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The Peterloo Massacre

The people marched to St. Peter's Field
On a fair and a sunny day,
They'd gone to listen to Henry Hunt
A radical, in his way,
For Manchester was a ruin then,
The people could beg or starve,
For the looms were sitting in silence there
With the wages more than halved.

The government passed the Corn Laws
To protect the growers at home,
But the British corn was inferior,
And the price quite overblown,
The people, faced with a famine sought
To reform the parliament,
A million folk in Manchester,
With just two to represent.

And only a hundred and fifty were
Electors, here I quote,
Not like the rotten boroughs that
Survived on a single vote,
The people marched on St. Peter's Field
While the government sent Hussars,
Fearing the spread of dissidence,
After Napoleon's wars.

The police were there and the yeomanry
As they came from near and far,
And William Hulton, magistrate,
The head of the Northern Bar,
His name was writ on a plaque of blood
In the nether depths of hell,
When he signed the letters to start the charge
On a people that just meant well.

There was no honour or glory there
But a cry of endless shame,
When Lieutenant Colonel Guy L'Estrange
Blackened his soldiers name,
For the horses trampled the people
And the sabres flashed in the air,
While many a woman was trampled to death
By the horses hooves out there.

Margaret Downes was sabred, Mary
Heys was trampled and crushed,
William Bradshaw shot in the head,
They died, it was so unjust,
Martha Partington died on the spot,
Thrown into a cellar, she died,
While sabred and stabbed with a bayonet,
Tom Buckley, and others beside.

Fifteen died on that infamous day,
And seven hundred were hurt,
Henry Hunt was arrested, jailed,
And others were dragged in the dirt,
Napoleon suffered at Waterloo
But the English have suffered too,
It's writ in the annals of infamy
As the massacre, ‘Peterloo! '

22 September 2012

poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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