On few points do the accounts of Peterloo vary more than on the question of the casualties. There is sufficient historical material available to enable us to investigate this matter in detail, but the task would be a gruesome one, and no useful object would be attained if it were accomplished. On the other hand, a few words may serve to show whereabouts the truth lies. In the _Cambridge Modern History_ (Vol. X., pp. 580, 581) it is stated that "a man was killed and forty were injured." In the _Political History of England_ (1906, Vol. XI., pp. 178, 179) we read that "happily the actual loss of life did not exceed five or six, but a much larger number were more or less wounded." A number of the most important school histories in use at the present time reproduce one or the other of these statements _verbatim_. If we turn to the contemporary records, they are somewhat conflicting. The hurried estimates given by the local papers immediately after the catastrophe (_e.g._, one newspaper reported twelve killed) had to be corrected later. The most general estimate seems to be "eleven killed and between 500 and 600 wounded." When we come to examine these figures in detail, however, these points emerge: (1) "Killed" is evidently taken to include the cases of those who died after lingering (possibly) for some weeks. (2) The summary includes the casualties due to the firing of the infantry in the neighbourhood of New Cross, some hours after the great event; included in the list, also will be the child (Fildes) knocked from its mother's arms by one of the yeomanry as they were riding to the meeting. Archibald Prentice, in his _Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester_ (p. 167), states that eleven were killed, that 420 were wounded, and that there still remained (according to the Relief Committee's Report) 140 cases to be investigated, making a total of 560. Mr. John Benjamin Smith (who very likely refreshed his memory by looking up records when writing his Reminiscences) gives the same result. Mr. J. C. Hobhouse, speaking in the House of Commons, on May 19th, 1821, said that "he held in his hand a list of killed and wounded running to 25-30 sheets, and defied them to disprove it." It is clear, then, that these estimates are quoted from the Committee's Report, and to this it will be well now to turn.