Henry "Orator" Hunt (6 November 1773 – 13 February 1835) was an English radical speaker and agitator remembered as a pioneer of working-class radicalism and an important influence on the later Chartist movement. He advocated parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws. He was the first member of parliament to advocate for women's suffrage; in 1832 he presented a petition to parliament from a woman asking for the right to vote. He was the leading figure in the events leading to Peterloo massacre.
___Peterloo_Massacre_q.jpg)
>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
👉 Henry Hunt (politician) in the context of Peterloo Massacre
The Peterloo Massacre took place at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on Monday 16 August 1819. Eighteen people were killed and 400–700 were injured when the cavalry of the Yeomen charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation.
After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, there was an acute economic slump, accompanied by chronic unemployment and harvest failure due to the Year Without a Summer, and worsened by the Corn Laws, which kept the price of bread high. At that time, only around 11 percent of adult males had the right to vote, very few of them in the industrial north of England, which was worst hit. Radicals identified parliamentary reform as the solution, and a mass campaign to petition parliament for manhood suffrage gained three-quarters of a million signatures in 1817 but was flatly rejected by the House of Commons. When a second slump occurred in early 1819, Radicals sought to mobilise huge crowds to force the government to back down. The movement was particularly strong in the north-west, where the Manchester Patriotic Union organised a mass rally in August 1819, addressed by well-known Radical orator Henry Hunt.