REVIEWS

Some of the marchers at the renowned Peterloo political demonstration on 16 August 1819 were wearing the long, straight empire-line dresses fashionable in the period. Such restrictive clothing hardly suggests that they were out to cause trouble for the Establishment, or that they anticipated having to run away from the sabre-wielding Yeomanry (who went on to killto re-examine the arguments about the degree to which the crowd incited the massacre.