A print depicting the Peterloo massacre. Photo: Published by J Evans and Sons in 1819.
‘Some sought sanctuary in the Meeting house… The soldiers followed, continuing their onslaught’
Friends Meeting House in Manchester was a key location during the Peterloo massacre of 1819. So where, asks David Boulton, were all the Quakers?
This summer has been marked by a season of events commemorating what came to be known as the Peterloo massacre. On 16 August 1819, troops attacked a peaceful demonstration of 60,000 people in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, wounding and maiming over 600 and killing at least fifteen men, women and children.
The peaceful protest, probably the largest the country had ever seen, was the culmination of a period of agitation for parliamentary reform and relief of Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire cotton workers on starvation wages. Public outcry at the brutality set in motion a century-long but irresistible process of electoral reform, free trade unions and the basic elements of a liberal democracy.
