Page 27 - Top Cover Issue 6

TOP COVER ISSUE 6 27

HISTORY

1782

The Bow Street Foot Patrol is introduced
in London. All its personnel are armed
with a truncheon and a cutlass and some

have pistols. Sixteen parties patrol the
1766 metropolis at night and six officers attend

At the Goose Fair in known trouble-spots such as outside
Nottingham there is theatres. They are also responsible for
a riot over the high
price of cheese. The the protection of the royal palaces. By
Mayor is knocked 1829 it will have an establishment of 100.
down and the 15th
Regiment of (Light)
Dragoons is called to
restore order. Many
rioters are arrested
and one innocent
man, said to be a
stallholder, is shot by
the soldiers.

1769 1784

The Spitalfields Riots. Silk weavers in London form a combination The Clerkenwell Bridewell Riot. There is
(a union) in support of a pay claim. Bands of ‘silk cutters’ armed a riot in the women’s section of Bridewell
with pistols, which they occasionally fire into the air to deter prison in Clerkenwell in London. There is a
interference, travel from work-place to work-place (almost fear that this could lead to serious damage
invariably private homes) to destroy the work on the looms to the prison, Newgate prison having been
being done by weavers who refuse to join the combination. gutted by fire during the Gordon Riots only
When a party of principal officers from the Bow Street public four years earlier. William Stevenson, a
office, accompanied by soldiers from the 3rd Regiment of Foot member of the London night watch outside
Guards, try to arrest ‘cutters’ who are meeting in the Dolphin the prison, is called inside. Three soldiers
alehouse in Cock Lane, Shoreditch, they are resisted and a arrive to visit a woman prisoner but instead
soldier, Private Adam McCoy, is shot in the head and killed. The they are taken to the keeper’s lodge and
soldiers fire into the alehouse and two men are killed. given a blunderbuss each. As they are being
led into an internal courtyard Stevenson
snatches a blunderbuss out of the hands of
one of the soldiers, William Rickwater. Once
in the courtyard the soldiers are told to fire
into the women’s section but they refuse.
Stevenson says that he will do it and he
fires through a wicket gate, despite efforts
by Rickwater to stop him. An inmate, Sarah
Scott, is killed. There is no further rioting but
Stevenson is charged with murder, largely on
the evidence of Rickwater. He is acquitted at
the Old Bailey six weeks later.