The above (unfortunately slightly blurred) is from David Goodway’s book on London Chartism.
How many turn-out for a protest is something still argued about in 2025.
The biggest demonstration in British history so far remains the 1 million plus who marched to Hyde Park to oppose war with Iraq on 15th February 2003. However in general the official police figure for a protest and that given by the organisers differs widely. The police have mostly stopped giving public estimates at the moment but clearly still do assess numbers to work out how many officers to deploy.
On 10th April 1848 the two London evening papers differed significantly with the Evening News reporting 150,000 and the Standard 9-10,000. This lower estimate- sometimes extended to 15 or 20,000 appears to be an officially approved one. The Times more or less stuck to it. Other morning papers on 11th April also carried similar numbers except the Morning Post.
The Chartist Northern Star which was published weekly claimed 250,000. That figure looks optimistic..
Historians have tried to estimate numbers based on the photographs of the protest and also on the size of the area the protest covered on the Common. Both are problematic in my view. We can’t really be sure at what point the photos were taken- as people were gathering, as they were dispersing, as the meeting was in progress? We also can’t be sure how closely packed a crowd might be in 1848 compared to modern day standards where, one hopes, safety considerations are important.
However one looks at it the Chartist gathering on Monday 10th April 1848 was bigly. The population of London in 1848 was around 2.3 million so if 100,000 were present (a sort of broad historical consensus…) that would be around 5% of the Capital’s population. Unlike 2025 in 1848 it was very largely a London only crowd. Train travel was available but it was expensive. Most people arrived on foot.
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