Richard Carlile's print of yeomanry cavalry charging the crowd at St Peter's Field, Manchester, in 1819
The Peterloo Massacre, 1819
Marked St Peter’s Field, Manchester

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Peterloo and the fight for the vote

On 16 August 1819 cavalry charged a peaceful crowd of about 60,000 at St Peter’s Field, Manchester, who had come to demand the vote. Eighteen people died. The fight for the vote went on through the Chartists to the suffragists and suffragettes.

Place
St Peter’s Field, Manchester · Kennington Common · WestminsterEurope
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet
Image
Richard Carlile (publisher), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. ISt Peter’s Field
  2. IIHenry Hunt
  3. IIIThe newspapers
  4. IVThe Reform Act of 1832
  5. VThe Chartists
  6. VISuffragists and suffragettes
  7. VII1918 and 1928

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Henry Hunt
  • Mary Fildes
  • Samuel Bamford
  • William Cuffay
  • Emmeline Pankhurst
  • Millicent Fawcett

Objects

  • Peterloo banners and medals
  • The People’s Charter
  • Suffragette banners

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1819 to 1928. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?