Page 48 - All About History - Issue 180-19

RemembeRing
RemembeRing

© Alamy

We speak with historians, curators and campaigners about why it’s so important

we never forget the 200-year old tragedy of this protest for voting rights

Written by Jonathan Gordon, Tom Garner

August 1819: between 60,000–80,000 by the 15th Hussars who also charged, having death, “At Waterloo there was man to man but
men, women and children assembled been ordered to disperse the assembly. What they there it was downright murder.” It’s an event that
in St Peter’s Field in Manchester to seemingly didn’t know is that exits had been echoed through the years that followed, but it
protest for their right to parliamentary blocked and most in the field were now trapped. would not be until 1832 and the Great Reform Act
16representation. Not long after Henry It’s believed that 18 people died in the attack, that anything close to what protestors called for
Hunt, the famed orator, took to the hustings the including one two-year-old child, with over 500 would be put into law, and over 100 years before
local magistrates ordered the arrest of Hunt and injured. It was a shocking event that the press universal suffrage would be achieved in the UK.
those leading the protest, and the Manchester nicknamed “Peterloo” as an ironic reference to the As we mark the 200th anniversary this year we
and Salford Yeomanry charged the field, attacking Battle of Waterloo. John Lees, a former soldier and spoke with some of the people looking to keep the
with sabres as they met resistance from the textiles worker, died from wounds he sustained memory of this event alive and why they think it
crowd. With tensions rising they were followed and is reported to have told a friend before his is such an important moment in British history.

48