Last Year's Lesson: Bloody Sunday in London - Nov. 13, 1887

One of history's many Bloody Sundays took place on this day in 1887 in London.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, history fans, here's a rerun for today, brought to
you by Tracy V. Wilson. We hope it makes previous
episodes for this date easier to find in the feed.
Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick

(00:20):
look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and it's November.
One of history's very many Bloody Sundays took place on
this day in seven. There are a lot of events
that have been named Bloody Sunday, and this one took

(00:41):
place in Trafalgar Square in London. In the late nineteenth century,
Trafalgar Square had become a common gathering place for protesters
in London, in particular the working poor. We're protesting against
exploitation and financial hardship. These protesters were often supported by
middle class socialists, and then over the summer of eighteen

(01:02):
eighty seven, the square had also become home to a
large number of unemployed people, many of them with nowhere
else to go. Some slept in the square and washed
themselves in its fountains, and newspapers were drawing a lot
of attention to this situation. Authorities regarded this sort of
encampment in the square as an embarrassment, and starting on

(01:22):
October seventeenth of that year, police regularly tried to clear
all the people out, but little was done to address
the circumstances that had led to these people being there
in the first place. So many of these evictions from
the square became violent, but the people, having nowhere else
to go, and having become such a focal point for protests,

(01:43):
people would gather there again. As attention grew to the cycle,
the protest grew also, and a lot was going on
in these protests and demonstrations. There were a lot of
different people involved who had their own goals and objectives.
There were socialists and anarchists and trade unionists and some
of the more specific political ideas that were brought up

(02:07):
in these demonstrations included Irish home rule in England's treatment
of Ireland, in addition to all the other things we've
already been talking about. So on November eight seven, a
notice was posted to ban meetings and Trafalgar Square. It
was issued by Charles Warren, who was the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
It said, in part, until further information, no public meetings

(02:30):
will be allowed to assemble in Trafalgar Square, nor will
speeches be allowed to be delivered therein, and well disposed
persons are hereby cautioned and requested to abstain from joining
or attending any meeting or assemblage. This notification also made
it clear that precautions were going to be taken to
prevent such assemblies and that disturbances would be suppressed. That

(02:52):
was the actual word that was used, suppressed. So now
in addition to the poor people and the socialists, the
trade unionists and all of these other people, there were
now also radicals who thought the key issue at play
here was the freedom of speech. In defiance of this ban,
a plan was formed to march on Trafalgar Square and protest,

(03:13):
and the plan also included speeches and a demonstration that
was planned once they arrived that was to happen on
November thirteenth of seven, But what happened instead was that
the police charged the protesters. There were fifteen hundred police,
including mounted officers, and there were hundreds of volunteers there
as special constables. The military was there too, including infantry

(03:36):
and cavalry, and most of these people were armed with
police truncheons, although the military units also had things like bayonets.
A few protesters were killed in this most sources say
either two or three, and at least two hundred were
injured in violence that went on all day. There were
also many arrests of the leaders of the demonstrations. Some

(04:00):
of the police in the military were injured as well,
but there were far far more injuries among the protesters.
A big part of the response to this event was
outrage against the police brutality that had happened, and the
people who were killed reviewed as martyrs. The authorities, though,
felt that the use of force had been appropriate, and

(04:20):
some of the more conservative papers framed this as a
much needed clean up of lawless agitators. A week later,
on November twenty, at a subsequent protest, a man named
Alfred Lynnell fell and was scrampled by a horse and killed.
His death was similarly condemned in the same way that
the police brutality had been. The idea was that an

(04:42):
exploitative and inhumane system had caused this innocent man's death.
Thanks to Christopher Osciotis for his research work on today's podcast,
and to KCP groom at Jailer Mays for all their
audio work on the show. You can subscribe to the
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