Tens of thousands of unemployed workers and Irish protesters converged on Trafalgar Square in London on this day in 1887, defying a police ban to demand jobs and the release of an imprisoned Irish MP. Commissioner Charles Warren met them with 2,000 constables and 400 soldiers under fixed bayonets; a local manufacturer even offered his steam fire engine as an improvised water cannon to clear the crowd, an offer Warren turned down.
The baton charges that followed left two or three protesters dead and hundreds injured, with 400 arrests made amid iron bars, knives and broken glass. Organisers including John Burns and Robert Cunninghame-Graham were jailed for six weeks, while Annie Besant, who addressed the crowd, was never charged.
The violence was not over. The following Sunday a young clerk named Alfred Linnell was run down by a police horse during a second demonstration, dying a fortnight later from his injuries; his funeral drew thousands and turned him into a martyr for the cause.
