execution of Jack Sheppard. The mob, believing
(he surgeons were going to carry off the
body, destroyed the hearse, beat the mutes,
and bore the thief's body off to the Barleymow
public-house in Long-acre. Discovering there
that the rumour was only a trick of the surgeons,
they broke into a riot, which was only
duelled by detachments of the Guards from the
Savoy.

In 1733, there was an excise-bill riot in London:
the bill being deferred, the mob burnt
effigies of the unpopular minister, and broke
hundreds of windows. In 1734, a great tumult
occurred in Suffolk-street, Charing-cross, where
some foolish young Whig gentleman had, in
ridicule of the death of King Charles, lit a bonfire
before the door, and thrown into it a calf's head.
An indignant Tory mob stormed the house, and
completely wrecked it. The Guards at last
suppressed the riot.

The next great disturbance in London was
owing to the attempt in parliament to suppress
the use of gin. The street cry was-. "No Gin, no
King!" Guards had to be posted at St. James's,
Somerset House, and the Rolls, and horse
militia were distributed as patrols in the parks
and Covent Garden. This same year there were
many desperate conflicts in Whitechapel between
the English and Irish bricklayers. In 1758,
there was a riot at Islington, at the funeral of
an undertaker, pawnbroker, and publican of
Moorgate, who had been detested by the
populace for his extortions. In 1763, during the
Covent Garden election, the Irish chairmen had
a desperate battle with a party of soldiers and
sailors. A challenge was offered by a chairman
to fight the best sailor present; this ended
in the defeat of the Irishman, who was instantly
reinforced by his brethren, when a general
attack commenced on the sailors with pokers,
tongs, fenders, and other weapons from the
household armoury; those, supported by a party
of unarmed soldiers, drove their antagonists from
the field, and immediately proceeded to demolish
every "chair" they could find. These outrages
continued till evening. By that time a
general muster of chairmen had taken place.
These, exasperated to madness, beat down men,
women, and children, in their progress to the
scene of action, where a dreadful conflict was
only prevented by a party of soldiers from the
Savoy, whose exertions accomplishedthe capture
of some of the ringleaders; but not before a
soldier and a sailor, and three other persons,
had been dangerously wounded, and the King's
Head alehouse almost demolished. The stalwart
chairmen of the Georgian era are familiar
to us through the pictures of Hogarth. The
year ended with tumult, for in December a
mob interfered to prevent the public burning of
Number Forty-five of Wilkes's North Briton
before the Royal Exchange. The people seized
the fagots, and thrashed and pelted the
aldermen and constables; they then marched to
Temple-bar, and, in mockery of the obnoxious
nobleman, Bute, burnt a large jack-boot at
Temple-bar.

The February of the following year, 1764,
produced a riot of a most singular kind. A
man, having a claim for debt against a female
servant of the ambassador for Morocco who
resided in Panton-square, Haymarket, collected
a mob, declaring that the woman was his wife,
detained for unlawful purposes. The ambassador's
windows were pelted with dirt and
stones, and all the furniture destroyed. The
ambassador and his retinue defended the first
floor with drawn sabres, and were pelted with
the legs of chairs, till a company of the Guards
arrived and dispersed the irrational mob.

A few months later in the same year, 1764,
the footmen of gentlemen attending Ranelagh
hissed certain persons who had refused their
servants vails. Not content with this protest,
they proceeded to destroy the fences, break the
coloured lamps, and pelt the company in the
rotunda. Some constables were stationed at
Ranelagh to preserve the peace, and two nights
alter the footmen's riot the constables
themselves got quarrelsomely drunk, and fought in
the midst of the fashionable promenaders.

In the year 1768, London was the scene of
innumerable riots, and no young town on the
banks of the Mississippi could have presented a
more lamentable picture of inefficient police and
lawless and determined mobs. On May 16th,
1768, a mob assembled round the King's Bench
Prison, where their ugly idol, Wilkes, was then
imprisoned, a report having been spread that
the great demagogue was that day to be taken
to the House of Commons. One of the mob,
posting against the prison-wall some doggrel
lines about Liberty being locked in with Wilkes,
the constable took it down, and a riot ensued.
Among the most conspicuous of those who
flung stones at the magistrates was a man who
wore two dirty red waistcoats, but no coat.
Six Grenadiers were sent to apprehend him;
but he fled among the cowsheds and tea-
gardens of St. George's Fields. The soldiers,
tracking him to a cowhouse, followed him in;
but he escaped by a door, through which,
unluckily, at the same moment entered a Mr. Allan,
the son of a neighbouring farmer. One of the
soldiers instantly shot him. The soldier's
defence was that the musket had gone off by
accident.

In this same year the journeymen tailors
collected in vast numbers in Lincoln's Inn-fields
to discuss their grievances. Sailors and
coalheavers proceeded to far more desperate
measures to obtain higher wages, actually stopping
outward-bound vessels, and disabling their sails
and spars. Luckily for quieter men, the
coalheavers and sailors at last fell by the ears and
fought like Montagues and Capulets, till the
gutters of Wapping and Rotherhlthe ran with
blood. On one falal night twenty of the
combatants were killed, and seven soldiers and a
sergeant lost their lives in a riot at Wapping.

About this time a brave, honest man, named
John Green, living at the bottom of New
Gravel-lane, Shadwell, was appointed deputy
under Mr. William Russell, an inspector of the