A huge crowd of people gathered at St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, to hear radical orators speak on the subject of parliamentary reform and high food prices. The local yeomanry were ordered to arrest the speakers, but panicked and charged the crowd. Eleven people died and hundreds were injured. The massacre became known as ‘Peterloo’ – an ironic inversion of the British military triumph at Waterloo.

In 1832, a Royal Commission into the Poor Law recommended changes to the system of parish poor relief. Many of its recommendations were incorporated into the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. This statute maintained outdoor relief (relief given outside a workhouse), but led to more central control of the system.

Over 700,000 slaves were freed in the British Caribbean. Plantation owners received about £20 million in government compensation for the loss of their slaves. The former slaves received nothing.

The Whig government under Viscount Melbourne faced increasing financial and public order difficulties, and Sir Robert Peel forced a general election after defeating the Whigs on a no-confidence motion in the House of Commons. The Conservatives won a Commons majority of more than 70. This was the first election in modern times when one political party with a parliamentary majority was defeated by another which gained a workable majority of its own.

This Reform Act was passed by a minority Conservative government led by Frederick, Earl of Derby. Its orchestrator was Benjamin Disraeli, who permitted larger extensions to the franchise than the Liberals would have countenanced. It virtually doubled the electorate, enabling one-third of adult males in Britain and one-sixth in Ireland to vote in parliamentary elections. In a few urban constituencies, working men were an electoral majority. A separate act for Scotland was passed in 1868.

Ireland’s Landlord and Tenant Act, passed by William Gladstone’s government, attempted to address a key grievance. The act provided for compensation to tenants evicted by landlords and it gave legal protection to customary tenant right. Tenants were also allowed to purchase their holdings if they could afford the cost.

This act changed the previous legal situation, in which all property automatically transferred to the control of a husband on marriage. It granted some limited separate protection to a married woman’s property and also permitted women to retain up to £200 of their own wages or earnings. Similar changes did not take effect in Scotland until 1877.

A J Mundella introduced a bill on behalf of William Gladstone’s Liberal government which made school attendance compulsory from ages five to 10. State expenditure on education, about £1.25 million a year in 1870, rose to £4 million, and would reach £12 million by the end of Victoria’s reign.

The second Land Act created a Land Commission for Ireland which could decide the level of ‘fair rents’. The act also granted free sale of land and security of tenure. William Gladstone’s Liberal government hoped, optimistically, that this legislation would take the sting out of violent agitation in Ireland.