What do you think?
Rate this book
Return to Peterloo
The Peterloo massacre of 1819 is one of the landmarks of British history. Notwithstanding the weeks of partisan legal argument and the decades of noisy disputes about who was responsible, the sheer quantity of evidence is exceptional and the basic facts have never been in serious doubt. This book, published in time for the bicentenary, offers new perspectives and even more detail about the event and the many issues surrounding it.
Originally the Manchester Region History Review Volume 23 2012
Originally the Manchester Region History Review Volume 23 2012
248 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2014
7 people want to read
About the author
Robert Poole
8 books2 followersRobert Poole (born 1957) is a UK-based historian, currently Professor of History at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 5, 2019
This is an painstakingly researched study, not only of the events of the infamous Peterloo Massacre in Manchester 1819, where a crowd of peaceful protestors - mainly cotton workers - were attacked by the Guards and the Yeomanry Cavalry, but the historical background and the events that led up to the events of that day.
The reasons behind that attack, the terror of the ruling elite of a revolt of the masses, their inability to accept the notions of equality which lay behind a demand for the extension of democratic representation, the panic of the ill informed and bigoted magistrates at the sheer size of the crowd, the misrepresentations of those who sought to defend the actions of the military, are all discussed here.
Hundreds were injured, and while only fifteen deaths were reported (these included chidren and a baby), the actual number of deaths as a result of injuries sustained that day was almost certainly far higher; a great many of the protestors did not go for medical help in the primitive infirmaries of the day, or apply for help from the benevolent funds later, fearing retribution from the authorities for protesting at all. The day after the massacre, hundreds of people were seen by witnesses collapsed in the fields about Manchester, too wounded and exhausted to walk any further on their agonizing progress back to the surrounding villages. Many of these people will have succumbed to their injuries, weeks or even months later, and not been counted in the official toll of victims.
The inquest on the death of John Lees, one of those who died from the injuries he came by that day - was used as a sort of test case; and the authorities showed themselves determined to give no truck to the idea that in riding down and cutting down the crowd (who were trapped in Peter's Square) the guards had used excessive violence.
He was a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, and one of the things he said in his last days, was that a man was safer there.
I find it impossible to read these accounts of this historical suffering without becoming angry with the ruling class who considered that only they had the right to a decent living and a voice in the ruling of the country.
There has been an effort by 'conservative' historians to play down these events, or even to try and pretend that the victims had brought their fate on themselves.
Reading of it, too, makes me more impatient than I should be, of the popular conception of the Regency as in some ways, an age of wildness and frivolity. That may have been the upper class perception of it. That of the cotton workers was starving, and being kept down as mindless brutes.
For the overwhelming majority of the UK population, the reality was anything but a romantic age, and it is high time that the reality found its place in popular fiction.
It was these events that inspired Shelley's immortal lines:
' Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few! '
The reasons behind that attack, the terror of the ruling elite of a revolt of the masses, their inability to accept the notions of equality which lay behind a demand for the extension of democratic representation, the panic of the ill informed and bigoted magistrates at the sheer size of the crowd, the misrepresentations of those who sought to defend the actions of the military, are all discussed here.
Hundreds were injured, and while only fifteen deaths were reported (these included chidren and a baby), the actual number of deaths as a result of injuries sustained that day was almost certainly far higher; a great many of the protestors did not go for medical help in the primitive infirmaries of the day, or apply for help from the benevolent funds later, fearing retribution from the authorities for protesting at all. The day after the massacre, hundreds of people were seen by witnesses collapsed in the fields about Manchester, too wounded and exhausted to walk any further on their agonizing progress back to the surrounding villages. Many of these people will have succumbed to their injuries, weeks or even months later, and not been counted in the official toll of victims.
The inquest on the death of John Lees, one of those who died from the injuries he came by that day - was used as a sort of test case; and the authorities showed themselves determined to give no truck to the idea that in riding down and cutting down the crowd (who were trapped in Peter's Square) the guards had used excessive violence.
He was a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, and one of the things he said in his last days, was that a man was safer there.
I find it impossible to read these accounts of this historical suffering without becoming angry with the ruling class who considered that only they had the right to a decent living and a voice in the ruling of the country.
There has been an effort by 'conservative' historians to play down these events, or even to try and pretend that the victims had brought their fate on themselves.
Reading of it, too, makes me more impatient than I should be, of the popular conception of the Regency as in some ways, an age of wildness and frivolity. That may have been the upper class perception of it. That of the cotton workers was starving, and being kept down as mindless brutes.
For the overwhelming majority of the UK population, the reality was anything but a romantic age, and it is high time that the reality found its place in popular fiction.
It was these events that inspired Shelley's immortal lines:
' Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few! '
Displaying 1 of 1 review