The Peterloo Massacre

Here is a very interesting article on the Peterloo Massacre, which is especially interesting because it gives prominence to female reformers. Do read!

The Peterloo Massacre
print published 1 October 1819
Manchester Library Services

This print, published by the Radical bookseller, Richard Carlile, is a coloured engraving. All the poles from which banners are flying have Phrygian caps or liberty caps on top. Not all the details strictly accord with contemporary descriptions; the banner the woman is holding should read: Female Reformers of Roynton -- 'Let us die like men and not be sold like slaves'. 

The print is inscribed: 'To Henry Hunt, Esq., as chairman of the meeting assembled in St. Peter's Field, Manchester, sixteenth day of August, 1819, and to the female Reformers of Manchester and the adjacent towns who were exposed to and suffered from the wanton and fiendish attack made on them by that brutal armed force, the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, this plate is dedicated by their fellow labourer, Richard Carlile.'