, two years later. Why did the protest take place? At the time of Peterloo, Manchester was growing fast. It had quadrupled in size in the previous 50 years as a result of the industrial revolution and the expansion of the cotton trade. By 1819, the population was more than 100,000, with people pouring in from the Lancashire and Cheshire countryside and Ireland in search of better-paid work. Mechanisation in the mills was making the traditional home-based handloom weavers a declining workforce. More urgently, the economic depression that had followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars was leading to a halving of the weavers’ wages just at the time that a succession of poor harvests (partially caused, though they did not know it, by climatic changes resulting from a volcanic eruption in Indonesia) was increasing the price of food. Dissatisfaction under these precarious conditions led to pressure for parliamentary reform, to make legislators more responsive to the needs of citizens – and indeed to secure fairer representation at Westminster so that their plight could no longer be ignored. Manchester, now the largest and most important of the new cities of the north, elected no MPs, unlike some rotten boroughs (with their tiny electorates) down south, and so its influence on policy was limited. Campaigners who wanted to change the system in the years after Waterloo divided into those who pressed peacefully for constitutional reform to widen the franchise to all men (only a few thought women should get a vote, though female suffrage leagues were beginning to emerge) and a small, revolutionary minority who wanted violent upheaval. The Peterloo demonstrators were in the former category. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/GettyImages-3202701-0370a05.jpg" width="3920" height="2584" alt="Painting by George Cruikshank, 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home'. (Photo by Spencer Arnold Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Painting by George Cruikshank, 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home'. (Photo by Spencer Arnold Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Lord Liverpool’s Tory government of the day knew that the parliamentary system was unbalanced but were in no mood to give way to even peaceful campaigners. The French Revolution was well within living memory – Liverpool and his foreign secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, had been in Paris to witness it as students 30 years earlier – and they feared any concessions would lead to something similar in Britain. Ministers and their supporters particularly feared the Spenceans, followers of the radical Thomas Spence, who argued for the common ownership of land, universal suffrage and the abolition of the aristocracy. But the government had only limited means to contain disturbances: no police forces yet, only special constables to enrol, or local militias and regular troops to call out – and they were reliant on informers to keep them abreast of what was happening. What triggered the French Revolution? Fighting for freedom: the storming of the Bastille and the French Revolution There had been a series of small-scale and easily contained uprisings in the previous four years, some shading into violence. England in particular was very far from the peaceful land depicted in Jane Austen’s novels. Long before the war ended, Luddites fearing for their jobs had been randomly destroying the new machinery that would replace them in mills across the north and Midlands. In 1817 starving Blanketeers (so called because of the blankets they carried) had attempted unsuccessfully to march from Manchester to London to petition the king for food but were headed off by mounted troops before they got beyond Stockport. In rural Derbyshire later that year, an attempted armed uprising had fizzled out with savage reprisals by the authorities against the ringleaders, three of whom were hanged and then beheaded. Much closer to Westminster, a reform meeting at Spa Fields, Clerkenwell in December 1816 had turned to violence as agitators attempted to lead a faction to storm the Bank of England before being repelled by troops from the Tower of London. The government’s difficulty was distinguishing between peaceful and violent protests, not helped by some reformers’ flirting with violent rhetoric. Viscount Sidmouth, the home secretary, quietly promised to offer magistrates legal protection if violence erupted and troops were called in. Listen | Acclaimed writer and director Mike Leigh talks about the creation of his major new historical epic, which explores the events of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 A series of large-scale public reform meetings had passed off peacefully across the country in 1819, including an earlier one at St Peter’s Fields, a three-acre open space on the edge of Manchester. Nevertheless, the local magistrates and government supporters, including factory owners and businessmen, were edgy in advance of the meeting on 16 August 1819, which promised to be the biggest gathering yet. Groups of those planning to attend had been drilling publicly in the foothills of the Pennines, as a means of keeping order on the big day. Unfortunately, the authorities did not see it that way, and there was concern that the meeting would be addressed by Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt, the leading extra-parliamentary speaker for the reformists, whom they regarded as a rabble rouser. Hunt had been speaking at meetings across the country that summer, including the earlier rally in Manchester, without being arrested and, a few days before the St Peter’s Fields meeting, he checked with the local magistrates that it was legal and could go ahead. They told him it could. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/GettyImages-898094658-0c2ba74.jpg" width="3090" height="3780" alt="An illustration by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) depicting the Peterloo Massacre, for Camden Pelham "The Chronicles of Crime", 1887, London. (Photo by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" title="An illustration by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne) depicting the Peterloo Massacre, for Camden Pelham "The Chronicles of Crime", 1887, London. (Photo by Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" /> Why did the Peterloo Massacre happen? Maybe the magistrates panicked that Monday morning when they saw the size of the crowd pouring into the space, from Manchester itself and the surrounding towns and villages. Later estimates reckoned there were about 60,000 people by 1pm when Hunt was due to arrive. They were so tightly packed that observers said their hats seemed to touch. The magistrates watching from the first floor of a neighbouring building had taken no chances. The newly formed Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, a part-time cavalry force, proud in their new blue and white uniforms, made up of local businessmen, factory owners and their sons, were holed up in nearby back streets. Many of them passed the morning drinking in local taverns, until a witness said they were so inebriated they were rolling on their saddles. There was also a contingent of regular cavalry from the 15th Hussars, as well as a detachment of 400 infantry with two small cannon, and special constables enrolled for the day and equipped with long wooden truncheons. The magistrates – all local men of property, retired businessmen, lawyers, even a clergyman, none of them likely to be sympathetic to political reform – had also taken the precaution of calling in some local loyalist Tories who could be sworn to testify that they believed the town to be in danger if need be. They accordingly did so, even as the crowd gathered below. Later the magistrates would claim that they had also read the Riot Act, the formal rubric ordering the crowd to disperse, though if they did so no one heard them and they certainly did not allow the statutory hour for the gathering to leave. "Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now": 5 minutes with Mike Leigh The workers’ revolution 5 of the worst years in British history The feared spinner Hunt arrived at the edge of the crowd in an open-topped barouche carriage at 1.15pm, accompanied by other members of the platform party, including Mary Fildes, the organiser of the newly formed local women’s suffrage movement, and John Tyas, a correspondent covering the meeting for The Times. Hunt mounted the hustings platform – two carts lashed together – and had no sooner started to speak than the magistrates ordered Manchester’s deputy constable, a corrupt and much feared former spinner called Joseph Nadin, to go and arrest him. To help him do so, they also sent in the yeomanry. It was just what the part-time cavalry had been waiting for: they clattered through the side streets, knocking over a woman and killing her two-year-old son as they did so, and charged into the crowd. People were packed so tightly around the hustings that the yeomanry were soon lashing out with their sabres and becoming submerged in the terrified mass of onlookers. The Rev Edward Stanley, rector of Alderley and a future bishop, who had ridden into Manchester on business that morning, was a witness to what happened: “With scarcely the semblance of line, their sabres glistened in the air, on they went, direct for the hustings… As the cavalry approached the dense mass of people they used their utmost efforts to escape but so closely were they pressed… that immediate escape was impossible… a scene of dreadful confusion ensued.” In the middle of all this, Nadin reached the platform and arrested Hunt, who was hustled back towards the magistrates’ building through a line of jeering constables and was beaten about the head as he reached the steps to the house. The constables themselves came under attack, probably accidentally, by the soldiers in the melee, with two being killed. The magistrates ordered the hussars into the crowd to rescue the yeomanry, who could be seen bobbing about in the midst of the crowd, slashing at the banners they were carrying. The hussars may have been marginally more disciplined than the yeomanry but neither had any experience of crowd control and if the troops really did, as their officers later alleged, try to use the flats of their sabres to move people along, they too were soon slashing away at anyone within reach. The crowd fled as best they could in the crush, falling over each other in their attempts to escape, trying to avoid the flashing blades and the horses’ hooves. Some ran into the grounds of a nearby Quaker chapel and found the cavalry riding in after them, others fell down the cellar steps of nearby buildings or were pressed against walls and railings. John Benjamin Smith, the young businessman, reported: “It was a hot, dusty day; clouds of dust… obscured the view. When it had subsided a startling scene was presented. Numbers of men, women and children were lying on the ground who had been knocked down and run over by the soldiers.” Within 20 minutes the field had been emptied and what was left behind were piles of bodies and the discarded debris of the rally: clothes, shoes and hats, banners and musical instruments abandoned by the bands. The troops rallied in front of the magistrates’ building and gave three cheers. They were congratulated by the Rev William Hay, one of the magistrates; they would receive the commendation of local Tories at a meeting the following day and would be sent a message later from the Prince Regent commending their “preservation of the public tranquillity”. The chief magistrate William Hulton wrote to Sidmouth praising “the extreme forbearance of the military”. Hiding their wounds That was not how the survivors in the crowd saw it. The roads out of Manchester were clogged with the injured. Apart from the 18 now thought to have died either on the day or from their wounds in the days afterwards, modern analysis of the casualty lists drawn up in the following weeks by reformist campaigners indicates that at least 654 people were sufficiently injured to require medical treatment. Others may have nursed their wounds in private, scared of the consequences for their jobs if their employers found out how they had been hurt. Strikingly, many of the injured were married men with children, the Irish present were particularly singled out (they were probably identified via their distinctive banners), and a quarter of the casualties were women, sabred or trampled by the horses. Margaret Downes bled to death after being slashed across the breast; Elizabeth Farren received a 3-inch gash from the crown of her head to her brow; Alice Heywood’s wrist was almost severed; and Sarah Howarth was wounded in 20 places. The troops and their defenders claimed that they had come under attack by demonstrators throwing stones but the wounds inflicted – 48 per cent injured by sabres, 26 per cent by horses and 26 per cent in the crush of the crowd – indicate that the injured must have been those closest to the cavalry’s path, not the stone-throwers. As one of the fatalities, 25-year-old James Lees, a former soldier who had fought at Waterloo but was now a weaver, told his relatives before he died from two deep sabre wounds to the head three weeks later: “At Waterloo there was man to man, but here it was downright murder.” Lees had been turned away from treatment at the Manchester infirmary after he refused to promise that he would not attend reform meetings in future. A fund was raised for the injured, but most of the £3,408 that was contributed went to the lawyers who represented Hunt – charged with seditious assembly – and four others in court at York the following spring. Sentenced to two and a half years, the great Orator settled down to writing his memoirs. He would later become, briefly, an MP. Six months after Peterloo came the Cato Street Conspiracy, led by the Spencean Arthur Thistlewood, the man who had tried to storm the Bank of England after the Spa Fields riot. He now wanted to assassinate the cabinet while ministers sat at dinner, but was cornered in a stable loft off the Edgware Road. He was tried and executed with five of his associates. It turned out that the government had known about the plot all along through an informer and may even have encouraged its development. It was the last attempt to overthrow the state by force. The reforms the crowd at Peterloo were seeking would gradually be enacted over the coming century, though it took 99 years for women to get the vote. From this distance it is hard to know what the Manchester rally would have achieved had it ended peacefully, as the organisers intended. But the cavalry’s brutal attack on unarmed, peaceful demonstrators ensured that it became a landmark in the struggle for democracy and has never been forgotten. Stephen Bates is a former senior correspondent with The Guardian and the author of 1815: Regency Britain in the Year of Waterloo (Head of Zeus 2015) The film Peterloo, about the 1819 massacre, written and directed by Mike Leigh, was released in cinemas in November 2018. Listen again: To listen to Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Peterloo Massacre on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, go to bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003k9l7 This article was first published in the December 2018 edition of BBC History Magazine -– Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen – reading time 6 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins Regency Britain: An age of war and revolution – reading time 6 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins Podcast: Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins
The Peterloo Massacre: how a peaceful protest turned into bloody chaos
In Manchester in August 1819, a peaceful protest quickly turned into bloody chaos. Here, BBC History Revealed explores the events that led to the Peterloo Massacre…
On 16 August 1819, more than 60,000 people gathered at St Peter’s Field, Manchester, bearing banners with the words ‘Reform’ and ‘Equal Representation’ written on them. The reform they wanted was that of Parliament itself – less than two per cent of the population were eligible to vote – and an end to the extreme poverty that gripped Britain. That, too, was deemed Parliament’s fault: the Corn Laws of 1815, which had introduced tariffs on imported grain at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, had seen the price of bread become astronomical. Famed radical orator Henry Hunt was scheduled to speak to the gathered crowds – many of whom had journeyed from miles around, some in their Sunday best. For those attending, it was an exciting day out; the processions heading for Manchester were accompanied by bands. Local magistrates watched the assembling crowd with some trepidation, imagining the gathering as having revolutionary and dangerous intentions. The magistrates attempted to read the crowd the Riot Act (from which we get the idiom – the now-defunct Act of 1714 gave authorities the ability to declare any group of 12 or more persons as being “unlawfully assembled”). The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? Peterloo: the story of a massacre (podcast) A “more shocking” massacre? How we might have overestimated the Peterloo crowds Soldiers and cavalry watched on when the local militia was tasked with arresting the ringleaders. The protesters linked arms to prevent the arrests, at which point the militia began striking down people with their swords. This was mistaken as an attack by the protestors, causing the rest of the troops to engage the already bottled-up crowd. At least 11 people, including women and children, were killed during the horror that unfolded. Around 700 others received serious wounds as the soldiers slashed their way through. Many of the protest leaders were arrested, and the magistrates received messages of congratulations from the Prince Regent – later George IV. But the majority of the public sympathised with the protestors, and began using the term ‘Peterloo’ in mockery of those who had attacked unarmed civilians – among whom were many who had returned from the battle of Waterloo as heroes. The Government responded with a crackdown: a series of laws, known as the Six Acts, intended to quash radical activity amidst the threat of revolution. Holding public meetings of more than 50 people now needed the permission of a sheriff or magistrate. Shocked by what he had witnessed, businessman John Edward Taylor set up The Manchester Guardian – now The Guardian – to promote liberal interest and civil liberty. Although it wouldn’t happen immediately, the massacre at Peterloo did alter people’s perceptions regarding voting rights and led to the rise of Chartism – a working-class movement that called for parliamentary reforms. Chartist demands included universal suffrage for men and payment for MPs, to enable those of modest means to take part in politics. The Reform Act of 1832 would extend voting rights to adult males who rented land over a certain value – but it wouldn’t be until 1928 that all adults over the age of 21 were given equal voting rights in Britain. This article first appeared in the August 2019 issue of BBC History Revealed
"Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now": Mike Leigh on a 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. As major film Peterloo is released, we spoke to acclaimed writer and director Mike Leigh about the challenges of filming historical events and the relevance of Peterloo today…
What was it about Peterloo that first captured your imagination, and made you think that this would make an amazing film? Although I grew up in Manchester, I didn’t know much about what happened at Peterloo at all. Lots of us from that part of the world didn't. I don’t remember when I first read about it, but I do remember thinking: “somebody should make a film about this.” However, it never occurred to me that that somebody might be me – at that time I didn't think I would ever make a period film. But after I'd made Mr Turner [Leigh’s 2014 film about the painter], it suddenly dawned on me that it would be a good idea, not least because the bicentenary of Peterloo is coming up in 2019. Read more: The Peterloo Massacre Why were there so few casualties at Peterloo? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/PJAN7M_cmyk-cdbc8d7-da4b300.jpg" width="413" height="413" alt="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)" title="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)" /> At the very beginning of the process back in 2013, Peterloo felt relevant, but given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now, it's become even more prescient. We found ourselves saying “this is really relevant” on almost a daily basis. Why do you think Peterloo isn’t better known about in 2018? The way in which history is taught in schools today doesn't demand much in the way of how it relates to the average school child's life. But you can't talk about Peterloo without discussing what it was about and why it happened. Therefore, maybe it's dangerous in some way. You mean because it's almost too relevant to today? Correct. You’re well known for developing scripts using a process of improvisation. What challenges does a historical setting – especially one based on real events – present for that approach? You can read about history in books until it comes out of your ears, but that doesn't make it happen in front of the camera. You've got to bring it to life. It's got to feel real, and that involves making characters that feel organic and three dimensional. When you have to integrate historical facts into that process, it’s just yet another thing to stitch into the narrative. Our December 2018 issue is out now. Find the full issue here, including: The last survivors of the First World War Walter Ralegh: the traitor who inspired Cromwell (exclusive to The Library) At the heart of film are the incredibly rousing speeches of the reform movement – most notably Rory Kinnear as Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt. Why was this such an important aspect of the story to you, and how did you go about reconstructing that remarkable speaking style? You can't make a film about a political movement that leads to a public expression of political aspiration without including those speeches. Read more: Podcast: The Peterloo Massacre Podcast: Mike Leigh on Peterloo <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/11/Podcast-Website-Jacqueline-Riding-8717fbc.jpg" width="375" height="375" alt="18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank. (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)" title="18th August 1819: 'The Massacre of Peterloo or Britons Strike Home', by George Cruikshank. (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)" /> There was a point in proceedings when I had to bite the bullet and say: “this film is going to have a lot of speeches in it.” But there's no point in worrying that the audience might find it boring. I always work on the assumption that the audience is intelligent. Otherwise you just end up patronising them and you ought to make a completely different sort of film. We took the speeches from historical source material and did a massive amount of character work to bring them to life. Something I find particularly interesting is that the young working-class radicals, who made some of the most impressive speeches, were either self-taught or had learnt to read and write in Sunday school. Not only were they articulate and literate – they would quote the classics. They were hungry for education, and would be horrified at the way in which we have access to education today, but eschew it. Likewise, if all of the thousands of people who were at Peterloo got out of a time machine today and found that people have the vote but don’t use it, they would be disgusted. That was the very thing they were protesting for, and some of them lost their lives for the cause. What can you tell us about working with the project’s historical consultant, Jacqueline Riding? Every single film I've made – including the contemporary ones – involves a huge amount of research. But I'm a storyteller, not an academic. When it comes to historical research, I need somebody who can point me in the right direction and make the source material digestible – someone who can wander into the British Library or the National Archives and know where to look. You couldn't make a film like this without such a person; it simply wouldn’t be possible. When we see this era on screen, it’s usually the ballrooms of Jane Austen, or the battlefield of Waterloo – is Peterloo’s positive reception a sign that period drama needs to widen its net? Peterloo is not concerned in any way, shape, or form about making things sexy. It's not concerned with being glossy, romanticising or sugaring the pill. Life is quite interesting enough. And in saying that, I am implicitly making comments about other kinds of films. Peterloo, a film about the 1819 massacre, written and directed by Mike Leigh, is in cinemas now. Listen to the full interview with Mike Leigh on the History Extra podcast, available now
The acclaimed writer and director talks about the creation of his major new historical epic
The acclaimed writer and director talks about the creation of his major new historical epic, which explores the events of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.
Historian and author Jacqueline Riding discusses the tragic events of August 1819
Historian and author Jacqueline Riding discusses the tragic events of August 1819, where cavalry dispersed a large meeting for political reform in Manchester, leading to several deaths and hundreds of injuries. Jacqueline also consulted on the Peterloo film which is released in a few days’ time.
16 August 1819: Militia massacres protesters at ‘Peterloo’
Dominic Sandbrook explores this big day in history
When the people of Manchester awoke on Monday, 16 August 1819, it was already shaping up to be a fine, hot day. By mid-morning thousands of people were streaming past the mills and chimneys towards St Peter’s Field in the town centre. To the watching townsfolk they presented an extraordinary spectacle. Each local village had sent its own contingent, but far from being the disorderly rabble of press hysteria, they seemed remarkably well turned out. Many were women, dressed all in white. And everywhere were flags and banners, woven in bright silk. “No Corn Laws”, they read, “Annual Parliaments”, “Universal Suffrage”, “Vote by Ballot”. The only banner that survives today was carried by Thomas Redford of Middleton. “Liberty and Fraternity” read the message on one side, picked out in gold letters. “Unity and Strength” it read on the other. Read more: Why were there so few casualties at Peterloo? 10 terrible taxes The Peterloo Massacre <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/08/PJAN7M_cmyk-cdbc8d7-1-2c19180.jpg" width="413" height="413" alt="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)" title="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)" /> The passions behind the meeting at St Peter’s Field had been brewing for years. Poor economic conditions since the Napoleonic Wars had bred a mood of deep dissatisfaction in Lancashire’s cotton towns, and many weavers were outraged at their lack of representation in parliament. The question of democratic representation became a kind of shorthand for the plight of the region. In Manchester, wrote Joseph Johnson, the founder of the town’s radical Observer, “nothing but ruin and starvation stare one in the face, the state of this district is truly dreadful, and I believe nothing but the greatest exertions can prevent an insurrection”. Johnson’s solution was a mass meeting, to be addressed by the radical speaker Henry Hunt. But when the government intercepted his letter, the dreaded word “insurrection” loomed large. Even as the weavers approached St Peter’s Field, Manchester’s magistrates were meeting for breakfast at the nearby Star Inn. Terrified that the rally would turn into a riot, they had mobilised the local yeomanry and the city’s militia, while Lord Liverpool’s Tory government had sent a detachment of the 15th Hussars. Using the troops against the crowds, however, was bound to be risky. One observer called the yeomanry a band of “hot-headed young men, who had volunteered into that service from their intense hatred of radicalism”; for another, they were simply “younger members of the Tory party in arms”. Listen now: Podcast: Mike Leigh on Peterloo Podcast: The Peterloo Massacre In the meantime, the crowds had swelled to unprecedented proportions. Estimates of the numbers differ wildly, from 50,000 people to as many as 150,000. So dense were the ranks of protesters, wrote one eyewitness, that “their hats seemed to touch”. But when Hunt arrived to begin his address, the chairman of the magistrates panicked, issuing a warrant for his arrest. At that, Captain Hugh Hornby Birley, a local factory owner, spurred the yeomanry into action. By now, however, the crowds were far too tightly packed for the horses to pass – and in the chaos and the heat, something snapped. Some said Birley and his men were drunk; what is beyond doubt, however, is that they lost all self-control, lashing out wildly with their sabres. Then in came the hussars, charging the crowd – but even they were shocked by the indiscipline of the yeomanry. “For shame! For shame!” one hussars officer was heard to shout. “Gentlemen: forbear, forbear!” The massacre lasted ten minutes. After that, wrote the radical Samuel Bamford, “the field was an open and almost deserted space,” strewn with “caps, bonnets, hats, shawls, and shoes, and other parts of male and female dress, trampled, torn, and bloody.” Read more: The workers’ revolution (subscription) Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period In the awful silence, he recalled, “several mounds of human being still remained where they had fallen, crushed down and smothered. Some of these still groaning; others, with staring eyes, were gasping for breath, and others would never breathe more. All was silent save those low sounds, and the occasional snorting and pawing of steeds.” The final casualty figures at St Peter’s Field – which soon earned the nickname ‘Peterloo’ – were never determined. As many as 15 people may have been killed, and a further 500 badly injured. Four men of the Manchester yeomanry were later acquitted of the murders; in a bitter irony, though, five of the radical organisers, who had killed nobody, were sent to prison. Terrified of revolutionary far-left Jacobinism, spreading from France, the government cracked down on civil liberties. But as Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had been appalled by the news of the massacre, wrote in his great poem The Masque of Anarchy, the campaign for rights and liberties would never die. “Rise like Lions after slumber / In unvanquishable number,” he exhorted the masses. “Ye are many – they are few.” Dominic Sandbrook’s latest book is Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 (Allen Lane). He is a frequent guest on Radio 4’s Saturday Review This article was first published in the August 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why were there so few casualties at Peterloo?
What became known as the Peterloo Massacre took place on St Peter's Field, Manchester, on 16 August 1819...
A public meeting had been called to demand political reform and was led by the famous radical speaker Henry Hunt. At 1pm the chief magistrate, William Hulton, sent for military assistance to arrest Hunt and break up the crowd of 80,000 people. The amateur Manchester and Salford Yeomanry arrived first, urged their horses into the crowd, and began hitting people with the flats of their blades. This provoked the crowd to throw stones, which in turn enraged the Yeomanry and at one point some of them began using the edges of their weapons. The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? "Peterloo felt relevant, given all the crazy and chaotic things that are happening now": 5 minutes with Mike Leigh By the time the regulars of the 15th Hussars arrived at 2pm the situation was out of control. Led by Colonel L’Estrange they charged the crowd, but he soon realised that the exits from the field were so narrow that the crowd could not disperse. He called off his men and shouted at the Yeomanry: “For shame, for shame. The people cannot get away.” After 10 minutes the fighting had stopped, the crowd dispersed and Hunt had been arrested. Of the 11 dead, five died as a result of sabre wounds and the rest died due to being mown down by the horses. Most of the injuries were caused by people being crushed or trampled by the crowd as they tried to escape. The outrage at the time was due not only to the carnage and confusion, but also to the fact that Hulton had not given warning of his actions by reading the Riot Act. Listen | Historian and author Jacqueline Riding discusses the tragic events of the Peterloo Massacre The low number of deaths was probably due to the fact that L’Estrange called off his men and to the restraint shown by the 15th Hussars. This is ironic as the event was dubbed ‘Peterloo’ due to the fact that the 15th Hussars had fought at the battle of Waterloo just four years earlier. Answered by Rupert Matthews, historian and author. This Q&A was first published in the January 2013 issue of BBC History Magazine