PETERLOO, or the Manchester Massacre, a name given to a meeting held on Aug. 16, 1819, in St. Peter's Fields, Manchester. Its object was to demand the reform of parliament and it was attended by about 6o,000 persons, including an unusually large proportion of women and children. None were armed and their behaviour was admittedly wholly peaceable, but the magistrates, who were in a nervous condition, ordered the Manchester yeo manry to seize the speakers immediately after the meeting had begun. The yeomanry, who were untrained Manchester business men, did not confine themselves to arresting the leaders, but made a general attack upon the audience, crying "Have at their flags," and cutting them down with the edge as well as the flat of their sabres. The chairman of the bench of magistrates there upon ordered the 15th Hussars and the Cheshire yeomanry also to charge the crowd, and in ten minutes the place was cleared ex cept for bodies, "some still groaning, others with staring eyes, gasping for breath ; others will never breathe more ; all silent save for those low sounds and the occasional snorting and pawing of steeds." The numbers of killed and wounded were disputed; 600
authenticated cases are known. The indignation caused by the behaviour of the yeomanry and its endorsement by the govern ment contributed largely to the ultimate success of the reform movement. A Peterloo medal, now rare, was struck, bearing the legend "The wicked have drawn out the sword, they have cut down the poor and needy and such as be of upright conversation" (Ps. xxvii., 14).
See Memoirs of H. Hunt, Esq. (182o-22) ; S. Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical (1893) ; F. A. Bruton, Story of Peterloo (1919) ; and Three Accounts of Peterloo (1921). (R. W. P.)