Peterloo
On 16 August 1819, a radical meeting of around 60,000 people at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester was violently suppressed by the Government. 18 people died from injuries received that afternoon and up to 700 more were injured, women were disproportionately attacked. As news of the traumatic events circulated, it acquired the satirical name ‘Peterloo’ – a reference to the bloody battle of Waterloo, only four years previously.
Groups of women dressed in white were an eye-catching feature of Peterloo. Mary Fildes, the President of Manchester Female Reformers, stood on the hustings next to Henry Hunt. After leaping off the stage, she was beaten by a constable and went into hiding to avoid imprisonment.
The Manchester Comet, a short-lived satirical newspaper, poked fun at radical reformers. Despites its hostile intentions it is one of the earliest representations of an all-female political meeting. The woman addressing the meeting is probably Mary Fildes, president of the Manchester Female Reform Society.
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Isabella Banks was born in Manchester two years after Peterloo, yet the massacre captured her imagination and featured in her bestselling novel. It is likely she spoke to elderly eyewitnesses when researching The Manchester Man. This illustration shows a Yeomanry Cavalry soldiers on horseback, brandishing a sabre.
By the 1880s Henry Hunt, the charismatic speaker imprisoned for addressing the crowds at Peterloo, was no longer seen as a dangerous radical but widely celebrated. Isabella Banks was active in an unsuccessful campaign to rebuild the Henry Hunt memorial in Ancoats. It was built by the Chartists in 1842.