News at Eleven: On 16 August 1819, a crowd of more than

50,000 gathered at St Peter's Fields outside Manchester to support parliamentary reform. The radical orator Henry Hunt was to speak in favour of widening the franchise and reforming Britain's notoriously corrupt system of political representation. Magistrates ordered the Manchester Yeomanry to disperse the demonstration. The cavalry charged the crowd, sabres drawn, and at least 15 people, including a woman and a child, were killed.

from The Guardian: Anarchy in Peterloo: Shelley's poem unmasked

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