The British Industrial Revolution had transformed Manchester from a market town of 25,000 in 1772 to a textile-manufacturing city of 95,000 by 1819. The city had no parliamentary representation — Manchester sent no MPs to Westminster — while less populous rural boroughs each elected two members. The parliamentary reform movement of the late 1810s focused on extending the franchise and granting representation to the new industrial cities.
The radical orator Henry Hunt had been organising large reform meetings across the industrial north through summer 1819. The Manchester meeting was scheduled for 16 August 1819 at St Peter’s Field — an open ground near the centre of the city.
The meeting
The crowd assembled from approximately 9 a.m. on the morning of 16 August 1819. Reform groups from surrounding mill towns marched in by formation, with bands, banners, and discipline. The conventional contemporary estimate of the total crowd size was approximately 60,000 — about two-thirds of the city’s population.
The crowd was peaceful. Many of the marchers wore their best Sunday clothes. The contemporary press accounts agree that there were no weapons visible, no provocations toward the local authorities, and deliberate self-discipline among the reform organisers.
Hunt began speaking from a horse-drawn platform at approximately 1:30 p.m. The Manchester magistrates — meeting in a house overlooking the field — concluded that the meeting was illegal under the 1817 Habeas Corpus Suspension Act and ordered Hunt’s arrest. The magistrates’ chairman William Hulton ordered the Manchester Yeomanry — a part-time volunteer cavalry force of approximately 60 local mill-owners and shopkeepers — to make the arrest.
The charge
The Yeomanry rode into the crowd at approximately 1:40 p.m. The crowd was so dense that the cavalry could not move at speed. Several Yeomen used their sabres to clear a path. Within minutes the action had escalated from arrest to general cavalry action against the surrounding crowd.
The 15th Hussars — regular British Army cavalry under Lieutenant-Colonel L’Estrange, posted as backup — joined the action at the magistrates’ order at approximately 1:50 p.m. The Hussars cleared the entire field with sabre charges.
The field was cleared by approximately 2:20 p.m. — about 40 minutes of cavalry action. Eighteen people were killed; approximately 600 were wounded. The dead included a 2-year-old child (William Fildes, knocked from his mother’s arms by a Yeomanry horse) and two women trampled in the panic.
What it produced
The Manchester Observer coined the term Peterloo in its 18 August 1819 edition — a sarcastic combination of St Peter’s Field and the recent Waterloo victory, where the same kind of cavalry had been deployed against an actual enemy rather than against unarmed British citizens. The name stuck.
Henry Hunt was tried for sedition in March 1820 and sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment. The magistrates and Yeomanry were thanked by the British government for their role in maintaining public order. No one was prosecuted for the deaths.
The government’s longer-term response was the Six Acts of December 1819, which restricted public meetings, freedom of the press, and the right of private military training. The reform movement was suppressed for the next decade.
Reform eventually came in 1832 with the Great Reform Act under Earl Grey’s Whig government. Manchester gained two MPs. The franchise was extended to about 18 percent of adult men — below universal but a significant first step. Universal male suffrage came with the 1918 Representation of the People Act; universal adult suffrage with the 1928 Equal Franchise Act.
The site of St Peter’s Field is now under the Manchester Central Convention Complex. A small monument was unveiled in August 2019 — the 200th anniversary — on Windmill Street. The monument lists the 18 dead by name.