Eyewitness Accounts

To commemorate the 200 year anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre the Peterloo 2019 Ambassadors have worked in partnership with Professor Robert Poole (University of Central Lancashire), author of Peterloo: the English Uprising and the Age of Revolution at University of Kent to compile the 400+ eyewitness accounts which include press reports and petitions.

This is the first time the original accounts have been compiled into an online archive. You can now use the website to search by name, place and role and learn more about the eyewitness accounts from 1819.

Roger Entwisle Eyewitness Account

Saw the Stockport division arrive armed with sticks. Saw stones and brickbats thrown, but did not know how people had acquired them. Claims the warrants could not have been administered without military assistance and that the yeomanry behaved appropriately.

Place: Manchester
Role: Spectator
Occupation: Solicitor

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Robert Hindmarsh Eyewitness Account

Testifies that the crowd were peaceable and did not offer resistance to the cavalry while he was on the field. Serjeant Cross his testimony is unreliable because of his shortsightedness.

Place: Salford
Role: Spectator
Occupation: Dissenting Minister

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Ann Jones Eyewitness Account

Watched from a second floor window in Windmill Street with her husband. Testifies to seeing unprovoked attack by the cavalry with little or no resistance or retaliation from the crowd. Two people killed by her door. She saw the cavalry cutting so much near the hustings that she did not think anyone could have survived.