Henry Hunt (politician)

"Orator" Hunt was the main speaker at St Peter's Field in Manchester on 16 August 1819, where around 60,000 people gathered to demand parliamentary reform at a time when most adult men, and all women, had no vote and industrial towns had no MPs. Yeomanry charged the crowd, killing at least 15 people. Hunt was jailed for two and a half years; the Peterloo Massacre became the founding grievance of British democratic reform.