The Peterloo Massacre

This volume provides a narrative account of the events leading to the charge of a strong force of yeomanry and regular cavalry into a crowd of more than 100,000 workers gathered for a parliamentary reform meeting on St Peter's Field, Manchester in August 1819. Several were killed and dozens sabred and badly wounded. The book describes, with much contemporary detail, the nature of a society powerfully influenced by technological change in the years leading to the massacre.