Peterloo 1819: Democracy, Protest and Justice


Interesting display at the National Portrait Gallery of portraits of those involved in the Peterloo Massacre to mark the two hundredth anniversary.

The display was just two sides of a small case but there was an extensive information board which helped to explain the context and why so few pictures of the protagonists exist. There was just one watercolour picture, shown here, of the main speaker at the event, Henry Hunt, but others were represented by prints which became popular after the event.

It was a nice touch to have the display near the portrait of Shelley who wrote two poems about the event which weren’t published until the 1830s.

Closes 1 March 2020

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