The horror of Peterloo

Stephen Bates reveals how the massacre of 1819 became a cause célèbre in the struggle for full suffrage in Britain

It started as a peaceful appeal for political reform, but ended with 18 dead and hundreds injured. As a major film on the Peterloo Massacre is released, Stephen Bates describes how the events of 16 August 1819 – when cavalry brutally dispersed a crowd of 60,000 protestors – became a landmark moment in the struggle for democracy

Cavalry charge into a crowd of protestors 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