The Battle of Mapperley Hills was the culmination of Chartist unrest in Nottingham in August 1842, resulting in mass arrests of working-class demonstrators.
Key Facts
- Date
- 23 August 1842
- Demonstrators assembled
- approximately 5,000 people
- Arrested
- approximately 400 people
- Released on recognizance
- approximately 250 people
- Military unit deployed
- 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays)
- Disturbances began
- 18 August 1842
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Chartist activists in Nottingham adopted a resolution on 18 August 1842 to cease work until the People's Charter of 1838 became law. Magistrates banned further meetings, but over several days Chartists continued to gather, leading troops and police into repeated confrontations across the town and surrounding villages.
On 23 August 1842, several thousand Chartists assembled on Mapperley Hills Common outside Nottingham. The 2nd Dragoon Guards and police ordered the crowd to disperse; when they did not, magistrate Colonel Rolleston ordered arrests. About four hundred demonstrators were detained and marched to the Nottingham House of Correction, with street fighting breaking out along the route.
Approximately two hundred and fifty of those arrested were released the same day upon entering recognizances of £5 each to keep the peace. The episode effectively ended the immediate wave of Chartist disturbances in the Nottingham area, and was later satirised in a lengthy poem published in the Nottingham Review on 23 September 1842.
Belligerents & Mobilization Analysis
Side A
1 belligerent
Colonel Rolleston (magistrate).
Side B
1 belligerent